For the record, I was never a programmer.
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Tag Archives: snobbery
Like wrestling a pig
Yesterday morning, I waded into the slap fight between Pitchfork and Urb magazine with this post on the TOC blog. In dissing Pitchfork, Urb placed them within the Chicago indie rock scene, which it finds to be “the most pretentious smarter-than-thou scene in the entire country.”
Nevermind that ALL indie rock scenes are at least a little pretentious, but I don’t think you can really call much of anything in Chicago pretentious (although in a response, LA Weekly drops a reference to Tortoise and if all most of the rest of the world knows about Chicago is either its post-rock and free jazz scenes, then I guess I can understand where they’re getting that from). Moreover, I don’t think Pitchfork is a vibrant part of the city’s scene. It’s not a knock against them, they’re just more nationally-focused.
In any case, the post got picked up by LAist and The Daily Swarm as well as a couple other places. I’m getting called out for not knowing my ass from page 8 in the dictionary because Film School are originally (?) from San Francisco and not L.A. OK, my bad even though they’re billing themselves as an L.A. band. And yeah, they’ve been around a couple years, but that’s exactly my point: I don’t see them as anything more than a band of noodling wankers who keep trying to convince people to buy what they’re selling.
Skeet On Mischa also points out that No Age is obviously L.A.’s most talked-about indie musical export right now. And he’s got a point. It slipped my mind that the noise-rock duo hails from there.
So to sum up, in the 1st Annual Talking Out Of Your Ass Tourney, TOC, Pitchfork and Urb finish in a three-way tie.
Death and ennui
Hey wait, where you going? Come back, I promise this isn’t going to be depressing.
I think for anyone who follows media cycles, there comes a point when you sigh and say “That’s quite enough.” For me, it happens when all the stuff that’s being pushed on you is of middling to no value. It’s perhaps exacerbated by my failing to renew my subscription to The Economist.
In any case, I present this list of Things Whose Ubiquity Is Indirectly Proportional To My Level Of Excitement About Them:
* The Simpsons Movie
* Local stage productions of “High School Musical”
* Silverchair’s new album (I swear I get 1-2 press releases a week about this thing)
* The Redwalls’ new album (ditto)
* Michael’s return to Lost
* Meltdowns by Lindsay and Britney
* A really blurry video of Beyonce falling
* Flash Gordon returning to TV
OK, that last one’s a lie. The buzz on that is proportional to my level of interest (“mild”). Mainly, it’s been stoked by TOC‘s TV editor Margaret Lyons who keeps inquiring if I’m looking forward to it, followed by me correcting her that it is this Flash and not that one, that I follow.
Speaking of, the most recent Flash, Bart Allen, died in last month’s issue, just as his mentor and uncle Wally West (the prior Flash) returned from a sort of self-imposed exile in the speed force. It’s a shame that the character was killed just as Marc Guggenheim was starting to shake off the awful Bilson/DeMeo re-launch. But worse than that is the possibility that DC has thrown out the baby with the bath water in an attempt to get the series back on its feet. It’s bad enough that DC bungled the character’s life, but worse than that they’ve bollixed up his death. 
Up until this 13-issue run, DC did a pretty good job of developing Bart Allen as he grew from Impulse to The Flash. But in the first few several issues of the relaunch, Bilson/DeMeo took a storied title and ran it into the ground by writing it as if they were crafting a discarded script for Smallville. Guggenheim came aboard and grounded the character, thanks to a job with the LAPD and a romantic interplay that resembled the hard choices and failings typical of your first adult relationship.
But it’s possible the damage was done. Plus, most readers still felt as if they were in a limbo over Wally West’s departure, unsure whether they should mourn his passing and embrace his successor or bide the time, and have patience with his placeholder. Per tradition, Bart Allen as The Flash died saving the world (not during a Crisis like his forebearers, but still) and received a similarly literary send-off (a quote from Sir Walter Scott that read “And come he slow, or come he fast, it is but death who comes at last”). But even with these ties to the past, his was a quick and senseless death, and quickly followed by the return of his much-loved uncle (and the much-loved Mark Waid who has a better ear for The Flash than anyone in the last 25 years). In giving so little weight to his death, DC tarnishes the spirit of the character.
The Flash is a harbinger of change in the DC Universe. And the death of a Flash has always been heavy with meaning. With so many changes yet to come for DC characters, and so little meaning attached to the loss of Bart Allen, I’m wondering if I’ll get that same “That’s quite enough” with comics, too.
This is an authentic blog post
Authenticity in a musical performance is a tricky thing to parse out. Probably because there’s no good working definition of it. You could come up with a list of criteria for measuring authenticity, but that would be self-defeating since a performer could do nothing more than hit his or her marks and bingo! Instant authenticity.
So I imagine, for most people, authenticity is like Justice Potter Stewart’s definition of pornography in that they know it when they see it (Milli Vanilli aside). But when it comes to music, two people can see the same show or hear the same piece, and see and hear two very different things. So the whole notion of authenticity in music might just be moot. I’ve yet to read the book mentioned in this feature, but the accompanying text seems to suggest I’m right.
Therefore, I should probably stop obsessing over whether Amy Winehouse* is the real deal or not. But it would be a lot easier to do so if the business of music weren’t what it is today.
Winehouse is basically a pop singer working in a particular idiom that’s a mix of Brill Building songcraft, Motown soul and a touch of blues. Perhaps because those genres are seen as being more “real” than your average top 40 single, there’s more suspicion about her than there either Nelly Furtado – whose transformation from hippie neo-soulster to freak-hopper didn’t have anyone batting an eye – or Nellie McKay, whose first album of piano pop, rap and jazz had critics salivating for a follow-up before she was even old enough to drink (or so went the line at the time, which turned out to be not exactly true).
I haven’t delved into Winehouse’s personal history enough to know whether or not what she’s singing about is autobiographical. None of that matters though, since some of the greatest singers gave voice to thoughts and feelings that weren’t their own. Randy Newman’s not racist stupid and bigoted, but his characters certainly are. But no one would call his songs or performances inauthentic.
For me, Winehouse’s Back To Black album resonates with the same kind of power. You won’t find a more verisimilitudinous couplet in pop music than line than What kind of fuckery is this/You made me miss the Slick Rick gig from “Me and Mr. Jones.”
Even still, the whole notion of pop music involves at least a little artifice. It’s all just a question of how much an audience is willing to tolerate. A few manufactured feuds? Meh. Fudging your age? No big. Hooking up with a mega-producer to snag some chart success after your second album stiffs? Just bring the beats.
So if none of this matters – and if I’m essentially saying Winehouse is the real deal – then why the hesitation?
Well, I think it’s probably the package is just a little too precise. It goes without saying that Winehouse is easy on the eyes, but plenty of pop singers are both talented and hot. But things start to seem fishy when I know hear more about her drugging, partying feuding ways that I do about her music. All that ancillary crap is usually trotted out when the label feels their “product” doesn’t have the chops to make it without a compelling backstory.
And there’s the problem. Here you’ve got someone who’s proven (Winehouse already had one accomplished album under her belt before anyone here ever heard of her), hotter than sauce, and with a compelling – if sometimes absent – stage presence. Yet her record company is putting across Back to Black as if it’s Lindsay Lohan’s third album.
If you can’t sell someone with talent, shouldn’t you just get out of the business altogether?
* Is it me or is the streaming version of “Back to Black” on her website slower than it sounds on the album? See, this is the kind of stuff that makes me get all suspicious that I’m being duped into thinking she’s the Billie Holliday of the aughts.
God, I love that band
First, an update: Van Halen tour, possibly not off. The postponement is “not due to any internal strife among band members.” Sure.
Also, Billy Corgan’s manager on the reason why he’s not bringing James and D’Arcy back into the mix: “For the sake of a younger generation that he wants to turn on to the band’s music, he is doing it with a band that will more faithfully recreate the old songs than ever before.” Hear that? Corgan – by proxy – just said that James and D’Arcy has fallen off. Rock Beef 2007!
Anyway, I just finished the 2006 version of DaCapo’s Best Music Writing anthology. Year after year, DaCapo collects some of the most insightful, funny, and thought-provoking pieces written about music – sometimes only tangentially. Most of the pieces are more than just critical analyses of music, in that they try to say something about how music affects a particular worldview. Elizabeth Mendez Berry’s piece on domestic violence in rap and John Jeremiah Sullivan’s surprisingly thoughtful travelogue about the Christian Rock festival called Creation, in particular.
The selection that really hit me was J. Edward Keyes’ reporting on a Bloc Party show in 2005 (unfortunately, it’s not available online). The piece’s focal point is the hype that Bloc Party are set to be “the next Franz Ferdinand” (I always thought they were supposed to be the next Gang of Four, but no matter) before delving into the twin devils of mystique and hype, and the unrealistic notions of both. While Keyes might not come up with any earth-shattering conclusions, the impact comes from the way he presents his findings, letting his reporting speak for itself and avoiding any pop-psych journo speak.
At one point Keyes is speaking with a couple indie music snobs who have this to say on whether Bloc Party will indeed become the next FF:
“As long as they stay under the radar, I’ll keep listening to them,” he says. “But if they become mainstream, I’m probably going to stop.”
I’ve been a full-time music lover since, roughly, junior high, and a part-time music snob since probably college, but this is one of the most asinine statements ever made, right up there with “I’m only staying for one drink.”
People who really love music (and this guy isn’t one of them but more on that in a bit) sometimes say things like this. Not exactly this, but like this. It’s because they worry that success will spoil Rock Hunter, and the things they love about a band will change. Maybe chasing mainstream success will cause an artist to change his or her sound so much that they’ll no longer be the band you love (we’ll call this The Liz Phair Rule). Or they’ll record new material that makes it harder and harder to convince people that they were once relevant (we’ll call this The Rod Stewart Rule).
But nowadays – and I realize what an old man that phrase makes me sound like – there’s an increasingly large segment of the music-consuming population that’s reduced music to a trend, to fashion, which is why it’s more common now to see a band become wildly hyped, then torn down, often before they’ve even released a full-length (Tapes ‘n’ Tapes, Clap Your Hands Say Yeah and Arctic Monkeys to name a few). Other symptoms of this phenomenon include indie rock songs in commercials, girls who wear baby tees emblazoned with the names of bands whose albums they don’t own, and dudes who claim to be huge fans of a band, five minutes before they hit the exits and ten minutes before said band hits the stage.
And that brings us back to the Bloc Party fan.
I don’t worry about my favorite bands becoming mainstream or overly popular. I worry about jagoffs like this guy taking up residence in my favorite rock clubs. For this cat, being a “Bloc Party fan” is about knowing something other people don’t, not about enjoying the music. And that’s why he’s not saying he’s worried that if the band becomes mainstream, they might fall victim to The Liz Phair Rule or The Rod Stewart Rule. It’s not a qualitative decision. He’s saying he only likes the band because of what it says about him.
People who make comments like this always try to make it sound as if they’re very high-minded, as if their criticism stems from the band abandoning its initial ethos. So it’s important to remember that in these instances, it’s more about the person making the comment, than the band about whom they’re commenting.
Because what does it matter if you’re the first to know about something that’s wonderful, if you can’t appreciate the wonderfulness of it?
