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 Tue, 20 May 2003 22:33:15 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/2003/05/20/223315.php Problem DrinkerThe readers of Spin (and we'll try not to use words of more than one syllable in case any of them are looking at this post) may not need to hear about every single Todd Rundgren reissue that comes out, but it probably wouldn't kill them to read this interview with him. And we're not particularly fond of Rundgren; we just think the readers of Spin are total fucking morons. Music5476@blogcritics.org Tue, 20 May 2003 22:33:15 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/04/22/124019.php Problem DrinkerThe New York Times today reprints an essay by Raśl Rivero, a Cuban poet recently sentenced to 20 years by the Castro regime. The entire thing is worth reading, but this should give you a good indication of how powerful it is:"I cannot feel guilty. It is almost as if I were being accused of breathing, or as if an eventual prison term had been predicted for me because I love my daughters, my mother, my wife, my brother, my friends."I cannot assume I am a criminal because I recounted with precision the drama of more than 300 political prisoners, or reported that a building in Old Havana was demolished, or published an interview with a Cuban who wants a pluralistic society complete with freedom of expression."No one, no law, can make me assume the mentality of a gangster or a criminal because I report the arrest of a dissident or a lawbreaker, or make known the prices of basic food products in Cuba, or write an article saying it's a disaster that each year thousands and thousands of Cubans go into exile, to the United States, and hundreds of others living abroad try to remain wherever they happen to be."Again, the entire thing deserves your attention. Books4775@blogcritics.org Tue, 22 Apr 2003 12:40:19 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/26/153040.php Problem DrinkerThis seems like a pretty decent way to support the troops and get rid of some of those old paperbacks at the same time. To quote their website:"Books For Soldiers started in 1991 during the Gulf War I. We heard from many of our family members and friends about the long waits with hours and hours of nothing to do. We sometimes forget that our service people are alone, thousands of miles away, with nothing to stimulate them intellectually."During the first Gulf War, we collected almost 1000 used paperback books and sent them to our friends serving in the Gulf and they passed them out to their fellow soldiers."We received many notes of thanks, after the war, from soldiers who got one of our books, read it and passed it on. It made the time away from family pass more quickly."Click here if this sounds like something you'd be interested in. Books4123@blogcritics.org Wed, 26 Mar 2003 15:30:40 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/26/145802.php Problem DrinkerBurdened by the knowledge that it will no doubt eventually appear on these shores with a full complement of bonus tracks and promotional videos, I nevertheless broke down and bought the new Black Box Recorder, Passionoia, on import. In spite of my initial reservations, I'm at peace with my decision: it's a damn fine record. There has been some grumbling over the increasing popification of BBR's sound, but the elegant bleakness of England Made Me was never going to provide a comprehensive foundation on which to sustain a career. Passionoia ups the pop quotient of The Facts of Life while at the same time reducing the level of menace that so informs Luke Haines' work: more than ever, the band relies on Sarah Nixey's vocals to carry the day (which is not to say that they haven't been the integral component to begin with). The now-standard critical nomenclature for Ms. Nixey's sound focuses on adjectives such as "cut-glass": she's the thinking man's Sophie Ellis Bextor. I'm actually put a bit in mind of some early-solo Brian Eno vocal performances. Regardless, Nixey is, for the most part, up to the task (her rapping headmistress tones somewhat undermine the joke in "Andrew Ridgely," but, really, that's my only complaint). Like everyone else, I tend to undervalue the role of John Moore: lacking Haines' paper trail (and with that slightly dodgy Jesus & Mary Chain connection) his contributions are more difficult to quantify, but, rest assured, I won't try to make some absinthe metaphor here. This is a pretty synth-heavy record; if that's not your thing you might have a hard time getting into it. Search for some of the MP3s floating about if you're wary (standout tracks include "The School Song," "British Racing Green," and "These Are the Things"); but if you're already a fan of the band's, I promise you that you won't be kicking yourself for having plunked down the extortionate import cash. At least until that extras-laden domestic edition gets released.This review originally appeared in slightly modified format at The Minor Fall, The Major Lift. Music4121@blogcritics.org Wed, 26 Mar 2003 14:58:02 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2003/03/17/205209.php Problem DrinkerThe writer Amanda Davis died in a plane crash on Friday, along with her parents. The McSweeney's website is hosting a sort of memorial this week. I haven't read her novel yet, but I liked her short story collection very much. This is a terrible loss.UPDATE More on Davis from PW NewsLine: Davis's eerily titled novel Wonder When You'll Miss Me, about a troubled teenager name Faith Duckle, came out to strong reviews last month. The author had left Malaprop's in Asheville and gotten on a plane with her father, who had been flying her to all her events, bound for McIntyre's, in Pittsboro, North Carolina.She was supposed to arrive in New York shortly after and meet with Morrow publicist Claire Greenspan Monday night, who was to have prepped her for what the publisher calls Davis's "New York Week" - readings at B&N Astor Place and Housing Works, among other appearances. But her plane never made it Friday evening.Greenspan was one of the last people to talk to Davis; the author had called her publicist as she was getting on the fateful flight. "It's all just very surreal. Things just don't happen this way," Greenspan said today, recalling how she spoke to Davis during her tour "about eight times a day." Talking with Greenspan, one thing was clear (at of course too high a price): how the sometimes frayed and superficial bond between author and publicist can often be warm and deep.Davis, a Bread Loaf fellow and Paris Review contributor, was very connected to literary scenes on both coasts. Many of her tour stops will go on as scheduled, with other authors and her friends readings her work, including the Bay Area's Daniel Handler, who will read at A Clean Well-Lighted Place. Books3881@blogcritics.org Mon, 17 Mar 2003 20:52:09 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/12/12/142923.php Problem DrinkerThis is a slight variation of the list at my own site (the list at TMFTML is: a) longer (i.e., includes more than ten items); b) more extensive; and c) includes books only published thus far in the U.K. I don't necessarily consider the books I listed here superior to the ones that I left out, but given the constraints of the format here, I narrowed this list down the titles published in the U.S. during 2002, and one excellent collection that should probably be in every home). Now that those caveats are out of the way, these are ten of my favorite books this year:BAD BLOOD, Lorna SageBRITAIN IN REVOLUTION, 1625-1660, Austin WoolrychESSAYS, George OrwellFRAGRANT HARBOR, John LanchesterGOULD'S BOOK OF FISH, Richard FlanaganPARIS 1919: Six Months That Changed the World, Margaret MacMillan.SAMUEL PEPYS: THE UNEQUALLED SELF, Claire TomalinTHE ROTTERS' CLUB, Jonathan CoeSIR GAWAIN AND THE GREEN KNIGHT, W. S. MerwinSPIES, Michael Frayn Books2236@blogcritics.org Thu, 12 Dec 2002 14:29:23 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/11/06/145036.php Problem Drinker(Okay, Caravan is prog, so I'm lying there, but otherwise, this is fairly accurate.)Death Cab For Cutie, We Have the Facts and We're Voting YesLiars, They Threw Us in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on TopTwo Dollar Guitar, Weak Beats & Lame-Ass RhymesCaravan, If I Could Do it All Over Again, I'd Do it All Over YouButthole Surfers, Widowermaker! EP (actually, I could fill this list with nothing but Buttholes records)Magnetophone, I Guess Sometimes I Need to Be Reminded of How Much You Love MeSpacemen 3, Taking Drugs To Make Music To Take Drugs ToBig Black, The Rich Man's Eight Track TapePussy Galore, Dial M for MotherfuckerDead Milkmen, Bucky Fellini Music1712@blogcritics.org Wed, 6 Nov 2002 14:50:36 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/10/29/134837.php Problem DrinkerTo start, a few words on Vanity Fair: I'm not a regular reader (if I want pop culture glossified and presented to the trendy-if-safe, above-average-incomes crowd, I'll stick with The New Yorker, thank you very much). So my experience with the book is slim, but I will say this: if the recession has really affected magazine ad buys, you wouldn't know it from checking out VF. One flips through approximately (and pay attention, because while this sounds like a gross generalization, it's actually fairly accurate) one-hundred-and-fifty pages before getting to the actual meat of the issue. And the meat, sad to say, is chicken-fried steak. (Which, for readers who may be unfamiliar with the concept, sucks.)Before I get to the actual articles, a quick note on Graydon Carter's Editor's Letter. I assume that anyone who reads Blogcritics is fairly media savvy to begin with, so you certainly don't need me to tell you that the man is a self-obsessed, insufferable prick. Still, all you need to do is read the actual letter and it's impossible to come away with any other impression of the man but that, goddamn, he's really a self-obsessed, insufferable prick. Leading off with the profound assertion that music "re-ignites whatever sentiments I had attached to it, and I'm back to where I was when I heard it the first time, or perhaps the last time," Carter, in the space of six short paragraphs, establishes his 24-karat idiocy with a series of supposedly revealing anecdotes about his father and his record collection that, surely, an editor with colleagues unafraid to point out his ridiculousness would never allow to see the light of day.Anyway, the articles. Or, to start at the beginning, the cover. VF's cover is a three-panel fold-out with "The Women of Rock" flanking an unforgivably pimpified Barry White. Before I get into the semiotics of the cover girls, a quick word on fold-outs: I understand that there's only so much image space on a magazine cover. But when you feature a lineup of stars, surely you realize that they can't all be included in the front panel that sells your book on the newsstand. So the decision to put Gwen Stefani, J. Lo, Sheryl Crow, and Alicia Keys facing front, while Barry White, Debbie Harry, and Shirley Manson (arguably the least buzzworthy subjects of the shot) bring up the rear, wouldn't be based on anything as crass as commercialism, would it?But back to the gals. It's a trite point, made ever more trite by the fact that everyone says it, but the VF cover proves that musical talent is no longer enough to guarantee success: you have to be pretty. Barry White is by far the ugliest mug on this spread: everyone else is gorgeous, and musical talent is a distant second in justification for inclusion (much like it is, to be sure, when the record companies hand out contracts). Although, to be fair, I should point out that Sheryl Crow (or, as the great Austin Chronicle columnist Ken Lieck once put it, "MTV-augmented dwarf Sheryl Crow") is not at all attractive, but she does represent the kind of "give me something new that sounds exactly like everything else I've listened to over the last twenty years" artist that I suspect is highly popular with the VF demographic. So, the articles. But actually, I'd be doing you a disservice if I failed to mention page 160, where VF highlights upcoming releases to watch for. All you need to read is the claim that Ryan-not-Bryan Adams' demos (helpfully described by VF as "outtakes from recording sessions") are "superior to most people's much-hyped, overworked 'real' albums," to understand where VF is coming from. This statement offers up delicious irony only two sentences later, when new releases by both The Wallflowers and Matchbox Twenty are duly plugged.Okay, the articles. For real. I'm not sure who thought it was a good idea to have lefty snitch Christopher Hitchens tool along Route 66 in a rented Corvette, but I think I remember something about him being a regular VF contributor, so as long as Si's paying the bill, why not? Hitchens is at his best when purveying invective, which, sadly, is not the case here, although he is able to cast some not-so-subtle aspersions on the hard-working blue collar citizens of this great country of ours (apparently, if you wear pink socks, they think you're a queer). If Hitchens seriously believes that Bobby Troup is responsible for the long-vowelled pronunciation of St. Louis, he needs to be swiftly introduced to the works of one William Christopher Handy. Eminently skippable.Wolcott does drug memoirs. Not bad, if obvious. Especially good for the pre-Leatherface photo of Marianne Faithfull. Takes five minutes to read.Elvis Costello's "what to listen to." Another sad documentation of Costello's decline into intolerable pretension. My only hope is that some long-suffering assistant wrote this for him. Skip, skip, skip. Nick Tosches, "Who Killed the Hit Machine?" You either like Tosches' (ahem) "muscular" prose style or you hate it (I fall into the "hate it" camp), and that will probably color your reception of this article. Mock profundities like, "Skip to 1958. Yes, skip. That is what records do. Even CDs. They skip," certainly don't help. For all that, this is a great story, and Tosches is surprisingly on top of it. The piece is, of course, a failure, but even I can't blame Nick for that: there's simply not enough space to cover the Warner Brothers story here. On balance, he does as well as one could with great material and a limited word count. Even though you'll have to slog through some tough prose, this is, unfortunately, required reading."Beyond the Sea" vs. "La Mer." It may just be because I love the song, or it may be that Friedwald has a way with words, but I recommend that you read this piece.The British Invasion. Best thing in the book, and the one piece that made me feel marginally less sad for blowing four bucks. What strikes me (my parents experienced the British Invasion firsthand, if that gives you some sort of generational hook to hang my hat on) is how genuinely exciting and vital the whole thing actually was. A fairly obvious point, one would think, but, as is so often the case, one would be wrong. The mists of time and the inability of the Sixties generation to recount any event in their lives without also asserting its truly cosmic significance have served to dull the astounding social import of the event. (The shorthand: nothing, Elvis, Beatles, Ed Sullivan, Stones, Woodstock is pretty much what the typical member of my social set maintains in terms of cultural knowledge for the era.) I'm certainly no nostalgist, but it is, on occasion, important to lay aside the cynicism and really try to understand how we got from there to here. Pieces like this are a good way to do that. Plus, it's in oral history format, which makes for really easy reading. Highlights: Freddie Garrity: "[A]ll of a sudden you've got girls coming out of your ears! And, you know, I didn't want to go deaf," Marianne Faithfull: "I think [Bob Dylan] was really irritated that I wouldn't run away with him to America, or whatever it is that he wanted. And then I went off with bloody Mick Jagger! I can see what he means, quite frankly," and a tragically self-deluded Dave Davies postulation that maybe, "... all us crazy guys from the 60s are alive and well for a reason, and there's still something I've yet to say." Far be it from me to endorse the purchase of Vanity Fair, but if you do feel compelled, this article is the rationalization.The Rock Snob's Dictionary. Fish-in-a-barrel hipster takedown that serves the dual purpose of educating VF's apparent demographic of mouthbreathing ignoramuses as to who Solomon Burke is. I'd make more fun of this, but it's actually pretty enjoyable. I'll cop to having a few chuckles at this one.Rocktastic! Skiptistic!The Music Portfolio. Fun for illiterates, although I would like to compliment whoever's doing Enrique Iglesias' wig these days. Nice nipples, Cassandra! (And a quick word about the Stax reunion shot: it's great to see all these faces assembled together, but am I wrong in thinking that this would have made a great fucking story? It's Stax records, man! This is a real missed opportunity; even a half-decent article on the subject would have elevated this issue into the "keep on the pile for a couple of months" category.) I'd tell you to skip this, but we both know you're going to savor it. After all, no one really buys Vanity Fair for the articles. The rest is your standard back-of-the-book filler: an unfunny Sinatra parody, a piece on the New York scene in the 70s that drains any excitement that topic has to offer, and a single-page interview with James Brown that could have been written at any point in the last twenty years. And there you have it. I spent four bucks so you don't have to. And if you still want to read it? I suggest the library or the barbershop. Or I could send you my copy. Because I am well and truly done with it.This article appears in slightly modified format at The Minor Fall, The Major Lift. Culture1572@blogcritics.org Tue, 29 Oct 2002 13:48:37 EST http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/27/143255.php Problem DrinkerDodo Marmarosa, the unique bebop pianist, died on September 17th. Marmarosa's story is of the tragic variety so often found in music (especially in jazz), but that shouldn't obscure his real talents at the keyboard. If you enjoy this style of music, I'd recommend starting with either Up in Dodo's Room, an overview of his work on the Dial Label, or his collaboration with saxophone great Gene Ammons, Jug and Dodo. Music955@blogcritics.org Fri, 27 Sep 2002 14:32:55 EDT http://blogcritics.org/archives/2002/09/25/145638.php Problem DrinkerI've been thinking about long broken-up bands getting who get back together (I'm agin' it). This line of thought was inspired by the impending release of Nextdoorland, the new album from The Soft Boys. I will admit to going against principle and catching them on the Underwater Moonlight Reissue Tour, but only because I convinced myself that it was a one off, and that Hitchcock would go back to making his increasingly worthless albums while Rew would return to, Ill, wherever he'd been hiding. And, you know, I really wanted to see them. When the announcement came that there would be a new album I felt vaguely cheated, but mostly concerned that the recording would detract from the band's not inconsiderable legacy.Now you can certainly make the argument that since pretty much all of The Soft Boys' material was written by Hitchcock anyway (and that his longtime backing band, The Egyptians, was essentially The Soft Boys minus Rew), Nextdoorland is simply a continuation of what he's been doing for the last twenty-five years. But to me, a band is more than just members and songwriters: it's the whole vibe, the je ne sais quoi that a group of people, working together at a specific moment in time, make you feel about their music.So it was with great trepidation that I picked up Nextdoorland. I was especially dubious because I had heard some of the new material on the tour, and it left me cold. Well, I was wrong about that: those songs have been reworked and refined and I may even find myself humming them. The opening track actually does have The Soft Boys vibe. The rest of the album? Not so much. There's little in the way of innovation, either, although the production sounds a bit more "full."It's always dangerous to generalize about a record after only a few listens, but here I go (and I reserve the right to revisit the topic at a later date): this is the best batch of songs Robyn Hitchcock has released in a long time, but it does not feel like a Soft Boys record. It is, in fact, a very high-quality Robyn Hitchcock record. Which is not a bad thing. I just wish he'd put it out under his own name.This review appears in slightly modified form at The Minor Fall, The Major Lift. Music: Alternative Rock871@blogcritics.org Wed, 25 Sep 2002 14:56:38 EDT