Thursday, December 26, 2013
6 selections from 2013.
I had a list of 5 but I couldn't NOT put Momus on. Honorable mention goes to The Strokes and Queens of the Stone Age, both of whom put out solid records.
I thought it was a disappointing year for pop. Even the best albums - Haim, Daft Punk - sound like an homage to time periods when we took decent pop music for granted.
The absolute worst album I heard all year was "Artpop" by Lady Gaga.
Tuesday, September 25, 2012
Friday, January 27, 2012
David Bowie with Ava Cherry, "Footstompin", 1974
You don't see this anymore; a popular musician openly presenting one of his influences on a cable television appearance. 'Footstompin' is a 60s single by the Flares, but you can hear the guitar riff that would soon become the backbone of 'Fame'. I just think this is a killer performance.
Tuesday, January 24, 2012
Monday, January 23, 2012
internet nostalgia: unmanaged comedy
The Threebrain videos were some of the first 'viral' videos I ever saw. Before Youtube become a household tool it was the smaller, DIY websites that hosted the best videos, and friends would crowd around each other's clunky desktop PCs and share URLs. Threebrain had some of the funniest stuff I'd ever seen.
Before the age of omnipresent internet, television was the primary source for comedy, though it was all 'managed' comedy. The guys you saw on comedy central and HBO had already been forced to jump through a lot of hoops and omit a LOT of material to create a show that would be palatable to a wide audience, because in television there was no other audience; you must appeal to everyone, or you appeal to no one. In the TV age, something like this would have never received a second of airplay:
The internet brought in the Age of the Unmanaged, a time for comedians (or musicians, or filmmakers) to make their raw output accessible to a wide audience, or a small audience, or ANY audience. No joke was forcibly cut, or deemed too strange or random or offensive or left-field. If someone had vision, at last that vision could see full realization without being butchered by a team of marketers. And thus, magic happened.
The idea of appropriating and abusing the old G.I.Joe PSAs was surely not a novel one; everyone who had seen the show had poked fun at the dopey lessons laid out by the Joes at the end of every episode. Eric Fensler's clips, however, are classic because they're anything but obvious. These parodies are born from a sense of humor that we would never have been exposed to on cable television, because it's too bizarre to present to a wide audience. The glory of the internet, though, is that your show has a 24-hour timeslot; you can plant a joke in the world wide web, and with time and sunlight it will grow its own audience. Realistically, probably 1 in 5 members of the wide audience would laugh at "I'm a computer." But over time, from one desktop PC to the next, that ends up being a lot of 1's.
Eventually the G.I. Joe clips did get a bit of unwanted management, when Hasbro issued a cease-and-desist letter to Fensler, demanding that he remove the videos from his website. It didn't matter, though - the small audience that appreciated the videos turned out to be large enough to keep them alive, hosting them on a slew of other sites including Youtube. Fensler then found himself writing promos for Adult Swim, a programming block that found success by appealing to the very audience that finds dancing hamsters and psychotic G.I. Joes funny. (I hear these days he writes for Tim & Eric Awesome Show, a televised, managed program that achieves a very unmanaged feel.)
Thursday, January 19, 2012
Wednesday, December 21, 2011
a great song done justice.
The original from the year of my birth, 1982.
Done by the Dirtbombs...
...and by Shudder To Think front man Craig Wedren in 2009
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Sunday, December 18, 2011
Monday, May 16, 2011
Thursday, May 12, 2011
Happy Mondays, Bummed, 1988
"Happy Mondays are a difficult band to work with." -Nathan McGough, manager
Bummed is a great album. Are Happy Mondays a great band? Probably not, but on this record everything seems to line up perfectly- the band, the scene, the label, the drugs, and the guy who just played shakers. Most importantly, Martin Hannett's super dense, reverb-drenched production is disorienting in the most joyful way. It's not often the words "hellish" and "colorful" can both be used to describe the same music, but that seems to be what they were going for.
Here is a cute little TV documentary on the making of the album, which manages to capture McGough asking an apprehensive Tony Wilson for more money to invest in the record. (Of course, the band really just wanted more drugs.)
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"Happy Mondays are a difficult band to work with." -Nathan McGough, manager
Bummed is a great album. Are Happy Mondays a great band? Probably not, but on this record everything seems to line up perfectly- the band, the scene, the label, the drugs, and the guy who just played shakers. Most importantly, Martin Hannett's super dense, reverb-drenched production is disorienting in the most joyful way. It's not often the words "hellish" and "colorful" can both be used to describe the same music, but that seems to be what they were going for.
Here is a cute little TV documentary on the making of the album, which manages to capture McGough asking an apprehensive Tony Wilson for more money to invest in the record. (Of course, the band really just wanted more drugs.)
.
Thursday, May 05, 2011
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
triumph of the artifice.
There's nothing truly committed about a Brian Ferry or a David Bowie.
-Lester Bangs
I guess it makes sense for two of my favorite rock musicians to be criticized on the grounds of being uncommitted. But when it comes to music, who needs commitment? Part of the whole point of the glam/punk scene's pointlessness was being an effective antidote to the ultra-sincere, ultra-committed school of bands like...well, The Band. Bangs asserts that Ferry "doesn't care about rock and roll at all," but maybe it would be more accurate to say he didn't revere the genre as a religion. He cared about rock enough to deconstruct it, to remake and remodel it.
Sometimes it's better to be fake. During his Ziggy period, Bowie sometimes wore a fake anchor tattoo under his left eye. A big part of his influence was the impermanence of his aesthetics, the constant openness to change and stylistic evolution. A tattoo may show classic, rock-ish commitment, but it limits you to carrying that expression for eternity. Better to slap it on for a while, then wash it off when you find a new persona to explore. Freedom, and then inspiration, comes from not having to worry about the permanence or sincerity of something. As Ferry says, "There isn't much time to stop and think, 'what am I doing this for?'"
Thuggage gets the Lester Bangs treatment as well. We've had 'serious' rappers get offended by our shows or songs, and they feel it's their responsibility (as true believers) to knock us for being fake or uncommitted. "They've never ridden low." There's a lot of honor in hip-hop, a lot of pride and exclusivity, so for a group to come along that is knowledgeable and unconcerned with authenticity is like a magician exposing the secrets of their craft. But the magic of artifice is the ability to try on different masks and stay fresh while sincere, committed acts settle into redundancy (50 Cent, the Eagles, etc.)
Of course, the joke was on Bangs. Not only are Bowie and Ferry still playing sold-out shows, but the influence of their 70s work is immeasurable, and there's a whole slew of bands today that seem (ironically) very committed to carrying their legacy. Looks like the artifice payed off.
.
There's nothing truly committed about a Brian Ferry or a David Bowie.
-Lester Bangs
I guess it makes sense for two of my favorite rock musicians to be criticized on the grounds of being uncommitted. But when it comes to music, who needs commitment? Part of the whole point of the glam/punk scene's pointlessness was being an effective antidote to the ultra-sincere, ultra-committed school of bands like...well, The Band. Bangs asserts that Ferry "doesn't care about rock and roll at all," but maybe it would be more accurate to say he didn't revere the genre as a religion. He cared about rock enough to deconstruct it, to remake and remodel it.
Sometimes it's better to be fake. During his Ziggy period, Bowie sometimes wore a fake anchor tattoo under his left eye. A big part of his influence was the impermanence of his aesthetics, the constant openness to change and stylistic evolution. A tattoo may show classic, rock-ish commitment, but it limits you to carrying that expression for eternity. Better to slap it on for a while, then wash it off when you find a new persona to explore. Freedom, and then inspiration, comes from not having to worry about the permanence or sincerity of something. As Ferry says, "There isn't much time to stop and think, 'what am I doing this for?'"
Thuggage gets the Lester Bangs treatment as well. We've had 'serious' rappers get offended by our shows or songs, and they feel it's their responsibility (as true believers) to knock us for being fake or uncommitted. "They've never ridden low." There's a lot of honor in hip-hop, a lot of pride and exclusivity, so for a group to come along that is knowledgeable and unconcerned with authenticity is like a magician exposing the secrets of their craft. But the magic of artifice is the ability to try on different masks and stay fresh while sincere, committed acts settle into redundancy (50 Cent, the Eagles, etc.)
Of course, the joke was on Bangs. Not only are Bowie and Ferry still playing sold-out shows, but the influence of their 70s work is immeasurable, and there's a whole slew of bands today that seem (ironically) very committed to carrying their legacy. Looks like the artifice payed off.
.
Tuesday, April 12, 2011
birds with tits.
I heart Russian animation. The artist/animator Ivan Maximov has been making surreal little movies since the late 80s, and still uploads newer films and computer experiments to his Youtube page.
.
I heart Russian animation. The artist/animator Ivan Maximov has been making surreal little movies since the late 80s, and still uploads newer films and computer experiments to his Youtube page.
.
Sunday, April 10, 2011
Wednesday, April 06, 2011
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
correct me if I'm wrong...
I don't update this thing regularly anymore, although I do update my Myspace blog with "weekly inspiration" posts which are similar to what I was doing here, so if you are still interested in what I am interested in, check those out. In the meantime a few people have asked me to update this thing, so today I'll talk about pitch correction.
What is pitch correction? Wikipedia says it is "the process of correcting the intonation of an audio signal without affecting other aspects of its sound." That does a good job of explaining the specifics, although the article later makes sure to point out "It is now popularly used as a robotic effect in some styles of hip-hop music." For many, that line alone would pass as a definition. The article also mentions the origin of the effect in popular conscience; namely, Cher. I find this funny, because back when Cher released her comeback single "Believe," with it's goofy use of a pitch correction software called auto-tune, nobody thought it was cool. It seemed everyone saw it as just more evidence that Cher had lost her touch. Relying on a production technique to hit those notes? Pretty sad. But jump ahead to today and according to the state of hip hop, the world's barometer of everything trendy/gratuitous, pitch correction is the coolest effect to hit the music scene since Elvis's slap-back echo.
Of course, many in tune with hip hop will associate the effect with one man: T-Pain. In short, T-Pain gained popularity as the guy who 'sings' the heavily pitch-corrected hooks and choruses on a whole slew of terrible rap songs. Why he has a career is still a mystery; when vocals are corrected to this level, virtually anyone could attempt to sing the words and produce the same sound. But it's his obnoxious persona and idiotic appearance that have rounded out his villain, and his presence on virtually every bonehead single that is released by a major rap artist has made him an expected trademark in an already embarrassing genre which is apparently perpetuated by the question "how dumb can we make our chorus?" (But that's another issue.)
T-Pain comes off as a failure because he is so sincere in his gimmick that his output is barely more than an ad for the product he is using. However, the auto-tune/pitch correction effect can have virtue when used within context, as an option but not a trademark. The song "Maquina de Ritmo (Rhythm Box)" on Glberto Gil's new album begins as an acoustic samba but gradually transforms into electronic bossa nova, with Gil's vocals sounding corrected and streamlined by the end of the track. Of course, by this point in the song (and at this point in his career), Gil has already proven that he can sing quite well without electronic application, something T-Pain still hasn't bothered with. Momus has been using auto-tune almost frequently on his past few albums, not so much to correct his pitch as to accentuate his electronic compositions. In the song "Nervous Heartbeat," the effect still allows a few warbles and cracks that give the robotic vocal a fragile grace.
One of the best uses of pitch correction I've heard is Pop Levi's song "Mai's Space," a catchy diddy in which any natural human voice just wouldn't sound appropriate. The song is so exact, the melody so precise and synthetic, that Levi's corrected vocals - or is it a vocoder? - fit snugly between a synth and drum machine. Sadly, whatever technology Levi is using, he knows that people's attentions are more focused on those using it poorly: his tags for the YouTube video of "Mai's Space" include Flo Rida and T-Pain.
I don't update this thing regularly anymore, although I do update my Myspace blog with "weekly inspiration" posts which are similar to what I was doing here, so if you are still interested in what I am interested in, check those out. In the meantime a few people have asked me to update this thing, so today I'll talk about pitch correction.
What is pitch correction? Wikipedia says it is "the process of correcting the intonation of an audio signal without affecting other aspects of its sound." That does a good job of explaining the specifics, although the article later makes sure to point out "It is now popularly used as a robotic effect in some styles of hip-hop music." For many, that line alone would pass as a definition. The article also mentions the origin of the effect in popular conscience; namely, Cher. I find this funny, because back when Cher released her comeback single "Believe," with it's goofy use of a pitch correction software called auto-tune, nobody thought it was cool. It seemed everyone saw it as just more evidence that Cher had lost her touch. Relying on a production technique to hit those notes? Pretty sad. But jump ahead to today and according to the state of hip hop, the world's barometer of everything trendy/gratuitous, pitch correction is the coolest effect to hit the music scene since Elvis's slap-back echo.
Of course, many in tune with hip hop will associate the effect with one man: T-Pain. In short, T-Pain gained popularity as the guy who 'sings' the heavily pitch-corrected hooks and choruses on a whole slew of terrible rap songs. Why he has a career is still a mystery; when vocals are corrected to this level, virtually anyone could attempt to sing the words and produce the same sound. But it's his obnoxious persona and idiotic appearance that have rounded out his villain, and his presence on virtually every bonehead single that is released by a major rap artist has made him an expected trademark in an already embarrassing genre which is apparently perpetuated by the question "how dumb can we make our chorus?" (But that's another issue.)
T-Pain comes off as a failure because he is so sincere in his gimmick that his output is barely more than an ad for the product he is using. However, the auto-tune/pitch correction effect can have virtue when used within context, as an option but not a trademark. The song "Maquina de Ritmo (Rhythm Box)" on Glberto Gil's new album begins as an acoustic samba but gradually transforms into electronic bossa nova, with Gil's vocals sounding corrected and streamlined by the end of the track. Of course, by this point in the song (and at this point in his career), Gil has already proven that he can sing quite well without electronic application, something T-Pain still hasn't bothered with. Momus has been using auto-tune almost frequently on his past few albums, not so much to correct his pitch as to accentuate his electronic compositions. In the song "Nervous Heartbeat," the effect still allows a few warbles and cracks that give the robotic vocal a fragile grace.
One of the best uses of pitch correction I've heard is Pop Levi's song "Mai's Space," a catchy diddy in which any natural human voice just wouldn't sound appropriate. The song is so exact, the melody so precise and synthetic, that Levi's corrected vocals - or is it a vocoder? - fit snugly between a synth and drum machine. Sadly, whatever technology Levi is using, he knows that people's attentions are more focused on those using it poorly: his tags for the YouTube video of "Mai's Space" include Flo Rida and T-Pain.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
post something new!
Someone gave the above request recently, so here is something actually rather old, but probably new to you; Alan Watts A Conversation With Myself from 1971.
I haven't been posting recently because I'm not really in a comfortable position to observe and analyze things. Portland is difficult. Transportation is inconvenient, work is scarce, the job I have managed to catch is frustrating, and I have only just figured out a living situation. I can't write about what I see now, because my perception is skewed; all I see are dead ends and cold, wet streets. I'm bogged down by the albatross of uncertainty and the crown of doubt.
If and when things pick up, maybe I will start posting again. In the meantime, admire Watts's orange shirt and think about wiggly nature.
.
Someone gave the above request recently, so here is something actually rather old, but probably new to you; Alan Watts A Conversation With Myself from 1971.
I haven't been posting recently because I'm not really in a comfortable position to observe and analyze things. Portland is difficult. Transportation is inconvenient, work is scarce, the job I have managed to catch is frustrating, and I have only just figured out a living situation. I can't write about what I see now, because my perception is skewed; all I see are dead ends and cold, wet streets. I'm bogged down by the albatross of uncertainty and the crown of doubt.
If and when things pick up, maybe I will start posting again. In the meantime, admire Watts's orange shirt and think about wiggly nature.
.
Thursday, February 14, 2008
beauty and irony.
Well, happy Stadium Mud Buggies Day everyone. I haven't been updating much lately, I know, but I always post on Feb 14, and thought I'd share some valentine-flavored sights and sounds with you. First is Cocorosie's lovely rendition of Kevin Lyttle's "Turn Me On". You really can't fully appreciate this performance until you listen to the original song in all its mediocrity. And have I mentioned that Bianca Casady is one of my favorite figures in pop music?
Unfortunately you will never see this, or any Cocorosie video, on MTV. There is a good chance, however, that if you turn the channel on right now you will see my next clip:
Not only is Melina's video hilarious - aping the retro look of videos by Shalamar and Earth Wind & Fire - but Snoop Dogg's song is just plain dope. "Sensual Seduction" (actually titled "Sexual Eruption") is catchy in a way that isn't obnoxious or overly stupid, which is more than I can say for most hip-hop singles in recent memory (*cough*Soulja Boy *cough*). For an overly-horny forefather of modern rap, Snoop Dogg has done well for himself, managing to rise above the current trends of the genre by reaching back to the oldest of the old-school and coming up with something that sounds, ironically, fresh.
.
Well, happy Stadium Mud Buggies Day everyone. I haven't been updating much lately, I know, but I always post on Feb 14, and thought I'd share some valentine-flavored sights and sounds with you. First is Cocorosie's lovely rendition of Kevin Lyttle's "Turn Me On". You really can't fully appreciate this performance until you listen to the original song in all its mediocrity. And have I mentioned that Bianca Casady is one of my favorite figures in pop music?
Unfortunately you will never see this, or any Cocorosie video, on MTV. There is a good chance, however, that if you turn the channel on right now you will see my next clip:
Not only is Melina's video hilarious - aping the retro look of videos by Shalamar and Earth Wind & Fire - but Snoop Dogg's song is just plain dope. "Sensual Seduction" (actually titled "Sexual Eruption") is catchy in a way that isn't obnoxious or overly stupid, which is more than I can say for most hip-hop singles in recent memory (*cough*Soulja Boy *cough*). For an overly-horny forefather of modern rap, Snoop Dogg has done well for himself, managing to rise above the current trends of the genre by reaching back to the oldest of the old-school and coming up with something that sounds, ironically, fresh.
.
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
city world.
Here is my little basement den in (south)East Portland. I moved up here a couple weeks ago. It's nice with its neon green trim, but it gets awful cold in this weather.
It's fun to go downtown and look at the big buildings. Some are new, some are old, some are gothic, some are modern, and some, like this Michael Graves creation, are just silly in a Batman-ish way:
Joel reflects beneath a strategically placed "Suicide Hotline" sign on the Hawthorne Bridge.
Emerson Valentine Lyon, aka Rickety, self-proclaimed leader of hip-hop and my bandmate in Thuggage. Oh, and check out his song Rude, my favorite single of 2007.
Comedian Aaron Ross as talk-show host Ed Foreman...
...and as bathroom-lesbian-couple eavesdropper, along with fellow comedian Bobby Mickey and former president Abraham Lincoln.
More to come.
Here is my little basement den in (south)East Portland. I moved up here a couple weeks ago. It's nice with its neon green trim, but it gets awful cold in this weather.
It's fun to go downtown and look at the big buildings. Some are new, some are old, some are gothic, some are modern, and some, like this Michael Graves creation, are just silly in a Batman-ish way:
Joel reflects beneath a strategically placed "Suicide Hotline" sign on the Hawthorne Bridge.
Emerson Valentine Lyon, aka Rickety, self-proclaimed leader of hip-hop and my bandmate in Thuggage. Oh, and check out his song Rude, my favorite single of 2007.
Comedian Aaron Ross as talk-show host Ed Foreman...
...and as bathroom-lesbian-couple eavesdropper, along with fellow comedian Bobby Mickey and former president Abraham Lincoln.
More to come.
Monday, November 12, 2007
REMODELING.
As you can see, I've updated my template. I did this for a few reasons: 1) Blogger's new templates are more open to customization, 2) the built-in comments feature is more reliable than the old comment button I added myself, and 3) my archives are once again available for viewing (when I switched over to Blogger Beta a while back, all the archive links disappeared from my old template). Now you can go all the way back to my very first post, and then observe how I gradually become more and more cynical as the years progress. Thanks, Blogger!
As you can see, I've updated my template. I did this for a few reasons: 1) Blogger's new templates are more open to customization, 2) the built-in comments feature is more reliable than the old comment button I added myself, and 3) my archives are once again available for viewing (when I switched over to Blogger Beta a while back, all the archive links disappeared from my old template). Now you can go all the way back to my very first post, and then observe how I gradually become more and more cynical as the years progress. Thanks, Blogger!
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