http://blogcritics.org/ A sinister cabal of superior bloggers on music, books, film, popular culture, politics, and technology - updated continuously. en Copyright 2005-2007 by the authors Sat, 5 Jul 2003 16:04:36 EDT http://backend.userland.com/rss Blogcritics.org custom software http://blogcritics.org/ Phillip WinnSunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding. Administration0@blogcritics.org Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/07/05/160436.php Dr. FrankI saw Bob Mould at the Great American Music Hall the other night. I don't get out much, and even though I dearly love BM's music and have found delight and inspiration every time I've seen him play, I don't think I would have made the effort to go if it hadn't been for the fact that Kevin Army, a close friend and the guy who produces all my records, was on the bill as the opener. This is a bit sad, but I have to admit: I rarely see shows anymore unless I or one of my friends happen to be playing. Even sadder, the latter is pretty rare, too. Most of my experience of clubs is hanging around in them waiting to go on. The process of going to the ticket window, giving my name and ID to the ticket girl, saying "I, um, think I should be on the list," getting the little tickets, handing them to the door guy and walking in was far less familiar than it ought to have been, and I didn't handle it quite smoothly. When the box office girl handed me the tickets-- which look like those little tear-off movie tickets-- my first thought was "why are they giving me drink tickets?" This was followed by "hmm, maybe Kevin, knowing I like to drink a bit, left them at the door for me? Oh, right, these are the tickets to get in! Duh!" At the door, I gave the guy the tickets and stood there like GHWB in front of a supermarket checkout, a clubbing naif, totally confused. I finally had to ask "so, uh, what do I do now?" He gestured and said something like "up to you, buddy." So in I went, feeling like a total idiot. Which I was. I should do more of this kind of thing. I'll get the hang of it eventually, I'm sure.Anyway, it was a great, great show. Bob Mould has lost a great deal of weight, and I didn't even recognize him when he walked on stage. I thought he was a sound guy or something. Then there was this surreal moment when he picked up his guitar and strummed a characteristic chord-with-jangly-open-strings, and with that sound the unfamiliar figure on the stage suddenly snapped into focus visually, sort of "morphed" into the real Bob. His distinctive voice, the mere sound of which for me always conjures an instant cascade of memories, little snatches of what life felt like during various stages over 20+ years of listening to it, completed the "picture." (I understand that mistaking sounds for visions is a characteristic of schizophrenia, but in this case - I'm pretty sure - it was a function of a mildly consciousness-altering collision of emotion, memory, experience, and art.)During the first half of the set, he played a 12-string acoustic guitar. The second half was electrified (no amp, though-- just one of those guitar sound emulator boxes that I'd describe better if I understood how they work.) Much of this second part was also accompanied by techno backing tracks, songs from and along the lines of the experimental stuff on the Modulate album. He had told Kevin backstage that the techno stuff was "all he was really interested in these days." There was, perhaps, a bit less interest on the part of some audience members, and I'd say the reaction was mixed. Some people really got into it though, and it was kind of fun to watch little pockets of thirty-something alterna-types getting into the spirit of things by busting out the dance moves, many of them adorably awkward. I didn't try to do any dancing, as that would have been wrong, but I did think the techno-y portion of the show was great, all the more so for being unexpected. And really, I would enjoy listening to Bob Mould sing in pretty much any context. The best part for me, though, was as so often before the beautiful, moving, unadorned rendition of "Celebrated Summer" that closed the second encore. It's hard to explain exactly why, since it doesn't have that much to do with the literal content, but I always get a little choked up when I hear this song, particularly when caught up in the immediacy of the solo singer-songwriter presentation of it. I'm getting a little choked up just remembering it now. I guess that's how the emotion/memory/experience/art collision gradually builds its power over time. Or maybe I don't understand it all that well, at that. Whatever: I'm content to enjoy the mystery.Kevin Army's set was great, too, in a (for me) slightly different way that I think is worth mentioning.I've met Bob Mould a couple of times, but I really only know him through his music. One of the strangest and most powerful things about the singer-songwriter/audience relationship is this disconnected but oddly genuine-seeming intimacy you can feel towards someone you don't actually know. I know from the experience of being on the other end of it that this intimate "knowledge" of another tends to be inaccurate, sometimes wildly so. Knowing a person in person just happens naturally, while knowing someone through their songs takes some work and diligence, and there's no real way of knowing whether any inferences you make or impressions you get about the real guy are true. It doesn't matter whether or not they are, really. I can hear Bob Mould's often cryptic or buried lyrics, feel genuinely moved by them and try to explore why; in the process I may learn something about him, or I may not. His songs have meant something to me, so I feel this sort of affection not just for the songs but for him personally, which is the most natural thing in the world, but which is in a way kind of turning the concept of "affection" on its head. What I'm getting at is, it's not the same as a real relationship with a real person. But it can sure feel a lot like one. Kevin Army, on the other hand, I have known well for close on twenty years. (I first met him somewhere between Zen Arcade and New Day Rising, so the time frame is roughly equivalent.) While I might, perhaps, learn things about him from his songs, a great deal of my experience in listening to them is colored by my knowing him personally. It's not exactly the opposite of the Bob Mould situation, but it's something like the inverse of the kind of relationship I was talking about. Just as I can't imagine what it would be like to hear a BM song knowing him primarily as a person,I can't quite put myself in the position of knowing Kevin only through what I can gather from the experience of listening to his songs. (If Bob Mould was my best friend, would some of the lyrics that seem cryptic to me now be less so? They might. The song would still be great, but to what degree might it be "differently great"?) I had never thought of it in quite that way before, but seeing the two songwriters in juxtaposition, I was really struck by it.Despite having an "inside track," however, I think I'm right in saying that Kevin's songs are not in any way cryptic, and nothing is buried. They are rather remarkably, nakedly personal and direct, and they often leave the narrator/singer/character "entity" exposed in way that can be unsettling, uncomfortable, painful even. It's all simply out there. Many, if not most, of his latest crop of songs focus on the experience of being gay, and the process of self-exploration that results from coming to terms with the realization relatively late in life, as he has done. Some are affably-presented, relatively light-hearted treatments of this or that phenomenon or topic associated with gay culture, such as "Rainbow Cross". Others, like "Poster Boy for the Holocaust" or "Did Anyone Die Today?" are unnervingly direct and only sparsely encumbered with distancing devices. As my wife remarked during the set, it's like reading someone's diary. Even when they present you with it and say it's okay, you feel a little uncomfortable peeking inside. Some of the songs are rather complex compositionally, with the occasional songwriterly bell or whistle that makes someone like me smile inwardly and say "good one." Many have quite beautiful melodies, and they are presented on stage with a good-natured, casual, even slightly goofy manner which relieves the tension. But the material is powerful and really doesn't pull any punches. I don't mean to make it sound too "heavy," because it doesn't quite come off that way. Much of it is fun, but it can be a complicated kind of fun.Not all the songs are gay-centric, though as with all metaphoric language, the hints and nuances can cut several ways. "Take Me Away in a Helicopter," about the death of his father, is eminently relatable and even, I think, approaches actual poetry. "Flying Low," an old favorite of mine, borders on what I think rock critic types may occasionally mean when they pluck the word "anthemic" from their hoard of imprecise, intelligent-sounding terms. (Sounds good to me, and hey, it's better than "seminal.") It "feels" like a classic song that somehow has always been there, and evokes sentiments that would resonate with anyone who has ever felt that merely getting off the ground at all would be a signal achievement -- which is to say, I'd guess, practically everybody. There's even one newish tune which deals with yet another angle of the bizarre complex of music-related redefinitions of what personal intimacy means. (I suppose that's the vague theme of this post.) I reckon you've never heard anything quite like "The Ghost of Jesse Michaels," which concerns the strange situation of the recording engineer/producer's intimate involvement in the work, but not the life, of an artist. I heard it for the first time that night, and it sounded like a "hit" to me.Kevin has spent most of his career producing recordings of other peoples' songs rather than his own. You can't buy a record of these songs, and he doesn't play out very often. I hope someone puts them out someday, though. There truly is nothing quite like them, which is something you can't often say about music these days.I didn't begin this post intending to write such a lengthy "review," or even intending it be a review at all. One thing I learned from the experience of watching Kevin and Bob is that there are still new things to learn, new angles on music and songs, and sometimes you may have to leave the house to stumble on them. Maybe I'll do it again one day. Music6744@blogcritics.org Sat, 5 Jul 2003 16:04:36 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/25/133122.php Dr. FrankLooking for info. about John Trubee, I stumbled on to The American Song-Poem Music Archives, an entire site devoted to the "song-poem" genre. There's a full explanation on the site, but in brief, what they call "song-poems" are what results when suckers with stars in their eyes respond to ads like this:Then, in return for a fee, they get a "professional" recording of their words set to music, with the never-fulfilled promise of "promotion," royalties, etc. It's like a sound recording vanity press. (Just like this whole innernut publishing thing, as Ken would probably say.)John Trubee's "Peace and Love" (more popularly known as "Blind Man's Penis") is beyond question the most famous song-poem there is, and is one of pop music's most demented treasures. It never fails to make me giggle, even having lost the vital element of surprise due to literally hundreds of listens. Here's Trubee's own version of the well-known story behind the song, if you haven't heard it. "Peace and Love" is, I'd imagine, the high-water mark of what can result when a conscious ironist joins forces, so to speak, with the "straight" confidence men of a vanity publishing outfit. Part of the boundless appeal of this recording is the tension arising from the question of who's been conning who. You can hear it in the bemused voice of the singer Ramsey Kearny, whose deadpan delivery cannot mask the pathos of a professional performer, presumably with the hopes, dreams, regrets, and bitterness of all show-biz aspirants, having come to such a pass that he must mutter "warts love my nipples because they are pink" into a microphone as part of a comic-book swindle in order to pay the rent. And, of course, this pathos is a kind of mirror of that of the song-poem sucker who sees the comic book ad as a door to a bright future in the music business. In "Peace and Love," we're in on the joke, while the singer isn't, or doesn't appear to be. It's funny-funny, it's strange-funny, but it's also just a bit sad-funny.Such intentional post-modern table-turning notwithstanding, the sad-funny part of most song-poems issues entirely from the user end. (So to speak.) Some are silly enough that you can laugh with few qualms, but others aren't quite so uncomplicated. There is an unarticulated "back-story" to each one of them, with no John Trubee to explain that it was all a big joke. You imagine the eyes of such a poet (say, the author of "I'm Just the Other Woman" or "How can a Man Overcome his Heartbroken Pain") alighting on the ad in Popular Mechanics; pausing to allow hope to do battle with skepticism; carefully typing out the lyrics, and perhaps a polite cover letter as well; addressing the envelope to Nashville, licking the stamps, the envelope flap; jumping for joy, and phoning up friends, upon receiving the "acceptance" letter; eagerly inscribing a check for $79.95, perhaps kissing it before sliding it into another Nashville-bound envelope; and so forth. Like all songs perhaps, but in a way all their own, such songs can be a sort of window into a sad, beautiful life. Sometimes I almost feel guilty for enjoying them. But I do enjoy them.Anyway, the site lists several compilations of song-poems (complete with sample mp3s) in addition to the recent one on Bar None (which is the only one I'd heard of.) Now I know what I want for Christmas. Music6498@blogcritics.org Wed, 25 Jun 2003 13:31:22 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/21/120654.php Dr. FrankPretty much, anyway.Here's Ben's promised, fiery (and terrific) essay on how the the "totally free music" conceit and internet theft impacts The Little Guy. I wrote a bit about this last year (and received tons of abuse for it-- get ready, Ben.)Many of the evangelists for the free content revolution, and a fair few of the less strident advocates, often mention that (a) some tech-savvy musicians have been able to use the digital-swap culture to their advantage, recognizing that unauthorized copying is going to occur anyway, and employing it as a marketing tool for other commercial products; and (b) that the music fans who download a lot of mp3s end up buying more CDs than those who don't; hence (c) Free Music is a net plus for independent musicians, at the expense of no one but the evil record companies. (d) Everybody wins! Now (a) is quite true (I've attempted to do a bit of it with my cyber-busking and pre-release of demos-- with modest success.) (b) may well be the case, and seems plausible, though I don't know how you could check. (c) and (d) however, are extremely dubious. These are all non sequiturs with little bearing on the issue of where unauthorized downloading (in lieu of buying) records falls on the morality/immorality continuum. It's not an easy question to answer. (Somewhere between murder and giving blood-- not sure where.) As a practical matter though, Ben is absolutely right about one thing: the Free Content model (by which I mean the idea that someone, somewhere, other than consumers ought to foot the bill for producing recordings), if carried to its logical conclusion, will lead to less, less interesting, music. Period. Particularly if you're interested in "alternative" or off-beat music; under the Totally Free Music model, most of your favorite albums would never have been recorded. Think about that next time you listen to your "free" downloaded song from Zen Arcade. And say goodbye to the Zen Arcades of the future. It's astounding how many people don't seem to realize that making music, like everything else, costs money. As Ben points out, most musicians don't have a prayer of making a living at it; those that try usually end up living somewhere around or below the poverty line. (Me included-- that's right: I'm a Lucky Ducky. Hot dog!) But even aside from the standard of living issue, there's a more pertinent angle when it comes to recordings of songs (which are precisely the things which are supposed to be "free.") Producing them costs money, too. Even if you're the most selfless, ascetic, not-for-profit, doin'-it-for-the-kids, sacrificing-it-all-for-art music martyr who doesn't mind living like a dog among dogs, the fact remains: if you're going to make a record, the guy who runs the studio has to get paid. (You're wondering where all those free studios are? They all had to close down because they couldn't pay their rent.) Now this money has to come from somewhere. And the Free Music extremists don't really seem to care where it comes from, as long as it isn't them.(From time to time, I'll even receive mail that goes something like: "hey, dude, I downloaded all your kewl punk rawk tunez for free! When are you guys coming to Iowa City?" Not realizing that, to some degree, there might be a connection between his decision not to purchase CDs and the band's disinclination or inability to buy enough gas to drive all the way to Iowa.)On the other hand, I see lots of exciting possibilities in the technology and in the digital culture (despite the bloody-mindedness of some of its advocates). And I even kind of like the idea of fans sharing recordings with each other as part of an ongoing discussion about my greatness [hah! --ed.]-- though I wish it could happen in such a way that enough people still buy enough records that I can still have a prayer of convincing someone to let me make another one. When anyone asks for permission to post mp3s, I almost always say yes. As I've mentioned before, "democracy, whisky, sexy" entered the fan consciousness instantaneously-- something I've never experienced. That wouldn't have been possible before, and I think it's really cool. Sharing/hawking my works-in-progress over the net has been a tremendous, useful experience, and I really believe it will help draw attention to the "real" album when it comes out and perhaps help make it more successful than it might otherwise have been. I intend to do more of it in the future.However, it seems to me that the decision of whether to make songs available for free really ought to rest with the writer, the artist, the copyright owner. And there is a general feeling on the part of Free Music advocates that this is an outrageous, unreasonable, scandalous expectation. I admit that it may be an unrealistic expectation, but that's hardly the same thing. When I wrote the little, unassuming piece I mentioned above, I received tons of email, overwhelmingly negative. Ben's email to me about it, in fact, was only one of two positive ones. A lot of it was along the lines of "boo hoo, poor baby, why don't you stop whining and get a day job?" (Profanity and scatology omitted from this example for aesthetic reasons.) But the general thrust of the angry mail was that the very idea that writers ought to have a right to control their own work was illegitimate, beneath contempt. I was genuinely shocked by the hostility that arose with regard to this simple, to me unassailable, proposition. I know, I know. You don't want to rip anyone off. You're just tired of having to buy a whole album of crap just to get the one good song. You know, the good one, the one that's on the radio all the time. And you get a lot of satisfaction out of sticking it to the record companies who want to make you suffer through so much crap when all you want to do is rock out to The Good One. That's all well and good. But don't kid yourself that downloading, in lieu of purchasing, a record is neutral (or even, God help us, helpful) when it comes to the artist. And Ben's right: it's a formula for narrowing the amount of quality music even further. If you can't make enough money to pay the studio guy, you don't get to make another record. It's that simple. Only Good Songs from now on, right? Music6393@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Jun 2003 12:06:54 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/06/21/115316.php Dr. FrankWe just watched the "Criterion Collection" DVD of Straw Dogs (which has long been one of my favorite films, though I haven't seen it in quite awhile.) I gotta say, the commentary by film critic Stephen Prince (author of Savage Cinema: Sam Peckinpah and the Rise of Ultraviolent Movies) is really excellent. He announces at the beginning of the commentary that his goal is to explain to doubters why this, despite general condemnation, is a great film. He succeeds, to the extent that my wife (who didn't think much of it when we watched it the first time through) was persuaded after we watched the film with the comments on directly afterward. I learned quite a few things I hadn't known, and I feel that this unusually engaging commentary has deepened my appreciation and understanding of this strange, superb, unsettling film. How's that for a rave review?In this commentary and in the accompanying booklets, there's an allusion to a famous review by Pauline Kael, who trashed the movie as "the first American film that is a fascist piece of art." This formulation seems to have become a kind of unofficial subtitle of the film, always mentioned in the same breath, as it were, as the movie's title when the subject comes up in print. I've tried to search out the review itself on-line without success, though references to it abound. My question is, what do film critics mean when they label a film "fascist"? It comes up from time to time. The most recent one I remember having been proclaimed as such is Fight Club (of which I'm not too fond), but there have been others. Is it simply the putative "glorification" of violence? (In which case, I suppose the bulk of contemporary American films might be so described.) Or is it the theme of territorial struggle, man as animal, survival of the fittest, that sort of thing? Aesthetically speaking, to my eye, there is nothing in Straw Dogs that resembles the "fascist aesthetic" of the Hitler-Mussolini-Franco cultural milieu. Perhaps it's a contemporary cultural politics angle, where the word "fascist" describes something that is perceived as undermining or attacking liberal values? Here's my other film-related question, and it's more trivial:Another of my favorite movies is Rosemary's Baby. There's a line in the film, spoken by Guy/John Cassavetes, that has always puzzled me. He has just lit a fire in the fireplace, and has forgotten to open the flue. Rosemary points it out and Guy says (if I recall correctly): "nobody but nobody has a fire tonight!" I believe this line is also in the novel (which the script closely follows). What is he talking about or referring to? I've never understood this, and I've always wondered. Any ideas? Video6392@blogcritics.org Sat, 21 Jun 2003 11:53:16 EDT