First of all, my apologies for the long gap in between blog entries. I totally lost focus during the holiday season, and I am finally getting back into the groove. That said, I don't want to just crank out bland, uninspired blog entries, so I'm glad I finally had something to write about that sounded worthwhile.
So, today K.C. and I drove from Oklahoma City to Lubbock for a gig. On the way, I finished Here, There & Everywhere, Geoff Emerick's book about being the Beatles' recording engineer for most of their career as a band. After that, I took over driving for K.C., and listened to Sgt. Pepper and Abbey Road.
There were portions of the book that were very poignant to me, specifically moments shared between Emerick and Paul McCartney; he was clearly much closer to Paul than the other three Beatles. Emerick not only worked with the Beatles while they were together, he also did some work with them as individuals after the break up. Mostly, he worked with Paul. John Lennon was shot while Emerick and McCartney were working on the Tug of War album, and the description of McCartney's demeanor the day they learned of Lennon's death found me choked up and holding back the tears (I don't know what the rules are for quoting text online from books, so I decided to play it safe and not post an excerpt here...You'll just have to find the book and read it yourself).
During the car ride, I found myself thinking about Paul McCartney a lot, about how he tends to get a bad rap. There are people who think that the genius of the Beatles was solely due to John Lennon, and that McCartney only writes sentimental crap. In my opinion, nothing could be further from the truth. I continue to be inspired by that man and his work in ways that I can't even count, they are so numerous. Not only his work with the Beatles, but his current work as well. (Although, I am experiencing a renaissance with Sgt. Pepper for the umpteenth time. One thing that Emerick is clear about is that Sgt. Pepper was Paul's baby, to a degree...Emerick desribes Lennon as a bit detached during its recording. Despite the slightly lopsided nature of it, I still find Pepper to be mind-blowing, and I continue to discover new things in it to enjoy. McCartney's bass playing, which Emerick talks about a great deal in the book, really is the best part. It's absolutely phenomenal, and largely demonstrates why Paul McCartney will always be my favorite bass player.) There are some who will disagree with me, but I feel that McCartney hasn't made a bad record since the early 90's. Off The Ground was the last thing he did that I just couldn't abide, but everything since has been solid (Flaming Pie, Run Devil Run, Driving Rain, Chaos & Creation In the Backyard, Memory Almost Full).
The moments in the book where Emerick discusses Lennon's death, as well as George Harrison's, started me thinking about McCartney and how he probably won't be around for THAT much longer. Mind you, he's 66, and could easily last another 14 years or so (or more...he has obviously taken very good care of himself in recent years), but I can't help but feel the anticipation of the loss I will experience when he's gone. This is made all the more acute by the fact that one of my biggest musical dreams (I mean, it's REALLY big) is to meet him, and maybe even perform with him (just one song...that's all I ask. Preferably "I Saw Her Standing There"). I have a lot of big dreams, but if I didn't believe they were somehow possible, I would have abandoned them a long time ago. Same goes for this one.
My time spent in the car yesterday enjoying the Beatles' music (as well as some Robyn Hitchcock, and some other random favorites on shuffle, like Steve Vai's "Sisters" and Aphex Twin's "Alberto Balsalm") was one of those two to three hour periods that remind me why I do what I do. The inspiration I have received and continue to derive from the music of Paul McCartney and the Beatles is fuel for my own dreams and ambitions...Without it, I might be an accountant by now. I am so privileged to be on the road performing with K.C., and I hope to have the opportunity before too long to take Dr. Pants out on the road like this. I have so many ideas about things that will make Dr. Pants even better than it is now, and I am looking forward to putting some of them into practice. The book inspired me in that way as well...So much about the Beatles' recording process, and how they worked together (before they started bickering all the time) made me realize how much I have to learn about being in a band, and about how to make a band all that it can be.
If you are even a casual Beatles fan, seek out Emerick's book. It's well worth your time. Maybe it will inspire you, too.
Showing posts with label discussion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label discussion. Show all posts
Thursday, January 15, 2009
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Online Radio Dilemma
So, everyone's talkin' about Pandora. Pandora this, Pandora that. Whatever. It's no different than Last.fm, really, but it acts all fancy because of the whole "Music Genome Project" thing. I'm checking it out, I'm giving it a chance (as we speak, as a matter of fact...I created a Frank Zappa station, and I'm just waiting for the moment where it plays something that sucks. I created a Beatles station first, and the first non-Beatles thing it tried to play was f%@king "Brown Eyed Girl" by Van Morrison. As if I haven't heard that song on oldies/lite rock/classic rock radio a billion times, or had to sit through every crappy cover band on earth play that song. You're treading on thin ice, Pandora...). Last.fm has the advantage, because indie artists get to be part of it. You can upload your music and add it to the Last.fm database, and people who like a particular artist that you resemble might get to hear your song and not something they already know about. Pandora, so far as I can tell, has no option for introducing new music to the system.
Plus, I like the little Last.fm scrobbler box that registers every single song I listen to on my iTunes. And every time I plug my iPod into the computer, it scrobbles everything I played on my iPod since the last time I plugged it in. Hell yeah! It's a complete record of everything I listened to. Pandora has no such features.
If you create a profile on Mog.com, it will also keep track of what you listen to, and the last 10 songs you listened to on iTunes will be listed on your Mog profile. The Mog-0-matic software will also tally everything you have in your iTunes and tell you who you have the most songs by, etc.
Pandora is a lot of fuss over nothing, really. Last.fm does everything it does and more. Music Genome Project? Whatever. If you're not going to give it up to the indie artists, you can put your Music Genome up your wazoo.
Plus, I like the little Last.fm scrobbler box that registers every single song I listen to on my iTunes. And every time I plug my iPod into the computer, it scrobbles everything I played on my iPod since the last time I plugged it in. Hell yeah! It's a complete record of everything I listened to. Pandora has no such features.
If you create a profile on Mog.com, it will also keep track of what you listen to, and the last 10 songs you listened to on iTunes will be listed on your Mog profile. The Mog-0-matic software will also tally everything you have in your iTunes and tell you who you have the most songs by, etc.
Pandora is a lot of fuss over nothing, really. Last.fm does everything it does and more. Music Genome Project? Whatever. If you're not going to give it up to the indie artists, you can put your Music Genome up your wazoo.
Thursday, October 23, 2008
iTunes Genius
Okay, so if you've downloaded the latest version of iTunes (and being a good little program, it should be prompting you to do so regularly if you haven't), you may have noticed the little item under your "playlists" heading that says "Genius" (with a graphic next to it of an atom). Basically, Genius is a feature that 1) generates playlists for you and 2) recommends music to you from the iTunes store based on what you already listen to and enjoy.
I really didn't even give the recommendation part a chance, primarily because I'm in a bit of a spending freeze in terms of music at the moment (I even quit Emusic, which is a waaaay better deal than iTunes to begin with). But the playlist thing intrigued me. Basically, all you do is select a song in your library and hit the Genius button (in the bottom right corner of the iTunes interface), and it generates a playlist of 25 songs (minimum; you can up it to 50, 75, 100...) that it thinks "go well together" based on your selection (the song you select becomes track 1 of the playlist). I basically went through my library finding the most diverse, random songs possible and hitting the Genius button just to see what it came up with. Some results were intriguing, some were frustrating, and some were disappointing.
Most frustrating is the fact that if the song is not something that is sold in the iTunes Store, or is by an independent artist, more than likely the Genius will just balk at it. For instance, if I select something really obscure and avant-garde (like "Industrial Ambients" by Laibach, from a compilation entitled "An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music Volume 2), I get a message that says: "Genius is unavailable for the song "Industrial Ambients"." The same thing happens when I select a Dr. Pants song, or even a song by Abi Tapia, an up and coming songwriter in the folk scene (for the record, Genius doesn't work on K.C. Clifford, either).
The "disappointing" element mostly has to do with the stylistically narrow vision of the Genius, especially when it comes to music in genres primarily populated by African-American artists. For instance, I could tell it to generate a playlist based on a Marvin Gaye song, a Sly Stone song, or a Prince song, and I'd get an entire list of r&b stuff. Why, if I select "Little Red Corvette", do I not get some additional 80's hits that happened to be by white people? Why do I only get a list of all the other black folks in my collection? When it come to genres like this (r&b, hip hop, jazz, and even electronica), the Genius assumes that when I select a certain song (like, say, "South Side" by Moby) that I want an entire playlist of things that are in the same genre (a whole crapload of electronic stuff).
Interestingly enough, the Genius becomes most adventurous when operating in the exceptionally broad genre of "rock" (what on earth does that even mean anymore?). However, the Genius tends to select certain songs over and over again, regardless of what else is in the playlist ("Cars" by Gary Numan seems to be the Genius' favorite song in my entire library). I saved 23 of the playlists Genius generated for me that first day, and "Cars" is in 6 of them. It was in a whole bunch of other ones that I didn't save, too. My iTunes library has 9,192 songs in it, and it can't find another song to put in there instead? Seriously?
It did have some very intriguing results as well, though. Here are a couple of playlists that genuinely impressed me:
Playlist Based On "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" by Tom Waits:
I DON'T WANNA GROW UP-TOM WAITS
IT'S A MOTHERFUCKER-EELS
SEE NO EVIL-TELEVISION
YOUR LITTLE HOODRAT FRIEND-THE HOLD STEADY
I AM WAITING-THE ROLLING STONES
BOB DYLAN'S 49TH BEARD-WILCO
SONG AGAINST SEX-NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
PASSENGER SIDE-WILCO
HOLD ON-TOM WAITS
LORD ONLY KNOWS-BECK
IT'S A HIT-RILO KILEY
DRUNKEN ANGEL-LUCINDA WILLIAMS
LOW SELF-OPINION-ROLLINS BAND (When does Rollins Band EVER follow Lucinda??? That's AWESOME!!)
START A WAR-THE NATIONAL
100%-SONIC YOUTH
LETTER FROM AN OCCUPANT-THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
CALIFORNIA GIRLS-MAGNETIC FIELDS
PABLO PICASSO-THE MODERN LOVERS
RAILROAD MAN-EELS
HELL IS CHROME-WILCO
GHOST-NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL-YO LA TENGO
BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE AGAIN-WARREN ZEVON
EARTH DIED SCREAMING-TOM WAITS
TALKING WORLD WAR III BLUES-BOB DYLAN
If you know a good portion of those songs, then I don't have to tell you that it's a mix of the exciting and the bewildering. Also, I don't like the fact that whatever artist you ask it to base the playlist on, it will invariably include at least 3 of that artist's songs in the playlist. Here is my absolute favorite, though. I asked it to create a playlist based on the song "Bustin' Surfboards" by the Tornadoes (featured on the soundtrack to "Pulp Fiction"). THIS is what I got:
BUSTIN' SURFBOARDS-THE TORNADOES
EVERYBODY'S GONNA BE HAPPY-THE KINKS
FOOLS GOLD-THE STONE ROSES
DERELICT-BECK
WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE-JACKIE DESHANNON
FLYSWATTER-EELS
STARMAN-DAVID BOWIE
PICTURES OF LILY-THE WHO
DIGITAL-JOY DIVISION
EVERY FALLEN IN LOVE?-THE BUZZCOCKS
WAVE OF MUTILATION-THE PIXIES
BEETLEBUM-BLUR
DAYS-THE KINKS
BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD-BAUHAUS
SWEETNESS FOLLOWS-R.E.M.
LIAR, LIAR-THE CASTAWAYS
MOTHER'S LITTLE HELPER-THE ROLLING STONES
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE-LOU REED
JACK-ASS-BECK
CARS-GARY NUMAN (there it is again...)
LET'S SEE ACTION-THE WHO
TIRED OF WAITING FOR YOU-THE KINKS
ON YOUR OWN-BLUR
IMITATION OF LIFE-R.E.M.
(WHITE MAN) IN HAMMERSMITH PALAIS-THE CLASH
There are portions of this that melt my brain. First of all WHAT ON EARTH does "Bela Lugosi's Dead" have in common with "Bustin' Surfboards"? And THEN it follows that up with "Sweetness Follows" by R.E.M.?? Truly inspired. I mean, that moment almost made me weep with joy. Not all the playlists were this adventurous by any means...It's really interesting to see how inconsistent this thing is.
So, perhaps for a certain brand of listener, iTunes Genius could be construed as brilliantly smart (or some other adjective combination suggested by its name). I'm not convinced. Leave the Genius playlist making to we humans who have practiced it since our adolescence. I want Frank Zappa, Prince, R.E.M and Sly Stone all on the same playlist, and the Genius ain't gonna do that for me.
I really didn't even give the recommendation part a chance, primarily because I'm in a bit of a spending freeze in terms of music at the moment (I even quit Emusic, which is a waaaay better deal than iTunes to begin with). But the playlist thing intrigued me. Basically, all you do is select a song in your library and hit the Genius button (in the bottom right corner of the iTunes interface), and it generates a playlist of 25 songs (minimum; you can up it to 50, 75, 100...) that it thinks "go well together" based on your selection (the song you select becomes track 1 of the playlist). I basically went through my library finding the most diverse, random songs possible and hitting the Genius button just to see what it came up with. Some results were intriguing, some were frustrating, and some were disappointing.
Most frustrating is the fact that if the song is not something that is sold in the iTunes Store, or is by an independent artist, more than likely the Genius will just balk at it. For instance, if I select something really obscure and avant-garde (like "Industrial Ambients" by Laibach, from a compilation entitled "An Anthology of Noise & Electronic Music Volume 2), I get a message that says: "Genius is unavailable for the song "Industrial Ambients"." The same thing happens when I select a Dr. Pants song, or even a song by Abi Tapia, an up and coming songwriter in the folk scene (for the record, Genius doesn't work on K.C. Clifford, either).
The "disappointing" element mostly has to do with the stylistically narrow vision of the Genius, especially when it comes to music in genres primarily populated by African-American artists. For instance, I could tell it to generate a playlist based on a Marvin Gaye song, a Sly Stone song, or a Prince song, and I'd get an entire list of r&b stuff. Why, if I select "Little Red Corvette", do I not get some additional 80's hits that happened to be by white people? Why do I only get a list of all the other black folks in my collection? When it come to genres like this (r&b, hip hop, jazz, and even electronica), the Genius assumes that when I select a certain song (like, say, "South Side" by Moby) that I want an entire playlist of things that are in the same genre (a whole crapload of electronic stuff).
Interestingly enough, the Genius becomes most adventurous when operating in the exceptionally broad genre of "rock" (what on earth does that even mean anymore?). However, the Genius tends to select certain songs over and over again, regardless of what else is in the playlist ("Cars" by Gary Numan seems to be the Genius' favorite song in my entire library). I saved 23 of the playlists Genius generated for me that first day, and "Cars" is in 6 of them. It was in a whole bunch of other ones that I didn't save, too. My iTunes library has 9,192 songs in it, and it can't find another song to put in there instead? Seriously?
It did have some very intriguing results as well, though. Here are a couple of playlists that genuinely impressed me:
Playlist Based On "I Don't Wanna Grow Up" by Tom Waits:
I DON'T WANNA GROW UP-TOM WAITS
IT'S A MOTHERFUCKER-EELS
SEE NO EVIL-TELEVISION
YOUR LITTLE HOODRAT FRIEND-THE HOLD STEADY
I AM WAITING-THE ROLLING STONES
BOB DYLAN'S 49TH BEARD-WILCO
SONG AGAINST SEX-NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
PASSENGER SIDE-WILCO
HOLD ON-TOM WAITS
LORD ONLY KNOWS-BECK
IT'S A HIT-RILO KILEY
DRUNKEN ANGEL-LUCINDA WILLIAMS
LOW SELF-OPINION-ROLLINS BAND (When does Rollins Band EVER follow Lucinda??? That's AWESOME!!)
START A WAR-THE NATIONAL
100%-SONIC YOUTH
LETTER FROM AN OCCUPANT-THE NEW PORNOGRAPHERS
CALIFORNIA GIRLS-MAGNETIC FIELDS
PABLO PICASSO-THE MODERN LOVERS
RAILROAD MAN-EELS
HELL IS CHROME-WILCO
GHOST-NEUTRAL MILK HOTEL
YOU CAN HAVE IT ALL-YO LA TENGO
BACK IN THE HIGH LIFE AGAIN-WARREN ZEVON
EARTH DIED SCREAMING-TOM WAITS
TALKING WORLD WAR III BLUES-BOB DYLAN
If you know a good portion of those songs, then I don't have to tell you that it's a mix of the exciting and the bewildering. Also, I don't like the fact that whatever artist you ask it to base the playlist on, it will invariably include at least 3 of that artist's songs in the playlist. Here is my absolute favorite, though. I asked it to create a playlist based on the song "Bustin' Surfboards" by the Tornadoes (featured on the soundtrack to "Pulp Fiction"). THIS is what I got:
BUSTIN' SURFBOARDS-THE TORNADOES
EVERYBODY'S GONNA BE HAPPY-THE KINKS
FOOLS GOLD-THE STONE ROSES
DERELICT-BECK
WHAT THE WORLD NEEDS NOW IS LOVE-JACKIE DESHANNON
FLYSWATTER-EELS
STARMAN-DAVID BOWIE
PICTURES OF LILY-THE WHO
DIGITAL-JOY DIVISION
EVERY FALLEN IN LOVE?-THE BUZZCOCKS
WAVE OF MUTILATION-THE PIXIES
BEETLEBUM-BLUR
DAYS-THE KINKS
BELA LUGOSI'S DEAD-BAUHAUS
SWEETNESS FOLLOWS-R.E.M.
LIAR, LIAR-THE CASTAWAYS
MOTHER'S LITTLE HELPER-THE ROLLING STONES
WALK ON THE WILD SIDE-LOU REED
JACK-ASS-BECK
CARS-GARY NUMAN (there it is again...)
LET'S SEE ACTION-THE WHO
TIRED OF WAITING FOR YOU-THE KINKS
ON YOUR OWN-BLUR
IMITATION OF LIFE-R.E.M.
(WHITE MAN) IN HAMMERSMITH PALAIS-THE CLASH
There are portions of this that melt my brain. First of all WHAT ON EARTH does "Bela Lugosi's Dead" have in common with "Bustin' Surfboards"? And THEN it follows that up with "Sweetness Follows" by R.E.M.?? Truly inspired. I mean, that moment almost made me weep with joy. Not all the playlists were this adventurous by any means...It's really interesting to see how inconsistent this thing is.
So, perhaps for a certain brand of listener, iTunes Genius could be construed as brilliantly smart (or some other adjective combination suggested by its name). I'm not convinced. Leave the Genius playlist making to we humans who have practiced it since our adolescence. I want Frank Zappa, Prince, R.E.M and Sly Stone all on the same playlist, and the Genius ain't gonna do that for me.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Being Honest With Myself...
So, in case you haven't noticed already, I am not the uber-cool, indie rock guy that every music blogger in the known universe seems to want to be. I really can be pretty geeky in my taste, and don't have a lot of interest in certain large sections of the indie rock world. I don't like Pavement, I don't listen to Conor Oberst, etc. I've made concessions to the indie rock world (I am officially a Robert Pollard fan, and things like the New Pornographers, The Hold Steady and Rilo Kiley/Jenny Lewis), but I don't hang out there exlusively. The truth is that many times I'd really rather listen to Frank Zappa or Phish, or maybe Led Zeppelin or the Who. Even more so, I really think that R.E.M. is a better band than many of the indie rock luminaries of the last ten to twenty years. I'd rather hear them than Clap Your Hands Say Yeah, or Vampire Weekend, or any of the newfangled indie rock darlings.
I've really been enjoying Frank Zappa lately. It's easy to forget sometimes how much certain things inspire you if you haven't experienced them in a while. My own aesthetic is really a lot closer to his than it is to someone like, say, Robert Pollard...Pollard's music is fairly one-dimensional by comparison (this is NOT an insult...I love Bob, and think what he does is fantastic, but when you compare it to Zappa's "utopian disregard for genre", it's not exactly diverse). Frank's music is kaleidoscopic, and I've always wanted to be...I've subdivided my work to keep each project within a certain set of parameters, but when you look at it as a whole the picture is large and there's a lot going on (I would never propose that my work measures up to Zappa's, but it's easy to see that he's been an inspiration).
The facts are that the music that has been the most inspiring to me has never been the hippest, except for maybe a brief moment around 1991 or so (or it could have been the fact that everyone I knew and thought was cool was listening to R.E.M. and They Might Be Giants, too). I've always been pretty eclectic, and quasi-picky at the same time. As I post more of the Soundtrack Spotlight mixtapes, you'll see this more and more...1996 is up next and it's a perfect example. There were things that came out in 1996 that I should have been just ga-ga over, but I either didn't like them or didn't catch on until later (I was at least a year late on Cibo Matto, possibly 2 years). Anyway, all of this to say that as I've been falling back into the Zappa zone of late, I feel like I really need to cut myself some slack. I've been very concerned the past couple of years about what I'm listening to, how it's affecting (or not affecting) the music I'm writing, and that maybe if the music I'm listening to isn't hip enough then by default the music I'm writing won't be hip enough...and the reality is that's a bunch of shit. You heard it here first, folks. A bunch of shit. It doesn't matter if I'm hip enough or not. If I'm ahead, or behind, one way or another the world will catch up; it'll come back around.
Go find Frank's album LATHER (there's supposed to be an umlaut over the "A", but I don't have an umlaut key) and bask in the grandiosity of his vision. There is where my inspiration and aspiration lie. At least today.
I've really been enjoying Frank Zappa lately. It's easy to forget sometimes how much certain things inspire you if you haven't experienced them in a while. My own aesthetic is really a lot closer to his than it is to someone like, say, Robert Pollard...Pollard's music is fairly one-dimensional by comparison (this is NOT an insult...I love Bob, and think what he does is fantastic, but when you compare it to Zappa's "utopian disregard for genre", it's not exactly diverse). Frank's music is kaleidoscopic, and I've always wanted to be...I've subdivided my work to keep each project within a certain set of parameters, but when you look at it as a whole the picture is large and there's a lot going on (I would never propose that my work measures up to Zappa's, but it's easy to see that he's been an inspiration).
The facts are that the music that has been the most inspiring to me has never been the hippest, except for maybe a brief moment around 1991 or so (or it could have been the fact that everyone I knew and thought was cool was listening to R.E.M. and They Might Be Giants, too). I've always been pretty eclectic, and quasi-picky at the same time. As I post more of the Soundtrack Spotlight mixtapes, you'll see this more and more...1996 is up next and it's a perfect example. There were things that came out in 1996 that I should have been just ga-ga over, but I either didn't like them or didn't catch on until later (I was at least a year late on Cibo Matto, possibly 2 years). Anyway, all of this to say that as I've been falling back into the Zappa zone of late, I feel like I really need to cut myself some slack. I've been very concerned the past couple of years about what I'm listening to, how it's affecting (or not affecting) the music I'm writing, and that maybe if the music I'm listening to isn't hip enough then by default the music I'm writing won't be hip enough...and the reality is that's a bunch of shit. You heard it here first, folks. A bunch of shit. It doesn't matter if I'm hip enough or not. If I'm ahead, or behind, one way or another the world will catch up; it'll come back around.
Go find Frank's album LATHER (there's supposed to be an umlaut over the "A", but I don't have an umlaut key) and bask in the grandiosity of his vision. There is where my inspiration and aspiration lie. At least today.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
The Band That Wouldn't Die
Okay, so let me be clear...I am a fan of the band Phish. I am not a "phan", because I think that such terms are ridiculous. I am not a "deadhead" or a "beatlemaniac" either. But let me talk a bit about why I love Phish.
I have always been a listener who appreciates musical complexity and skill, probably because I am really nerdy when it comes to music theory and such things. I also appreciate a sense of humor in my music, as well as a weird, quasi-avant-garde sensibility. Listening to Phish's early records, especially LAWN BOY (1990) and A PICTURE OF NECTAR (1991), one can hear all of these elements, and they worked together to create something really magical. Now, let's all understand that I was not a fan of their live work early on because I had no access to it. I didn't know anyone who was in on the tape trading network, and Phish never came to my town, so I didn't get a chance to really explore what they did live until their first live album came out in 1995 (I did manage to see them play twice in concert before this, in 1992 and 1994, but these shows were relatively tame and straightforward). Little things trickled out here and there for a number of years after that, and then, in 2001 or so, the LIVE PHISH series of CDs started to hit stores, and a veritable deluge of high quality live Phish music was available to me. This all came after their first breakup (or "hiatus" as it was called) towards the end of 2000.
All of this is meant to illustrate that, to me, Phish really were a studio band. Did they make a few lousy records? Yes, perhaps more per capita than most bands I'm a really big fan of. But the good stuff, I SWEAR, is REALLY good. The high point for me has to be BILLY BREATHES, their 1996 album. I don't care who you are or what you lean towards; it's a nearly flawless rock record.
The quandary is that, to themselves and many of their followers, Phish were a LIVE band. That was the meat and potatoes of what they did. So, even after they came back from the hiatus, and made a really GOOD record (UNDERMIND), they quit again because the touring lifestyle wasn't working out anymore (mind you, there were some things going on underneath the surface that many didn't really know about at the time...Trey's addiction to hard drugs being the main one), and because the music wasn't moving forward to speak of. This was in 2004.
So, this brings up a number of questions for me in regards to this upcoming reunion. Apparently, they're doing three shows in March at the Hampton coliseum, and then additional touring for 2009 will be announced. What are they playing? The same shit that they were tired of four years ago? Is four years really long enough to decide that you want to go out there and play "The Divided Sky" again? And will there be a new record? Any new material at all? These are my questions, because if there is no new record or new material, and if there is no serious consideration being given to what's on/off limits in terms of setlists (I have LONG been vocal about the fact that, at some point, they should have cut everything from before 1994 out of the set, and that way they could really develop some of the newer songs without worrying about playing "You Enjoy Myself" or "Mike's/Groove" all the time), then this will die a quick and ugly death. It (the reunion) will have most of the same problems and issues that contributed to the 2004 breakup, and it will continue to sully and weaken the reputation of a band that many parts of the music community regard with a LOT of trepidation to begin with. And they don't deserve it. They really don't. At least, not YET. This latest announcement could change all that, if they're not careful.
Stay tuned to www.phish.com for more details, and stay tuned here for more opinions.
I have always been a listener who appreciates musical complexity and skill, probably because I am really nerdy when it comes to music theory and such things. I also appreciate a sense of humor in my music, as well as a weird, quasi-avant-garde sensibility. Listening to Phish's early records, especially LAWN BOY (1990) and A PICTURE OF NECTAR (1991), one can hear all of these elements, and they worked together to create something really magical. Now, let's all understand that I was not a fan of their live work early on because I had no access to it. I didn't know anyone who was in on the tape trading network, and Phish never came to my town, so I didn't get a chance to really explore what they did live until their first live album came out in 1995 (I did manage to see them play twice in concert before this, in 1992 and 1994, but these shows were relatively tame and straightforward). Little things trickled out here and there for a number of years after that, and then, in 2001 or so, the LIVE PHISH series of CDs started to hit stores, and a veritable deluge of high quality live Phish music was available to me. This all came after their first breakup (or "hiatus" as it was called) towards the end of 2000.
All of this is meant to illustrate that, to me, Phish really were a studio band. Did they make a few lousy records? Yes, perhaps more per capita than most bands I'm a really big fan of. But the good stuff, I SWEAR, is REALLY good. The high point for me has to be BILLY BREATHES, their 1996 album. I don't care who you are or what you lean towards; it's a nearly flawless rock record.
The quandary is that, to themselves and many of their followers, Phish were a LIVE band. That was the meat and potatoes of what they did. So, even after they came back from the hiatus, and made a really GOOD record (UNDERMIND), they quit again because the touring lifestyle wasn't working out anymore (mind you, there were some things going on underneath the surface that many didn't really know about at the time...Trey's addiction to hard drugs being the main one), and because the music wasn't moving forward to speak of. This was in 2004.
So, this brings up a number of questions for me in regards to this upcoming reunion. Apparently, they're doing three shows in March at the Hampton coliseum, and then additional touring for 2009 will be announced. What are they playing? The same shit that they were tired of four years ago? Is four years really long enough to decide that you want to go out there and play "The Divided Sky" again? And will there be a new record? Any new material at all? These are my questions, because if there is no new record or new material, and if there is no serious consideration being given to what's on/off limits in terms of setlists (I have LONG been vocal about the fact that, at some point, they should have cut everything from before 1994 out of the set, and that way they could really develop some of the newer songs without worrying about playing "You Enjoy Myself" or "Mike's/Groove" all the time), then this will die a quick and ugly death. It (the reunion) will have most of the same problems and issues that contributed to the 2004 breakup, and it will continue to sully and weaken the reputation of a band that many parts of the music community regard with a LOT of trepidation to begin with. And they don't deserve it. They really don't. At least, not YET. This latest announcement could change all that, if they're not careful.
Stay tuned to www.phish.com for more details, and stay tuned here for more opinions.
Monday, September 29, 2008
2 Records, 2 Beers
This is a repost of an entry from my MySpace blog earlier this year...I'm feeling this today, so I wanted to throw it on here:
2 records, 2 beers
Current mood:
thoughtful
2 records, 2 beers
Current mood:
thoughtful I just wish that I could do that every night. Listen to two whole records, drink two beers. I wouldn't be so tired that the beers would make me too sleepy to enjoy the music...I wouldn't have to start so late that I would flake out after the first record, or sooner...
John Coltrane is a beautiful thing, especially once you've been through your day, and your mind has been stretched out enough to handle it. I've always been bewildered by the fact that things that are less conventional are more enjoyable to me at the end of the day. If I try to listen to Coltrane, or Electroacoustic Music, or Sonic Youth even, at the beginning of the day, it doesn't really work out. The beginning of the day is the time for The Beatles, or R.E.M., or They Might Be Giants. Electric Miles Davis, Albert Ayler, Kenneth Gaburo and The Mars Volta are late night indulgences.
I have a conflicted relationship with the night...I desperately want to wade into it, deeply, until I'm up to my neck...I want to sit, engrossed in the music and the awareness of the darkness outside until the final notes of an album fade and I suddenly realize the sun will be up in two hours. I want to deny that the need for sleep even exists. For it doesn't do me any good in my soul to acknowledge said need...It only makes me feel discouraged and sad, because somehow my body has trumped my spirit... and my true being is disturbingly, dishearteningly subservient to my physical one. The intangible elements of my self could go on for days, continually absorbing and interacting with that which gives me life, if my damned eyes didn't begin to feel so tired, and demand that physical rest occur...
Will John Coltrane be there tomorrow? And Aphex Twin, and Frank Zappa, and Guided By Voices? Yes...but tomorrow will contain only a fleeting moment to engage them, and some of them will be left again, for the next day, and then for the next, and the next, and the next...and I will continually say, "Yes, I'm getting to that record. Or getting back to it. Giving it the attention it deserves, even DEMANDS..."
I try not to dwell in sadness because of these realities. And, let's not forget, this is to say nothing of my OWN music, and the neglect that it suffers. That's a whole other story. For another entry. For now, let's just listen.
Saturday, September 20, 2008
"Freedom...
...to be the President of the United States." No, I'm not going to write a political blog. That line comes from Mike D's remix of Ween's "Freedom of '76"...Kind of a rarity, but seek it out, because the intro he tacks on it is really entertaining.
Freedom, freedom in music, in art, in expression...This is what everyone is looking for, at least those who are desiring to CREATE. Many listeners, and the culture at large, are NOT looking for this whatsoever. Society and many people within it are looking for things that can be put neatly into little boxes that they call "categories" or "styles" or (grrrr) "genres"...whereas the REALITY is that to many who CREATE, such words are...meaningless.
This is the kind of blog that is going to frustrate people (including some very close to me, although I will not single out who those people are...you're welcome). However, I think that sometimes people are frustrated by the truth. Ultimately, music and art don't have any obligation or recourse to these things. The music that I make or that ANYONE else makes, for that matter, does not have any inherent responsibility to fit neatly into a box so that YOU can know what to call it. This is the biggest lie of the entire entertainment industry.
I have just finished jumping around to some different sites/blogs that I found the links to on Peter Breslin's blog (www.peterbreslin.blogspot.com), most of which having to do with so-called "free jazz" or other types of improvised music. The reality is that there is all kinds of art and music out there that begs to be listened to, but in a posture that does not subject it to any sort of "boxing". It even demands a kind of attention that is purely about the experience of listening itself, and not about, "What do I do with this? What do I call it? Where do I file it away? How do I know what "it" is so that I never have to hear "it" again?" Some days I feel like that's why the term "free jazz" was invented; so that people knew what to call this thing that they were being told to avoid like the plague (or so that the detractors would have something more constructive to call it other than "noise". Whatever. I'm not a detractor and I call it wondrous).
Mind you, there ARE scenarios in which "style" is a concern (for instance...I played my first gig as a substitute guitarist for my father-in-law's bluegrass band last night, and, although I have yet to play a solo in a performance context with them, if I do, I will definitely make some effort to adhere to a bluegrass "style" in said improvisatory moment). Mostly, though, it's a concern in scenarios where, as a musician, I am not "in charge" of the aesthetic direction of the proceedings. In other words, as a side man (like the bluegrass band scenario), I am under the obligation to adhere to the prescribed "style" of the musical context. However, if I am the LEADER of the ensemble in question, and I want to go really "out" in my solo (like I do sometimes in the second solo on "Hey Abe Lincoln"...doesn't really sound so much like Tom Petty at that point, does it??), I can, and I will, and I SHOULD, as far as I'm concerned. If that one moment takes that song ("Hey Abe Lincoln") out of the box of "classic rock" or "singer/songwriter" or WHATEVER, then so damn be it. I really don't care. From my perspective, that's the way the song is SUPPOSED to be, and it's not about rebellion or some deep-seeded, reactionary non-conformity...It's not a reaction to ANYTHING. It's my pure action. My pure, authentic, artistic ACTION that I make out of my deepest being.
And THAT, my friends, is what we should all be pursuing...the purest, most authentic artistic moment that you can conjure up at any given time, regardless of genre. If you are interested in writing for electronic instruments, orchestral instruments, guitar, bass and drums, and you want each one of those contexts to sound different, then that's okay. Go for it (I say this as much to remind myself of this truth as anything else).
Go out there today and find at least one piece of music that you've never heard anything like before in your life. Start breaking down those boxes.
P.S. Please don't mistake "passion" for "militancy". I am not "militant" about this. I am "passionate". I welcome your comments, your arguments to the contrary...I will just say one more thing. It is not the FAULT of the art or artist that many people find it difficult to break out of "boxes"...therefore it is not the RESPONSIBILITY of the artist to cater to that reality.
Freedom, freedom in music, in art, in expression...This is what everyone is looking for, at least those who are desiring to CREATE. Many listeners, and the culture at large, are NOT looking for this whatsoever. Society and many people within it are looking for things that can be put neatly into little boxes that they call "categories" or "styles" or (grrrr) "genres"...whereas the REALITY is that to many who CREATE, such words are...meaningless.
This is the kind of blog that is going to frustrate people (including some very close to me, although I will not single out who those people are...you're welcome). However, I think that sometimes people are frustrated by the truth. Ultimately, music and art don't have any obligation or recourse to these things. The music that I make or that ANYONE else makes, for that matter, does not have any inherent responsibility to fit neatly into a box so that YOU can know what to call it. This is the biggest lie of the entire entertainment industry.
I have just finished jumping around to some different sites/blogs that I found the links to on Peter Breslin's blog (www.peterbreslin.blogspot.com), most of which having to do with so-called "free jazz" or other types of improvised music. The reality is that there is all kinds of art and music out there that begs to be listened to, but in a posture that does not subject it to any sort of "boxing". It even demands a kind of attention that is purely about the experience of listening itself, and not about, "What do I do with this? What do I call it? Where do I file it away? How do I know what "it" is so that I never have to hear "it" again?" Some days I feel like that's why the term "free jazz" was invented; so that people knew what to call this thing that they were being told to avoid like the plague (or so that the detractors would have something more constructive to call it other than "noise". Whatever. I'm not a detractor and I call it wondrous).
Mind you, there ARE scenarios in which "style" is a concern (for instance...I played my first gig as a substitute guitarist for my father-in-law's bluegrass band last night, and, although I have yet to play a solo in a performance context with them, if I do, I will definitely make some effort to adhere to a bluegrass "style" in said improvisatory moment). Mostly, though, it's a concern in scenarios where, as a musician, I am not "in charge" of the aesthetic direction of the proceedings. In other words, as a side man (like the bluegrass band scenario), I am under the obligation to adhere to the prescribed "style" of the musical context. However, if I am the LEADER of the ensemble in question, and I want to go really "out" in my solo (like I do sometimes in the second solo on "Hey Abe Lincoln"...doesn't really sound so much like Tom Petty at that point, does it??), I can, and I will, and I SHOULD, as far as I'm concerned. If that one moment takes that song ("Hey Abe Lincoln") out of the box of "classic rock" or "singer/songwriter" or WHATEVER, then so damn be it. I really don't care. From my perspective, that's the way the song is SUPPOSED to be, and it's not about rebellion or some deep-seeded, reactionary non-conformity...It's not a reaction to ANYTHING. It's my pure action. My pure, authentic, artistic ACTION that I make out of my deepest being.
And THAT, my friends, is what we should all be pursuing...the purest, most authentic artistic moment that you can conjure up at any given time, regardless of genre. If you are interested in writing for electronic instruments, orchestral instruments, guitar, bass and drums, and you want each one of those contexts to sound different, then that's okay. Go for it (I say this as much to remind myself of this truth as anything else).
Go out there today and find at least one piece of music that you've never heard anything like before in your life. Start breaking down those boxes.
P.S. Please don't mistake "passion" for "militancy". I am not "militant" about this. I am "passionate". I welcome your comments, your arguments to the contrary...I will just say one more thing. It is not the FAULT of the art or artist that many people find it difficult to break out of "boxes"...therefore it is not the RESPONSIBILITY of the artist to cater to that reality.
Sunday, September 14, 2008
Weird Files, Santa Fe, Sonic Youth, blah blah blah....
I can't even say for sure that I'm going to write about all of those things in this entry. Those are just a few things that I'm thinking about as I begin it.
So, I wrote a piece of music yesterday that is, again, frustratingly unfit for any sort of "live" performance. It might be a piece of drivel, so it may not matter, but in the current musical culture of Oklahoma City, it's an issue in terms of making people aware that it (or the "project" it's associated with AKA Weird Files) exists. Maybe no one would care anyway, and therefore it doesn't matter whether I try to "promote" it or not. But it also comes back to some of the things I spoke about in a previous entry...
Let's say I want to make this piece (at this moment, it is imaginatively titled "Composition 1", since it is the first piece of music I've written since quitting my day job two weeks ago) a part of a Weird Files live performance. Currently, Weird Files live performances (of which there have been exactly 3 to date) involve me performing on electric guitar, acoustic guitar or vocals over some sort of recorded backing track, depending on the piece. No songs have "lyrics", per se...Any vocals are usually some sort of nonsensical noise. What I've managed to do so far, though, is to make every piece in the show a combination of taped and live performance. "Composition 1" does not appear to be performable in that fashion...No guitar part, no vocal part, all electronics and samples generated from within my little Mac laptop. And, silly, poor me, I have no midi trigger that I might use to play some of those parts "live" (even if I did, it might not gel...I don't know). So what do I do? Do I make the piece a part of the show and just let it play while I stand there? This, again, brings up questions about what performance is, the question about DJs, and when they become "performers" and when are they just spinning records. I would just be "spinning a record" of my piece, really, but in the midst of something that could be called "performance" (this is not the first piece I've written for Weird Files that I felt this way about).
That brings up the whole DJ thing again...I really want to do something along these lines, but it is incredibly difficult not to brand the whole idea as ludicrous, mainly because I don't know of anywhere that would allow me to do what I want to do. I mean, it's partly about choice of material, it's partly because I want to mix my own pieces of music in...It's partly because I don't want to do any sort of "DJing" that really fits in any sort of category that people are familiar with. I also am pretty sure I'm really going to suck at it, and that I'll get laughed at because my gear is shitty and not "real" DJ gear. Whatever. Let's imagine a playlist for a DJ set by me:
Jungle Love-The Time
Big Jilm-Ween
Discipline-King Crimson/Phil's Boner Story-Weird Files (Phil's Boner Story is just spoken vocal, so it would play simultaneously with the Crimson track)
Ballooon Man-Robyn Hitchcock
Dael-Autechre
Postal Blowfish-Guided By Voices
Dog Breath, In The Year Of The Plague-Frank Zappa & M.O.I.
Music Is My Radar-Blur
Cause For Concern-Nels Cline Singers
Rock & Roll Friends-Sifl & Olly
Fake Talking Heads Song-Liam Lynch
That's probably around 45 minutes or so, but you can tell how it might go on from there. Not especially concerned with any beat matching, or beats period. Not concerned with anything except playing some music that should get played.
I was in Santa Fe for only the second time since 1998 a weekend or two ago. I never thought I'd enjoy being there again as much as I did this time...When I left in 98 I was kind of sick of it, and the first time I went back (2006) I was just kind of in shock that the place was even real. Shocked that my memories were accurate, and that I had, in fact, spent 5 pivotal years of my life there from ages 18-23. This time it was like coming back to an old friend who had no reservations about giving you a warm embrace, even though things had been awkward the last couple of times you had seen him/her. I feel the pull of Santa Fe, of the boho/artistic population that, perhaps unlike anywhere else, and definitely unlike OKC, believes that whatever you do as an artist has intrinsic value, and doesn't need to be acknowledged by the populace at large as having value...a lie that is perpetuated daily by most of the citizens of my current city (more on that in a second...it's all going to tie together somehow). I couldn't help thinking, as I wandered through the park adjacent to the cathedral downtown, "THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!!" Yeah, I'm sure half of them are flaky nuts (e.g. our waitress at Tomasita's the night we arrived), but...it's really hard not to want to be somewhere where my artistic whims could be indulged without having to f$%@ing explain myself to people all the time, or whatever, whatever my complaint of the week is. Plus, I love the mountains more than I ever have...the landscape speaks to my heart in ways that it only showed an inkling of when I lived there. I don't know what to chalk that up to. I came close to tears as we headed into the Texas panhandle on the way home and the last vestiges of the NM-esque landscape disappeared. The clouds became further out of reach, the land became flatter and less interesting...Ugh. Thank God for trips in to Lawton and back the last two Fridays, where I witnessed the Wichita mountains and learned (again for the first time) about the geographic loveliness Oklahoma has to offer. That, and when we went to Lubbock last weekend, I also learned about some NM-esque bits of West Texas that I was unaware of.
So here I am in Oklahoma City, plowing away with Dr. Pants (we do have an EP coming out, that I am really excited about, and it's really positive, and I promise I'll get to talking about that and some other positive things some time soon, just not today), and attempting to muster up the enthusiasm for/tweak the performance concept of Weird Files. And trying to start DJing, all in the face of inevitable apathy on the part of the general populace. So, in the wake of quitting my job, not only do I think about all this, but I make the rather hopeful decision to try and write some string quartet music, with the goal in mind of doing a performance of it some time in the spring of '09. There are two possible explanations for this, one being much more cynical than the other. The cynical one is that at some point, I decided to give Dr. Pants a more narrow focus, musically, because I was convinced that a certain "commerciality" would give the music a better chance at being noticed by a larger audience. Now that I know that people don't give a shit no matter what you do, why not write some string quartet stuff? The less cynical explanation is that now that I have some more time to devote to my art, I feel able to tend to more of the "branches" my "musical tree" and therefore can do some things like this.
A few things about records:
Sonic Youth-EVOL
Man...I can't even describe the joy of my late "catching on" that is happening with these guys...I'm all over the map with their material, but this one is a particular favorite at the moment. It's dark, kind of dreary, and has a great 80's production feel that lends it a certain commonality with Joy Division, etc. Highly recommended. Only feel as though I'm scratching the surface.
The Hold Steady-Almost Killed Me
Their first record, which I purchased out of sequence with the others. Has more in common with Lifter Puller, Craig Finn's old band, than their other albums do. Great riffs, less Springsteen-esque than their newer stuff. Well worth it if you're a fan at all.
Brief, yes. But it's almost 1:00 am and it's about all I've got the juice for. Please leave comments. Go be a fan of Dr. Pants on Facebook if you can. We need to build this shit up. "The Cusack-Loggins EP" is almost here. Give us another four weeks or so, and hopefully we'll have it in your grubby little hands. Also, since Mike at Sonicjive.com was so generous as to post a link to my blog on his myspace page, I need to give him a shout out. Sonicjive.com could be one of the coolest music networking sites on the net, if you are willing to allow it to be. Go check it out. Dr. Pants is on there, so how could it be bad?
Later.
So, I wrote a piece of music yesterday that is, again, frustratingly unfit for any sort of "live" performance. It might be a piece of drivel, so it may not matter, but in the current musical culture of Oklahoma City, it's an issue in terms of making people aware that it (or the "project" it's associated with AKA Weird Files) exists. Maybe no one would care anyway, and therefore it doesn't matter whether I try to "promote" it or not. But it also comes back to some of the things I spoke about in a previous entry...
Let's say I want to make this piece (at this moment, it is imaginatively titled "Composition 1", since it is the first piece of music I've written since quitting my day job two weeks ago) a part of a Weird Files live performance. Currently, Weird Files live performances (of which there have been exactly 3 to date) involve me performing on electric guitar, acoustic guitar or vocals over some sort of recorded backing track, depending on the piece. No songs have "lyrics", per se...Any vocals are usually some sort of nonsensical noise. What I've managed to do so far, though, is to make every piece in the show a combination of taped and live performance. "Composition 1" does not appear to be performable in that fashion...No guitar part, no vocal part, all electronics and samples generated from within my little Mac laptop. And, silly, poor me, I have no midi trigger that I might use to play some of those parts "live" (even if I did, it might not gel...I don't know). So what do I do? Do I make the piece a part of the show and just let it play while I stand there? This, again, brings up questions about what performance is, the question about DJs, and when they become "performers" and when are they just spinning records. I would just be "spinning a record" of my piece, really, but in the midst of something that could be called "performance" (this is not the first piece I've written for Weird Files that I felt this way about).
That brings up the whole DJ thing again...I really want to do something along these lines, but it is incredibly difficult not to brand the whole idea as ludicrous, mainly because I don't know of anywhere that would allow me to do what I want to do. I mean, it's partly about choice of material, it's partly because I want to mix my own pieces of music in...It's partly because I don't want to do any sort of "DJing" that really fits in any sort of category that people are familiar with. I also am pretty sure I'm really going to suck at it, and that I'll get laughed at because my gear is shitty and not "real" DJ gear. Whatever. Let's imagine a playlist for a DJ set by me:
Jungle Love-The Time
Big Jilm-Ween
Discipline-King Crimson/Phil's Boner Story-Weird Files (Phil's Boner Story is just spoken vocal, so it would play simultaneously with the Crimson track)
Ballooon Man-Robyn Hitchcock
Dael-Autechre
Postal Blowfish-Guided By Voices
Dog Breath, In The Year Of The Plague-Frank Zappa & M.O.I.
Music Is My Radar-Blur
Cause For Concern-Nels Cline Singers
Rock & Roll Friends-Sifl & Olly
Fake Talking Heads Song-Liam Lynch
That's probably around 45 minutes or so, but you can tell how it might go on from there. Not especially concerned with any beat matching, or beats period. Not concerned with anything except playing some music that should get played.
I was in Santa Fe for only the second time since 1998 a weekend or two ago. I never thought I'd enjoy being there again as much as I did this time...When I left in 98 I was kind of sick of it, and the first time I went back (2006) I was just kind of in shock that the place was even real. Shocked that my memories were accurate, and that I had, in fact, spent 5 pivotal years of my life there from ages 18-23. This time it was like coming back to an old friend who had no reservations about giving you a warm embrace, even though things had been awkward the last couple of times you had seen him/her. I feel the pull of Santa Fe, of the boho/artistic population that, perhaps unlike anywhere else, and definitely unlike OKC, believes that whatever you do as an artist has intrinsic value, and doesn't need to be acknowledged by the populace at large as having value...a lie that is perpetuated daily by most of the citizens of my current city (more on that in a second...it's all going to tie together somehow). I couldn't help thinking, as I wandered through the park adjacent to the cathedral downtown, "THESE ARE MY PEOPLE!!" Yeah, I'm sure half of them are flaky nuts (e.g. our waitress at Tomasita's the night we arrived), but...it's really hard not to want to be somewhere where my artistic whims could be indulged without having to f$%@ing explain myself to people all the time, or whatever, whatever my complaint of the week is. Plus, I love the mountains more than I ever have...the landscape speaks to my heart in ways that it only showed an inkling of when I lived there. I don't know what to chalk that up to. I came close to tears as we headed into the Texas panhandle on the way home and the last vestiges of the NM-esque landscape disappeared. The clouds became further out of reach, the land became flatter and less interesting...Ugh. Thank God for trips in to Lawton and back the last two Fridays, where I witnessed the Wichita mountains and learned (again for the first time) about the geographic loveliness Oklahoma has to offer. That, and when we went to Lubbock last weekend, I also learned about some NM-esque bits of West Texas that I was unaware of.
So here I am in Oklahoma City, plowing away with Dr. Pants (we do have an EP coming out, that I am really excited about, and it's really positive, and I promise I'll get to talking about that and some other positive things some time soon, just not today), and attempting to muster up the enthusiasm for/tweak the performance concept of Weird Files. And trying to start DJing, all in the face of inevitable apathy on the part of the general populace. So, in the wake of quitting my job, not only do I think about all this, but I make the rather hopeful decision to try and write some string quartet music, with the goal in mind of doing a performance of it some time in the spring of '09. There are two possible explanations for this, one being much more cynical than the other. The cynical one is that at some point, I decided to give Dr. Pants a more narrow focus, musically, because I was convinced that a certain "commerciality" would give the music a better chance at being noticed by a larger audience. Now that I know that people don't give a shit no matter what you do, why not write some string quartet stuff? The less cynical explanation is that now that I have some more time to devote to my art, I feel able to tend to more of the "branches" my "musical tree" and therefore can do some things like this.
A few things about records:
Sonic Youth-EVOL
Man...I can't even describe the joy of my late "catching on" that is happening with these guys...I'm all over the map with their material, but this one is a particular favorite at the moment. It's dark, kind of dreary, and has a great 80's production feel that lends it a certain commonality with Joy Division, etc. Highly recommended. Only feel as though I'm scratching the surface.
The Hold Steady-Almost Killed Me
Their first record, which I purchased out of sequence with the others. Has more in common with Lifter Puller, Craig Finn's old band, than their other albums do. Great riffs, less Springsteen-esque than their newer stuff. Well worth it if you're a fan at all.
Brief, yes. But it's almost 1:00 am and it's about all I've got the juice for. Please leave comments. Go be a fan of Dr. Pants on Facebook if you can. We need to build this shit up. "The Cusack-Loggins EP" is almost here. Give us another four weeks or so, and hopefully we'll have it in your grubby little hands. Also, since Mike at Sonicjive.com was so generous as to post a link to my blog on his myspace page, I need to give him a shout out. Sonicjive.com could be one of the coolest music networking sites on the net, if you are willing to allow it to be. Go check it out. Dr. Pants is on there, so how could it be bad?
Later.
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
The New Suck
So, there is a lot of current pop music that I just don't like. That's just the way it is. I am pretty much bewildered by the popularity of most of the current musical trends, and I don't anticipate this changing. One in particular, though, is especially horrible, and that's the musical idiom occupied by such artists as Nickelback, Daughtry and Hinder.
It's taken me a long time to put words to why I find these particular artists so offensive, and why their particular brand of rock just doesn't work, period. First, we must acknowledge that the production on these records pretty much subtracts any hope of the music having any life to it at all, but that's true of the production on almost any mainstream rock record these days. Having gotten that out of the way, the horrible nature of this musical subgenre boils down to two key components:
1) These artists miss the 80's. They miss when rock was flashy, rude, uncomplicated. The 80's hair metal bands had all this going for them (technically challenging guitar solos paired with the dumbest of riffs, and the dumbest of lyrics). Part of their aesthetic is derived from the desire to make dumb rock again.
2) Having come of age in the 90's, however, these artists are of an era where rock bands were TAKEN SERIOUSLY. They want to be treated with the same sort of respect that, say, Nirvana was treated with. Therefore, they are EXTREMELY SERIOUS.
So what does this leave us with? The worst of both worlds. If any of us can say anything positive about 80's butt rock, it's that it was fun. It still is. It was so bad that it was good. You can't ignore the ridiculous hair, clothing, etc. It made that music something fun to remember, and something fun to interact with at the time. So why on earth would we want something that resembled that style musically but without any of the elements that made it so fun in the first place? Add to that the "uber-serious" attitude of 90's grunge, and you have a recipe for musical misery. There is nothing worse than someone making crappy, unimaginative music that is not willing to give an inch in the "serious" category. It just makes the whole thing taste like ass. If you want an egregious example, take for instance Nickelback's cover of "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" by Elton John. Now, Elton John's version of this song is fantastically fun. It was designed to be. Nickelback's, on the other hand, is boring, ugly, UBER-SERIOUS SOUNDING and absolutely no fun at all. The combination of an 80's musical aesthetic with a 90's desire to be taken deadly serious is like making a reality TV show that resembles SAW-esque torture porn flicks; disgusting, horrible and conscience-less.
More posts to come soon. I've been trying to get out of day job land, and tomorrow is my last shift. I've got at least two or three on the docket that I want to write. Stay tuned.
It's taken me a long time to put words to why I find these particular artists so offensive, and why their particular brand of rock just doesn't work, period. First, we must acknowledge that the production on these records pretty much subtracts any hope of the music having any life to it at all, but that's true of the production on almost any mainstream rock record these days. Having gotten that out of the way, the horrible nature of this musical subgenre boils down to two key components:
1) These artists miss the 80's. They miss when rock was flashy, rude, uncomplicated. The 80's hair metal bands had all this going for them (technically challenging guitar solos paired with the dumbest of riffs, and the dumbest of lyrics). Part of their aesthetic is derived from the desire to make dumb rock again.
2) Having come of age in the 90's, however, these artists are of an era where rock bands were TAKEN SERIOUSLY. They want to be treated with the same sort of respect that, say, Nirvana was treated with. Therefore, they are EXTREMELY SERIOUS.
So what does this leave us with? The worst of both worlds. If any of us can say anything positive about 80's butt rock, it's that it was fun. It still is. It was so bad that it was good. You can't ignore the ridiculous hair, clothing, etc. It made that music something fun to remember, and something fun to interact with at the time. So why on earth would we want something that resembled that style musically but without any of the elements that made it so fun in the first place? Add to that the "uber-serious" attitude of 90's grunge, and you have a recipe for musical misery. There is nothing worse than someone making crappy, unimaginative music that is not willing to give an inch in the "serious" category. It just makes the whole thing taste like ass. If you want an egregious example, take for instance Nickelback's cover of "Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting" by Elton John. Now, Elton John's version of this song is fantastically fun. It was designed to be. Nickelback's, on the other hand, is boring, ugly, UBER-SERIOUS SOUNDING and absolutely no fun at all. The combination of an 80's musical aesthetic with a 90's desire to be taken deadly serious is like making a reality TV show that resembles SAW-esque torture porn flicks; disgusting, horrible and conscience-less.
More posts to come soon. I've been trying to get out of day job land, and tomorrow is my last shift. I've got at least two or three on the docket that I want to write. Stay tuned.
Monday, August 4, 2008
Pop Music Will Eat You Alive
So I am currently in the process of downloading some completely improvised duets that a teacher of mine from college, Peter Breslin, did in Santa Fe last year. I’m really excited to listen to them (I will write about them as a “record” in this week’s record report, I think). I am also hoping to catch his radio show sometime soon, that is broadcast between 2-4 on Thursday afternoons Central time.
Why all this sudden interest in the avant-garde? Well, the truth is that it’s not sudden at all. It’s been there for years, since college. Some years it has lain completely dormant; as I awaken to the possibility of doing music full time, I also re-awaken to the possibilities of MUSIC. There are many, and I ignore most of them most of the time, shamefully. Weird Files has been an attempt to acknowledge the world outside “pop” music, or “rock & roll”, or whatever you want to call it. At the very least, it acknowledges the fringe of rock, where these so-called “avant-garde” tendencies and ideas creep in. Of course, the response in Oklahoma has been negligible, if that. Weird Files is a project that I don’t even know if I’m happy with, currently. The practicality of putting together the proper live ensembles to perform the pieces as written is nil, so I’m stuck doing this one-man-band, laptop thing, and at that point the parameters start to become unclear. Where is the line between performance of a piece of music and just spinning a recording of it? Where is the line between DJ and musician? When is a DJ a musician and when is he/she not? These are all lines that get blurrier and blurrier as time goes on. Check out the article on Diplo in the latest Paste magazine if you have any doubts.
So, yes, pop music WILL eat you alive. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the “pop” music world and ignore much of the rest, for good and bad reasons. The good reason is that there IS challenging music within the “rock” world (Trans Am, Sonic Youth, The Residents are just a few examples of ones I’ve been listening to lately…I’ll be writing about all of them here soon), the bad reason is that there are so many people doing amazing things out there on a small scale that are worth paying attention to, and those things are not marketed through many of the same channels as rock, and so if you’re only going to certain sources for your information on things, you miss out.
P.S. Yeah, I know. This entry isn't so much about records or mixtapes. Oh well. Music is music. That's what we're talking about here.
Why all this sudden interest in the avant-garde? Well, the truth is that it’s not sudden at all. It’s been there for years, since college. Some years it has lain completely dormant; as I awaken to the possibility of doing music full time, I also re-awaken to the possibilities of MUSIC. There are many, and I ignore most of them most of the time, shamefully. Weird Files has been an attempt to acknowledge the world outside “pop” music, or “rock & roll”, or whatever you want to call it. At the very least, it acknowledges the fringe of rock, where these so-called “avant-garde” tendencies and ideas creep in. Of course, the response in Oklahoma has been negligible, if that. Weird Files is a project that I don’t even know if I’m happy with, currently. The practicality of putting together the proper live ensembles to perform the pieces as written is nil, so I’m stuck doing this one-man-band, laptop thing, and at that point the parameters start to become unclear. Where is the line between performance of a piece of music and just spinning a recording of it? Where is the line between DJ and musician? When is a DJ a musician and when is he/she not? These are all lines that get blurrier and blurrier as time goes on. Check out the article on Diplo in the latest Paste magazine if you have any doubts.
So, yes, pop music WILL eat you alive. It’s so easy to get wrapped up in the “pop” music world and ignore much of the rest, for good and bad reasons. The good reason is that there IS challenging music within the “rock” world (Trans Am, Sonic Youth, The Residents are just a few examples of ones I’ve been listening to lately…I’ll be writing about all of them here soon), the bad reason is that there are so many people doing amazing things out there on a small scale that are worth paying attention to, and those things are not marketed through many of the same channels as rock, and so if you’re only going to certain sources for your information on things, you miss out.
P.S. Yeah, I know. This entry isn't so much about records or mixtapes. Oh well. Music is music. That's what we're talking about here.
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