My grandmother was fond of referring to rock and roll as "jungle music," a term that I'm sure was pejorative for her, but never sounded that way to me (granted, I had never heard the term "jungle bunny" or other associated racial slurs). To me at age 10, a jungle was probably the coolest place ever, and tribal rhythms were fun and participation-friendly. In fact, to me now, jungles are still awesome.
I think my grandmother's complaint had less to do with the music itself than with who was listening to it. She knew R&B as "race music," a segregated section at the record shop for black folks' music. As the daughter of a prominent architect in Des Moines, my grandmother was probably even less aware of black culture than I was growing up in Harrison, Arkansas. So the scary thing for her generation was that white kids were listening to race music and liking it. She merely feared what she did not understand.
I would wager that those who openly hate on a particular artist or genre are, like my grandmother, simply afraid of the people who listen to that music.
It's easy for us as a culture to forget how passionately people hated rock and roll at its birth. No genre has been as abusively maligned - not even rap music. The haters are more small-scale now. Folks hate on country-pop, jam bands, metal...even specific folks like John Mayer and Dave Matthews.
You don't hate Dave Matthews. You hate the frat guys who listen to Dave Matthews[1]. You might try to hate Dave Matthews for making music that appeals to frat guys, but an artist's audience is not his fault. It's not like his band sets out to make bland, retreaded rock specifically for insipid people (that's Nickelback's job). By any measure, the Dave Matthews Band is a thoroughly unique, cross-culturally pollinated band of really tight musicians. They also make music that's safe enough for frat guys to dance to without seeming gay. What's to hate?
You don't hate John Mayer. He's a decent guy who plays guitar better than most people in the pop pantheon, and seems to be actively trying (key word) to write good pop songs and to try different things. Sure "Your Body is a Wonderland" is cloying, but is it any more saccharine than "I Want to Hold Your Hand"? You may find him bland and uninteresting, because most of the time he is, but that's no reason to dis a guy. If boring is a crime, then a lot of people are going to jail. No, the vast majority of the hate comes from the fact that he makes money and gets chicks and you don't. And/or you hate the girls who adore him. Oh how you hate them. It's not his fault he's handsome and reasonably talented.
The same goes for the genres. Country-pop? You hate people who wear boots and hats, dip Skoal, watch NASCAR and go line dancing. Metal? You hate nerdy kids grasping for some kind of power in their otherwise sad lives. Gangsta rap? You hate an underclass who are so poor that pretending to be rich and badass is their primary form of entertainment. There's nothing intrinsic in the music that you dislike; it's just the people you don't understand.
1.) I'm making broad generalizations here, of course. No offense to frat guys, but if you want us to stop making broad generalizations about you, you need to stop enforcing conformity in your ranks.
Friday, February 27, 2009
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Fun with Economics
This passage in New York Magazine's article on Bernie Madoff stopped me in my tracks:
People later wondered how Bernie could ruin so many people he seemingly cared about. But for decades he didn’t hurt anyone. In fact, there were many that he helped. “I lived off Bernie for years,” one investor says, and he was speaking for many. In all likelihood, Bernie didn’t pocket much of the money. He always paid out promptly, never shorted anyone. And money was flowing out all the time, in large quantities, one continual bank run. Hadassah, for instance, invested $90 million but over the years withdrew $130 million.It sounds like he ran a collective money pool in which funds were shared and profits were delivered. I wonder how much longer it could have gone on, given that he had what every bank requires from its customers: trust. My question to you is: from a purely conceptual, theoretical standpoint, how was Bernie Madoff's operation any different than a bank?
Friday, February 13, 2009
E-Mail Lists I'm Unclear As To How I Got On
A list of things I've submitted my e-mail address for: online banking, bill paying, e-mail accounts (natch), Williams-Sonoma, Stereogum, Heiffer International, the Max Recordings mailing list, the Yep Roc mailing list...and then it starts getting fuzzy.
What I'm puzzled about is which list my e-mail was on that suggested that I'd be a good candidate for notifications about deals on vibrators. In anticipation of Valentine's Day, I got the above from Babeland.com.
To be fair, I really like where Babeland is coming from, based upon what I've read about them. Nonetheless, I'm full on flabergasted as to what demographic information is floating around in the ether that suggests I'm a good recipient of this stuff. More to the point: what demographic data suggest that I'm affluent enough to afford this? They're asking $185 for the Pink Waterproof Form 6! I haven't ever spent that much money on a car, much less a vibrator.
So, that said, for any readers out there who are looking for last minute Valentine's gift ideas in the just-under-$200 range, check it out.
Thursday, February 12, 2009
Bestsellers
I tripped over a statistic today related to my recent entry on declining culture. From Irving Louis Horowitz's lengthy and amazingly prescient 1983 article, "Printed Words, Computers, and Democratic Societies," in The Virginia Quarterly Review:
"In 1950...11,022 books were published in the United States....In 1979...45,182."
For 2005, 172,000.
It's amazing to think that just 55 years ago there were only 11,022 unique titles in the publishing industry in the U.S. Does that make it easier for a "classic" to get onto John Updike's piano teacher's shelf? I suspect it would, because there's a smaller pool of books from which Americans can choose to read. So perhaps it was easier for the cream to rise back then. The U.S. population, by contrast, only doubled between 1950 and 2005, while books increased by a factor of about 15.
I wish I could find out what the fiction to non-fiction ratio is for those earlier numbers, but I wonder if those stats are even available. Harder still would be figuring out, among fiction titles, the ratio of crap to books of literary value. Oh well.
I highly recommend reading Horowitz's article, by the way - it's deep, thoughtful and impressive in that it almost predicts things like the Internet as we know it, Wikipedia, and blogging. It's like William Gibson in a college professor's tweed jacket.
"In 1950...11,022 books were published in the United States....In 1979...45,182."
For 2005, 172,000.
It's amazing to think that just 55 years ago there were only 11,022 unique titles in the publishing industry in the U.S. Does that make it easier for a "classic" to get onto John Updike's piano teacher's shelf? I suspect it would, because there's a smaller pool of books from which Americans can choose to read. So perhaps it was easier for the cream to rise back then. The U.S. population, by contrast, only doubled between 1950 and 2005, while books increased by a factor of about 15.
I wish I could find out what the fiction to non-fiction ratio is for those earlier numbers, but I wonder if those stats are even available. Harder still would be figuring out, among fiction titles, the ratio of crap to books of literary value. Oh well.
I highly recommend reading Horowitz's article, by the way - it's deep, thoughtful and impressive in that it almost predicts things like the Internet as we know it, Wikipedia, and blogging. It's like William Gibson in a college professor's tweed jacket.
Sunday, February 8, 2009
It Came From Netflix: Emperor of the North
Perhaps the greatest benefit Netflix offers is access to a wider variety of film history than any single video store could ever offer. They've got Criterion films, Kino collections, guitar instructional DVDs, BBC television shows, all of the overpriced Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes...the mind boggles. So I think this blog entry may birth a series on films that you probably won't find anywhere else but on Netflix.
Emperor of the North (1973)
The greatest hobo-action film of all time. Set in the Depression, on the same stretch of Oregon tracks later used for Stand By Me, this gem of a film comes pedigreed with three Dirty Dozen alums: director Robert Aldrich, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine. The project was also developed by Sam Peckinpah before it changed hands. Rather than give you a conventional summary, here is a list of highlights:
Emperor of the North (1973)
The greatest hobo-action film of all time. Set in the Depression, on the same stretch of Oregon tracks later used for Stand By Me, this gem of a film comes pedigreed with three Dirty Dozen alums: director Robert Aldrich, Lee Marvin, and Ernest Borgnine. The project was also developed by Sam Peckinpah before it changed hands. Rather than give you a conventional summary, here is a list of highlights:
- Lee Marvin as a hobo king, "A#1," fending off Keith Carradine with a live chicken.
- Ernest Borgnine as "Shack," a severe conductor who sadistically enjoys clobbering hobos with his collection of small sledgehammers.
- The first line of Keith Carradine's character, named "Cigaret" after Jack London's hobo handle, is "who you calling a fool?" directed at Marvin's A#1, who had said nothing at all.
- A stable of veteran character actors from Westerns, including the bartender from Back to the Future III and the reverend from Blazing Saddles. And if that's not enough: Vic Tayback!
- A glorious 70's country-pop theme song by Marty Robbins, "A Man and a Train" (insightful line in the first verse, "a man's not a train and a train's not a man").
- Hobo poetry that only a man like Lee Marvin can deliver with something resembling gravitas: "You ain't stopping at this hotel, kid. My hotel! The stars at night, I put 'em there. And I know the presidents, all of them. And I go where I damn well please. Even the chairman of the New York Central can't do it better. My road, kid, and I don't give lessons and I don't take partners. Your ass don't ride this train!"
- Lee Marvin making a cop bark like a dog.
- The awesomest river baptism band ever.
Debbie Does America
In our recent discussions on how pop culture has changed (or hasn't), I neglected to point out how much the financial ascendancy of America's youth has done for movies, books and television. Over the last 50 years, entertainment marketing has become a science, as Tad Friend discovered in a very insightful and somewhat depressing recent New Yorker piece. And that science is primarily concerned with getting young people into theaters, buying music, and even reading books.
I mentioned Harry Potter, and it says a lot about the last half-century that the biggest bestsellers have been essentially children's books that are entertaining enough for adults. That seems to be the overriding theme in pop culture marketing: aim for the adolescents, grab some adults if you can. Adolescents are the most easily amused, the least informed about what has come before (so it's easier to recycle things like, say, The Pink Panther), and the most willing to part with discretionary income. If the film, literature and music of the past seemed more mature than the present, it may well have been so in many cases, as much of it was not aimed for the most part at teenagers.
For an entertaining and wholly cynical dissection of the horrific effects of youth marketing, read Frank Zappa's "Debbie Speech," as it encapsulates the dangers inherent in marketing so heavily to any one demographic. But it's inevitable as long as money is involved, because it's the job of business to generate the most capital with the least amount of risk. Again, the lowest common denominator is always the safest bet.
So, my original thesis being that people and culture really haven't changed all that much, I would like to amend it to say that the financing and marketing of popular culture has been sharpened to a rusty, jagged point. Up next: The Industry of Cool.
I mentioned Harry Potter, and it says a lot about the last half-century that the biggest bestsellers have been essentially children's books that are entertaining enough for adults. That seems to be the overriding theme in pop culture marketing: aim for the adolescents, grab some adults if you can. Adolescents are the most easily amused, the least informed about what has come before (so it's easier to recycle things like, say, The Pink Panther), and the most willing to part with discretionary income. If the film, literature and music of the past seemed more mature than the present, it may well have been so in many cases, as much of it was not aimed for the most part at teenagers.
For an entertaining and wholly cynical dissection of the horrific effects of youth marketing, read Frank Zappa's "Debbie Speech," as it encapsulates the dangers inherent in marketing so heavily to any one demographic. But it's inevitable as long as money is involved, because it's the job of business to generate the most capital with the least amount of risk. Again, the lowest common denominator is always the safest bet.
So, my original thesis being that people and culture really haven't changed all that much, I would like to amend it to say that the financing and marketing of popular culture has been sharpened to a rusty, jagged point. Up next: The Industry of Cool.
Friday, February 6, 2009
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart...
...This was a name that one member of the band suggested, and to which all other members of the band agreed. How did that go down, I wonder?
BAND MEMBER ONE: "How 'bout we call ourselves The Pains of Being Pure At Heart?"
EVERYONE ELSE: "Fine, but can we get back to our Franny and Zooey book club? Also, you said you were going to help us study for our GREs so we could get into Library Science grad school."
Ah, it's fun to laugh at twee music. And yet, it may be twee music that gets the final laugh. This is a genre that, like the blues, has shown remarkable staying power (almost three decades and counting for TM) without any real sonic or textural innovation in the medium. The stuff you hear now is, by and large, the stuff you would have heard in the genre's infancy. The chord structures, lyrical contents, deliveries, production values, arrangements...there's been precious little variation throughout the years.
Similarly, there hasn't seemed to be much variation in the demographic identifiers of the genre's adherents. Like a Led Zeppelin fan, who has always been and always will be the dude with ripped jeans, long hair, and a "Zoso" shirt, the fan of twee music will keep the glasses manufacturers, Beat Poetry publishers, knitting supply stores, and vintage bicycle dealers afloat from now until the end of time. The awkward kid stammering about Belle and Sebastian in the 90s could have been the awkward kid stammering about Field Mice in the 80s, who in turn could have been the awkward blogger stammering about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart right now.
And yet...yet...this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The level of innovation doesn't equate to quality or resonance. Perhaps you remember how most people lost their fool minds for Amy Winehouse? Or, alternately, how I was fawning over Human Highway for reminding me of mid-90s slacker rock? Aquarium Drunkard has a nice post on this band, the tenor of which is "Well, yes, they do sound like stuff that's come before, but they do it well. Oh, and the music is fun and good."
Frankly, I give this band a solid "meh" at first blush. I love stuff in this vein, and will thus give the tracks a few more listens. However, I cannot stress enough how flabbergasted I am that these guys are the buzz band of February 6th, 2009. What genre, I wonder, is not ripe for a comeback?
That said, I have to get over to my early-90s-R&B-revival band practice. Has anyone seen my linen suit?
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Stay Alive
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
For Comparison:
The Field Mice - Emma's House
Belle & Sebastian - Judy and the Dream of Horses
BAND MEMBER ONE: "How 'bout we call ourselves The Pains of Being Pure At Heart?"
EVERYONE ELSE: "Fine, but can we get back to our Franny and Zooey book club? Also, you said you were going to help us study for our GREs so we could get into Library Science grad school."
Ah, it's fun to laugh at twee music. And yet, it may be twee music that gets the final laugh. This is a genre that, like the blues, has shown remarkable staying power (almost three decades and counting for TM) without any real sonic or textural innovation in the medium. The stuff you hear now is, by and large, the stuff you would have heard in the genre's infancy. The chord structures, lyrical contents, deliveries, production values, arrangements...there's been precious little variation throughout the years.
Similarly, there hasn't seemed to be much variation in the demographic identifiers of the genre's adherents. Like a Led Zeppelin fan, who has always been and always will be the dude with ripped jeans, long hair, and a "Zoso" shirt, the fan of twee music will keep the glasses manufacturers, Beat Poetry publishers, knitting supply stores, and vintage bicycle dealers afloat from now until the end of time. The awkward kid stammering about Belle and Sebastian in the 90s could have been the awkward kid stammering about Field Mice in the 80s, who in turn could have been the awkward blogger stammering about The Pains of Being Pure at Heart right now.
And yet...yet...this isn't necessarily a bad thing. The level of innovation doesn't equate to quality or resonance. Perhaps you remember how most people lost their fool minds for Amy Winehouse? Or, alternately, how I was fawning over Human Highway for reminding me of mid-90s slacker rock? Aquarium Drunkard has a nice post on this band, the tenor of which is "Well, yes, they do sound like stuff that's come before, but they do it well. Oh, and the music is fun and good."
Frankly, I give this band a solid "meh" at first blush. I love stuff in this vein, and will thus give the tracks a few more listens. However, I cannot stress enough how flabbergasted I am that these guys are the buzz band of February 6th, 2009. What genre, I wonder, is not ripe for a comeback?
That said, I have to get over to my early-90s-R&B-revival band practice. Has anyone seen my linen suit?
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Stay Alive
The Pains of Being Pure At Heart - Young Adult Friction
For Comparison:
The Field Mice - Emma's House
Belle & Sebastian - Judy and the Dream of Horses
Thursday, February 5, 2009
Skate (or Paint) or Die
A little known fact about ol' David Slade: I'm obsessed with vintage skateboard art. Early Powell-Peralta and Santa Cruz logos and decks are particularly up my alley. So, it is with nothing short of rapture that I came across this post on Boing Boing about an art show inspired by "The Ripper," an iconic design by Vernon Courtland, first used for Ray Rodriguez's signature Powell deck.
If I mention much more, I'm just going to be copying BB's post word for word, so here's a link to the post and here's a link to the exhibit's site.
Now all I have to do is wait for a similar project for the Natas Kaupas Panther.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
I Love/Hate/Revisit The 90s
Little Rock had a modern rock station in the 90s. Not the most revelatory observation there, nor is this: I fully hated it. Every moment – save for the one time that they played Radiation Vibe by Fountains of Wayne – I cursed my town for having such a reductive, jock-jam-toting, Morning-Zoo-Crew having wedge of proto Clear Channel swill taking up my radio’s precious dial space. If I heard Cake one more time, I swore to myself, I would turn into a bell tower shooter.
But as with all things, I had no idea how much worse it was going to get. In a few years, I would be begging for Cake or Presidents of the United States, with their calculated yet ultimately benign slacker anthems. I would pull my car over to the side of the road to have a purifying vomit every time I heard the new playlists of 1997, 1998, 1999, all chock full of muscle-bound rap metal like Limp Bizkit and whatever genre Korn was (I don’t care if I’m mixing up my nomenclature here; all I know is that it was terrible).
I decided, fairly early on, that I hated the 90s. I hated its musical output (on a popular scale at least), but I also came to hate its stylistic signifiers. Goatees made me want to commit acts of violence, as did all the other cultural throwbacks that got wrapped up in the paper-thin excuse of ironic appropriation. For that matter, as I’m sure you will all remember, the word “irony” itself was used so excessively as to have needed retirement for the better part of this decade.
That said, check out this incredible song by the band Human Highway. It’s called “The Sound” and it reminds me of how superlative certain aspects of early-to-mid 90s slacker jams were. The 80s were so baroque and stylish and conceptual and self-absorbed, musically (NB: these are all important and valuable qualities in the making of pop music) that of course the next generation of artists were going to distance themselves, playing more with surface, immediacy, and simplicity. A light, but still profound, cleansing of the palate.
And so it is with Human Highway. This is a side project of one of the guys from Islands, and it is flawless: a careless, gentle, unpretentious song that asks nothing of you other than to nod your head. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and download the Reality Bites soundtrack. Sorry, Human Highway…you guys appear to be a gateway drug.
Human Highway - The Sound (mp3)
But as with all things, I had no idea how much worse it was going to get. In a few years, I would be begging for Cake or Presidents of the United States, with their calculated yet ultimately benign slacker anthems. I would pull my car over to the side of the road to have a purifying vomit every time I heard the new playlists of 1997, 1998, 1999, all chock full of muscle-bound rap metal like Limp Bizkit and whatever genre Korn was (I don’t care if I’m mixing up my nomenclature here; all I know is that it was terrible).
I decided, fairly early on, that I hated the 90s. I hated its musical output (on a popular scale at least), but I also came to hate its stylistic signifiers. Goatees made me want to commit acts of violence, as did all the other cultural throwbacks that got wrapped up in the paper-thin excuse of ironic appropriation. For that matter, as I’m sure you will all remember, the word “irony” itself was used so excessively as to have needed retirement for the better part of this decade.
That said, check out this incredible song by the band Human Highway. It’s called “The Sound” and it reminds me of how superlative certain aspects of early-to-mid 90s slacker jams were. The 80s were so baroque and stylish and conceptual and self-absorbed, musically (NB: these are all important and valuable qualities in the making of pop music) that of course the next generation of artists were going to distance themselves, playing more with surface, immediacy, and simplicity. A light, but still profound, cleansing of the palate.
And so it is with Human Highway. This is a side project of one of the guys from Islands, and it is flawless: a careless, gentle, unpretentious song that asks nothing of you other than to nod your head. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go and download the Reality Bites soundtrack. Sorry, Human Highway…you guys appear to be a gateway drug.
Human Highway - The Sound (mp3)
Tuesday, February 3, 2009
It's Getting Better All the Time
Recently I've had a couple of friends express to me their reluctance to have children in this messed up modern world. I must then convince them that the world today is better than it has ever been. Anyone who thinks that the past is a better place has not studied much history. And who can blame them when our history books and news media combine to present a thoroughly inaccurate picture of how folks are doing in the 21st century?
People today get their concepts of the past from three very untrustworthy sources: history books, movies and television. History textbooks, as a general rule, still tend to paint the United States with a manifest destiny behind it, where historical figures are larger-than-life heroes in the grand epic of the Western Civilization. Anyone who has read Lies My Teacher Told Me or Guns, Germs, and Steel can tell you that history is a much more complex web of human interaction.
Movies and television give us a sense of the past in a more visceral way. If we watch It's a Wonderful Life or Leave it to Beaver we feel like we get some sense of what life was like in those eras, but we need to be aware that these were illusory images even in their own time. For this reason I highly recommend both the book and movie version of Gangs of New York. Certainly the movie is cartoonish, but either way you learn that New York City in the late 19th century was a horrible place compared to today. People complain about gangs in the recent past, but at least they aren't mercenaries controlled by politicians the way they once were. People complain about government and corporate corruption today, but times were much worse in 1911, for example, when 146 people died at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire because the factory safety standards of the day were almost nonexistent. The life of man was truly, to quote Hobbes, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," and continues to be so for many people. We must remind ourselves of this. No movie is going to fully show it to us because not many people would want to watch it.
Then there's the news media. 24-hour news in particular is a horrible lens through which to view the world. People forget that the definition of "news," going back to the dawn of newspapers, is "man bites dog" -- the exceptions to the rule, the strange and the tragic. Yes, there are wars, and the one in which we are currently embroiled is misbegotten and nigh intractable, but did you know that wars around the globe have been steadily declining over the last 100 years? Did you know there are currently fewer wars today than in previous decades even? No offense to my friends in the news media, but they make the most money when disaster strikes. Trust them to give you the facts on newsworthy events, but don't expect them to give you an accurate picture of the world in general.
Another part of the problem is how we raise our children. We present the universe to them as a place where justice and fairness prevail and everything makes sense. It's inevitable that we set them up for a fall as they grow to discover how much the world can truly suck.
The big picture is always hard to see, and for everything we gain we often lose something. If I had to give my estimation of it, I'd say the world is a pretty horrific place but that overall it is getting better in imperceptible, incremental ways every day.
People today get their concepts of the past from three very untrustworthy sources: history books, movies and television. History textbooks, as a general rule, still tend to paint the United States with a manifest destiny behind it, where historical figures are larger-than-life heroes in the grand epic of the Western Civilization. Anyone who has read Lies My Teacher Told Me or Guns, Germs, and Steel can tell you that history is a much more complex web of human interaction.
Movies and television give us a sense of the past in a more visceral way. If we watch It's a Wonderful Life or Leave it to Beaver we feel like we get some sense of what life was like in those eras, but we need to be aware that these were illusory images even in their own time. For this reason I highly recommend both the book and movie version of Gangs of New York. Certainly the movie is cartoonish, but either way you learn that New York City in the late 19th century was a horrible place compared to today. People complain about gangs in the recent past, but at least they aren't mercenaries controlled by politicians the way they once were. People complain about government and corporate corruption today, but times were much worse in 1911, for example, when 146 people died at the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire because the factory safety standards of the day were almost nonexistent. The life of man was truly, to quote Hobbes, "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short," and continues to be so for many people. We must remind ourselves of this. No movie is going to fully show it to us because not many people would want to watch it.
Then there's the news media. 24-hour news in particular is a horrible lens through which to view the world. People forget that the definition of "news," going back to the dawn of newspapers, is "man bites dog" -- the exceptions to the rule, the strange and the tragic. Yes, there are wars, and the one in which we are currently embroiled is misbegotten and nigh intractable, but did you know that wars around the globe have been steadily declining over the last 100 years? Did you know there are currently fewer wars today than in previous decades even? No offense to my friends in the news media, but they make the most money when disaster strikes. Trust them to give you the facts on newsworthy events, but don't expect them to give you an accurate picture of the world in general.
Another part of the problem is how we raise our children. We present the universe to them as a place where justice and fairness prevail and everything makes sense. It's inevitable that we set them up for a fall as they grow to discover how much the world can truly suck.
The big picture is always hard to see, and for everything we gain we often lose something. If I had to give my estimation of it, I'd say the world is a pretty horrific place but that overall it is getting better in imperceptible, incremental ways every day.
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