Tuesday, April 28, 2009

Susan Boyle Superstar

A singer/actress friend of mine and I were discussing the Susan Boyle Phenomenon[1]. There are a lot of layers at work here. At first my friend was surprised about all the fuss over a lady with a good Broadway voice. She knows plenty of people like Susan Boyle, so what's the big deal?

The big deal, we realized, is not that a TV show found some actual talent for once, but that the talent was not beautiful. This apparently passes as some sort of revelation for people who regularly watch American Idol and Britain's Got Talent. The formula behind these shows is to select some attractive people to win, and a lot of unattractive people to laugh at. Only recently did the producers of BGT suddenly decide it was time to have a Carrie moment in their show where the unattractive people are avenged.

Susan Boyle slayed everyone not entirely by the strength of her voice. Had her voice come out of a cute twentysomething, we would not have been nearly so moved. Susan Boyle slayed the crowd with her unattractiveness and talent. Most viewers were surprised that such a voice could come in such a form, but why should they have been? Because TV and popular music have been controlling the Industry of Cool for so long we've actually forgotten that talent is independent of physical beauty.

The saddest part of this is that the greatest talents are most often the least attractive people. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan was not a handsome man. Nor was Luciano Pavarotti. The single most astounding guitarist and pianist I've ever seen was a fat guy from Memphis who had psoriasis.

I realize AI and BGT are entertainment shows, and they are designed to get you emotionally involved, and that manipulation is a big part of that. Legitimate musical talent has about as much to do with these shows as McDonald's has to do with quality beef. The audience just needs to be aware of the manipulation, and I don't think they are. I think people have confused AI/BGT with a musical meritocracy where excellence is rewarded. It's not.

Let's be honest: if AI/BGT showed us nothing but excellence every week, we would stop watching. No one likes to be constantly confronted with prodigies because it's depressing after awhile. But having a show where regular folk get rewarded for having regular talent creates a mental lottery of sorts where the viewer watches the show and relates to the contestants personally, thinking, "that's not so hard; I could do that." And we feel better because we're right. We could do that. Given the luck and timing, you could win on American Idol. Given the same conditions, you could also win the lottery.

Cheers to Susan Boyle, though, for being the person selected to remind the world that talent has nothing at all to do with attractiveness. Hers is apparently the most viewed video on the web ever, which is a testament to the weight of the truth she makes manifest. Perhaps it's a sign that the entertainment world is re-awakening to the possibility that unattractive people can still rock the house.

1.) If you don't know who that is, then no one you know watches television, forwards emails or looks at YouTube. Congratulations.

Tuesday, April 21, 2009

The Spirit of Radio, Continued

My previous entry may have been on to something[1], because Clear Channel just announced some changes that could translate to more autonomy for local stations.
"Managers will have the latitude to choose content and talent for their stations as a way to generate more audience and ultimately advertising dollars."
Wow. Here's hoping this is the first slip of the reins. In a related story, Hyperlocalization is coming.

1.) I'm as shocked as you are, believe me.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

The Industry of Cool and The Spirit of Radio

My family has a thing for radio. I have an uncle who has worked for many years as a DJ, my father had his own small-town radio show for awhile, I ran a small college radio station, and my first real job after college was working in talk radio. I still find the concept eternally fascinating: one person sitting in a room, talking into a system of devices that transmits a signal across the miles.

I actually find radio more impressive than the Internet, because the Internet is made of wires. Radio is made of air. It's in the air right now. Passing through you at this very moment: a car dealership commercial in Spanish, the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction," a talk show about camshafts, a weather report, and "Stronger" by Kanye West, among many, many others.

In the early days of music broadcasting, the DJ was the tastemaker. His in-depth knowledge of current music allowed him to select what he thought was the best of the best, and he wanted you to hear it. He controlled a frequency on your radio dial, and for his time slot he had your attention. He presented to you the songs he thought were cool, and this determined what songs topped the charts. For an all-too-brief span of time, this was an elegant arrangement. But it couldn't last; soon there were too many financial cooks in the kitchen and radio playlists essentially became record industry agendas. The industry generally decided what was cool, and spent the necessary money to convince the public to believe it. Thus popular music became, as Lester Bangs termed it, an Industry of Cool.

Today, though, it seems possible that the Industry of Cool may get crushed by its own weight. Given literally thousands of great bands with as many MySpace pages, iTunes, Pandora, Pitchfork, Paste, Spin, and a seemingly endless supply of music blogs...what's a music fan to do? In the words of an MTV writer covering SXSW 2007:
I was struck by how it’s like a microcosm of all the problems the industry is facing now: It’s too big, there’s too much to see out there, you have no idea what’s going to be big, it’s too splintered, there are too many ways of consuming music.
If the Industry of Cool is splintered, how will people know what's cool? If the record industry crumbles, and signs point to yes that it will, who will decide what gets to be heard nationally?

I'm sorry to say I don't know the answer, but I will say I'm excited to be alive to watch the revolution slowly take shape[1]. My secret dream solution goes something like this:
  1. The record industry as we know it dies.
  2. Without industry promotion, new artists are no longer financially able to achieve nationwide stadium-level success.
  3. Radio stations as we know them lose the industry payola and stop having their playlists dictated to them.
  4. Radio conglomerates die.
  5. Radio stations are sold back to local owners, who, in an effort to keep up with the diverse and niche-oriented Internet, expand their playlists and begin spotlighting local acts (many of which are just as good as today's nationwide crap anyway). The decreased profitability of radio may even necessitate that some stations die and others go non-profit, giving DJ power to volunteers.
  6. Radio rises again.
It's a long shot, I readily admit. But I think it's within the realm of possibility. The Internet is allowing so much to happen at a local level via neighborhood and music scene blogs; radio could take advantage of that. In the absence of industry support, it would seem the best course of action for radio stations is to go back to being locally focused.

Or maybe radio will just die out completely. I suspect, though, that there are enough people like my family who are drawn to radio for its own sake. Maybe there are enough people out there who can't live without their radio.

1.) One thing is for sure, given that MTV has essentially abdicated its role as a music channel, this revolution will most certainly not be televised.

Saturday, April 4, 2009

Our Man in Tehran

I've recently started up a dialogue with an Iranian musician. I've been fascinated by Heavy Metal Islam, which tells the stories of rock musicians in Muslim countries and the struggles they endure just to play the music they like. For as much as American musicians complain about the hardships of touring or not making any money, we really have no idea what it's like to be actively persecuted by our government for making music. Here's an excerpt from one of his emails:

You asked about music in Iran, it has a long story. Iranian society is really complicated. First of all i think you should know that government is not representative of people. Islamic Republic is a dictator government and they disfigure everything. but there are every kind of people in Iran, religious, irreligious, modern and every kind that you could think. Iranian society is complicated because Tehran is different with other cities and we are on border. on the border of modernity and tradition. and about music, we have all of genres but some of them are underground like metal bands. the government doesn't care to art and music but people are very interested in art, cinema, music. and this is a big problem. last month my friend had a piano recital and Culture Ministry pestered him really. I mean bureaucratic problems. they don't care to artists. many musicians immigrate to other countries like England and Canada and if they can USA. my teacher is a composer but when he wants record his orchestral work he goes to european countries. why?...because of bureaucratic problems. artists, authors are open minded and it's a dangerous problem for a dictator government..do you understand? but it's one of our problem...most people in the world and specially in western countries are misunderstood about Iranians. even some of them don't know that we are not Arab, we are Persian. our culture is very different with arabs. did you hear president Obama's message about new year in Iran. do you know that first Human rights law wrote by Cyrus, Iranian king 2500 years ago? and now, Iran is one of the worst countries from human rights viewpoint?


My hope is that some day Iran might be able to follow the example of Czechoslovakia, which overthrew its hardline rulers in 1989's Velvet Revolution, a movement spurred by the the country's artistic community. Playwright and Czech President Vaclav Havel was involved in the 1970's with the Charter 77 manifesto, motivated in part by the arrest of members of a rock band, the Plastic People of the Universe[1]. The constant crackdown on musicians and artists in that country eventually caused the communist regime's overthrow. Maybe the Iranian people will be ready to do something similar. If history is any indication, America's exported culture (movies, music, and books) has a way of infiltrating even the most restrictive countries. Rock and roll, it would seem, still contains within it the seeds for revolution.


1.) "Plastic People" of course is a reference to a Frank Zappa song. There were a lot of Frank Zappa fans in Czechoslovakia, so much so that Havel himself invited Zappa to become an ambassador of culture for the Czech people in the late 80's, a move that then-US Secretary of State James Baker swiftly condemned and ultimately quashed.

Sunday, March 15, 2009

The Poetry of Economics

Some recent quotations I've come across this week have formed a sort of confused constellation in my mind about the world economy:

"We have involved ourselves in a colossal muddle, having blundered in the control of a delicate machine, the working of which we do not understand."

- John Maynard Keynes

"The language of psychotherapy -- the recognition that few things in life are black and white, that it mostly consists of perplexing shades of gray -- seems immensely more helpful now than the self-assured, directive lingo we've all become accustomed to speaking or hearing. The advice I trust the most now comes wrapped in doubt. Here's what I'd do, and this is why I think it's right, but I'm not sure. What's implicit is the acknowledgment that very little is a sure thing, that if we follow this advice, we're following at our own risk, and that every potential gain also carries within it the possibility of loss.

Imagine where we might be if we'd spoken in a language that recognized this all along."

- Joel Lovell, The Washington Post

"We are so weak right now that if Germany coughs, we will catch penicillin-resistant tuberculosis."

- Riga Diena, Latvian

"I always knew this day would come."

- Bernard Madoff

Friday, February 27, 2009

Fear of the Other, or Why Dave Matthews Really Sucks

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.

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.

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:
  • 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.
It's a film that mixes unintentional comedy with real drama, probably more so than any other film I've seen. The climactic fight scene between offscreen chums Borgnine and Marvin is hard-hitting - when these guys brawl, you feel it enough to disregard the obviously fake blood. They lumber and stumble; no fancy moves, just punches, two by fours, hammers, chains and an axe. They really don't make 'em quite like these guys anymore. There's a certain flavor of badass for which these guys set the bar.

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.

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

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)

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.

Saturday, January 31, 2009

Man on Wire

I've long known that the line between genius and insanity is hazy and grey. The few true geniuses I've witnessed in my life always seemed to move inside a fog between clear-minded thought and irrational action. But in 1974 a Frenchman named Philippe Petit walked through that cloud on a 450-pound cable suspended between the towers of the World Trade Center.

His story, Man on Wire, is now available on DVD (and Netflix streaming, where I saw it today). Petit is a self-taught wire walker whose various highwire stunts are more like performance art. To see a man walking through the air one quarter of a mile above New York City is one thing, but to see the planning, practicing and subterfuge that got him there is quite another. Expertly planned madness is almost a contradiction in terms, and yet, there it was.

The most important thing the film gives you is a sense that humans can do the impossible when they are completely focused and dedicated to something. Petit seems to conquer not only fear but rationality itself. If a man can walk on a wire at such heights, kneeling, lying down, crossing the span eight times, taunting policemen...what can't humans do? Perhaps he's simply an expertly skilled madman, but he nevertheless proves what is possible to the rest of us, which is what great artists and scientists do.

If nothing else, I know that the next time I'm overcome with fear or anxiety, I'll have a new high water mark for how much can be accomplished through the rejection of fear and limitations, and the application of focus, skill, and creative passion.

Thursday, January 29, 2009

The Decline of Western Culture

"When I was a boy, the bestselling books were often the books that were on your piano teacher's shelf. I mean, Steinbeck, Hemingway, some Faulkner. Faulkner actually had, considering how hard he is to read and how drastic the experiments are, quite a middle-class readership. But certainly someone like Steinbeck was a bestseller as well as a Nobel Prize-winning author of high intent. You don't feel that now." - John Updike (1932-2009)

I hear this sort of complaint on a regular basis, and I have to wonder how much weight it carries when one factors in the rise in the standard of living in the mid-20th century in the US, and the increased literacy and financial access of lower classes. What constituted a "bestseller" in Steinbeck's time is probably, adjusted for inflation, still a lot smaller a sample of the overall population than today's bestsellers. Did working-class folks in 1940 read Grapes of Wrath in great numbers? Did kids? Was your average janitor reading a lot? Because I know janitors today who read Harry Potter.

My overall impression of the dumbing-down of popular culture is that it's mainly a factor of the rise of the lower class. Even the poorest of people in the US today can afford books, movies and TVs, and that was not nearly so much the case prior to, say, 1970. As a result, their interests are catered to most often, because they literally are the lowest common denominator, the safest bet. So when people from an earlier cultural era complain that popular culture is becoming increasingly low-brow, what they might want to consider is that it's just the equal and opposite reaction of lower classes achieving higher socio-economic status. But we don't like to talk about class in the US, so we just complain that culture is declining.

Maybe the truth is that popular culture is becoming a more accurate reflection of the make-up of the United States. I think there's room for all levels of "high" and "low" culture, but the stuff that will make the most money, and thus have the most visible presence, will always be the lowest common denominator stuff. Maybe that will change, but somehow I doubt it. Even as Steinbeck was popular in the 1940's, so were The Three Stooges.

UPDATE: I was watching this week's installment of PBS's "Make 'em Laugh," their history of comedy in America, and Larry Gelbart mentions that the writing on Sid Caesar's show was urbane and witty primarily because, at that time, a television was a luxury appliance; it wasn't until more people started buying televisions that they had to start appealing to a broader audience. So I think I'm backed up by a solid source in saying that popular culture has a lot more to do with economics and class than we'd like to admit.

Thursday, January 22, 2009

High Anxiety

I'll try and keep this one brief, as it's particularly Slade-focused.  That said: the word for today is "liminal."  It derives from the Latin "limen," meaning "a threshold."  Anthropologically, it seems to get bandied about to describe moments in which an individual moves from one state of being (be it a state of consciousness, social standing, etc.) to another.  Typically, it seems like the move is a forward one, although I'm not totally sure about that.
I mention this because I'm trying to reach a new point in my life and have started to ponder the extent to which I'm in control of this (or any) situation.  I'm kept up at night by the thought of moments in my life where I was presented with dual paths.  So far, I've been satisfied with how things have turned out and I've seen my history as, by and large, a flow of one necessary event after the other.  If there have been things that I've regretted, I've been consoled by the fact that they seemed to lay the foundation for certain profoundly good things that followed.
But today I'm freaked out.  There's something looming on my horizon that I want so badly.  There's a door I'm desperate to step through.  And, beating its way around my head is the thought that the only thing I have as I approach this moment is the contents of my heart and mind, which seem like pretty thin material.
Today I'm at the mercy of desire and doubt - two emotions that experienced alone are enough to drive me crazy, but in tandem are threatening to eat me alive.
So I'll let you know how it shakes out.

Tuesday, January 20, 2009

OK Communicator Inauguration Blogcast

11:20
Just woke up.  Am frantically pressing buttons on four separate remote controls to try and figure out how to get this TV off of the DVD input (due to an Arrested Development marathon last night) and onto the Cable input.

11:24
Got it on the Cable setting, but no sound.  Am calling Sebastian to figure out how to work his TV.

11:25
OK, now I have sound.

11:26
CNN newscasters have uttered the name "Aretha Franklin" no fewer than 15 times since I've begun watching coverage.  Thinking of trying to turn this into a drinking game.

11:32
A moment of almost erotic ecstasy passes over me as I watch George Bush walk through the rotunda.  This is his last day on the job and, hopefully, the final page of one of the worst chapters ever in the entire history of governance.

11:34
One newscaster is asked to expound on "the peaceful transfer of power."  As if this were the first time that the President of the United States achieved the office by election, as opposed to bloody coup.  Now they're talking about slaves.  

11:35
Cheney is in a wheelchair.  Just exquisite.  He could not look more like Mr. Potter, the villain of "It's a Wonderful Life," if he tried.

11:36
Am becoming increasingly jealous of the fact that Sprout has tickets to the Daily Show tonight.

11:39
First glimpse of Barack Obama.  As always, I feel like I'm about to cry.  Not only is he breathtaking, but even more remarkable, the CNN newscasters have shut up for a full 60 seconds.  Truly, it's an inauguration miracle

11:43
Interesting that he decided to be announced as "Barack H. Obama."  Also, I'm not 100% certain that I'm down with this announcer.  It sounds as if he's going to cut out after the inauguration and start cutting audio for monster truck rally commercials.  

11:47
Interesting to see Bush's reaction to Feinstein's comments about the power of the ballot.  The interior monologue perhaps runs something like this: "There's a third way, my friend.  You can rig it"

11:48
Rick Warren's invocation is a bit creepy.  While we're on the subject, everything about Rick Warren is a bit creepy.

11:53
Alright!  On to Aretha.  I think I want that hat.

11:55
Please let this extend into a medley.  I really want to hear "Freeway of Love (Pink Cadillac)."  Blast...no such luck.  Hmmm, maybe Robert Bennet will do it up.

11:59
Right on!  An Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, and some-other-people-whom-I've-never-heard-of performance.  Very classy.  I wonder whether there was serious consideration launching right into the West Wing theme song.  Mental note: watching a pianist play with fingerless gloves, regardless of the reason, is sexy.

12:04
Despite the fact that he has yet to be sworn in, Barack Obama is now the President.  How completely awesome.  

12:06
That's it.  How unspeakably cool.  A few hitches there, a couple of repeats on the part of Justice Roberts, but what are you going to do?  How truly remarkable.  What a beautiful, beautiful moment.

12:42
And...scene.  Congratulations, everyone.  We seem to finally be on a pretty legitimate track.  Long may it last.

Friday, January 16, 2009

The Eagle Has Landed

Yesterday, as I'm sure any of you who have access to any type of news medium whatsoever are well aware, a US Air passenger jet suffered engine failure (authorities are still trying to determine whether the flock of geese had any links to a terrorist organization) and crash-landed safely in the Hudson River.  Last I heard, every single person on board the plane survived.

The images that I've seen are astounding: a sinking plane surrounded by boats and, more importantly, a throng of people ankle deep in icy river water, held up presumably by the jet's floatation devices, waiting to be rescued.  The CNN anchor describing the scene last night made the comment "it appears these people are walking on water, but in *reality*..." and yes, that was the stupidest thing I've heard come out of a newscaster's mouth in recent memory.  Nonetheless, the whole thing did have the air of a miracle about it.

As a country, I think we very much like the stories that end with everybody surviving the disaster.  Now, more so than ever.  It isn't especially hard to view the plane as a metaphor for the US: powerless, locked into a seemingly fatal trajectory that's completely out of the control of all but a few of the people on board.  How enticing it is, then, to see it land safely, with no collateral damage (no city blocks leveled, no cars or playgrounds or department stores crushed beneath its hull), and to see every single passenger and crew member rescued.

At first I found myself thinking "Alright, a fucking plane landed.  Great.  On to the actual news now, eh?"  But beyond the pursuit of ratings, there's a strong argument for showing these same pictures over and over again.  Right now, people need stories of things working out, of competent people being at the helm, of everyone getting out alive.  I'm not saying that this in any way shape or form mirrors what's actually going on in any of the numerous crises occurring throughout the world, but I do think that it gives us an ephemeral glimpse of hope, of what it's like to see something play out in a way that doesn't make you want to hang your head in defeat.  It's been so long, for me at least if not for others, that I've forgotten what it feels like.

Wednesday, January 14, 2009

My first misprint, and a link

So, for those who read Colter's piece below and thought, as Colter did, that there might have been a missing paragraph at the end: you were correct.  I failed to put it in somehow.  See below for the (now) complete piece.

As a means of apology, please follow this link, which is sort of germane to the post.

The Axeman Cometh: Colter McCorkindale As Metal Apologist

NOTE: Today ushers in a very exciting era for OK Communicator. I have the honor of welcoming contributing writer Colter McCorkindale to the blog. Although I haven't figured out how to properly attribute posts to him yet, I'm incredibly grateful to Colter for being willing to share his incisive, compelling work with us, and for bearing with my luddite ways. Colter, it should be noted, has a pretty snazzy blog, himself, which is viewable here. OK, by way of that introduction, here we go:

Metal. You know it, you appreciate it ironically, or maybe you even enjoyed it in your youth and are ashamed to admit it. Maybe you laugh it off with your friends when it comes up in conversation, while secretly adoring its adrenaline-soaked virtues in the privacy of your home or vehicle. Whether you were into flashy hair metal or brutal thrash, I'm here to tell you that it's OK. It's OK to like metal unironically.

Just as younger siblings often define themselves in opposition to their elders, so today's indie rock came of age in the shadow of the metal-heavy 80's and 90's. 90's alternative rock never really had a defining ethos, but it certainly knew what it was NOT. It was not fast guitar solos, and it was not long hair. But just as I am not my brother, I don't deny him his right to exist. And sadly, the recording industry does not tolerate diversity in rock music. Homogeneity is the only thing that sells. So the long haired guitar monkeys were tossed aside in favor of the brooding kids in sweaters.

But both teams have their limitations. One side is sensitive and introspective, but quite the whiny killjoy, while the other is an empty-headed hedonist, but a lot of fun at parties. The domination of either side in popular culture equals a loss for the audience.

Part of the problem stems from the difference in psychology of the two groups of kids. Most punk/indie/alt rock kids come from the perspective of Mick Jones of the Clash when he said "Sex Pistols showed me that music was something anyone could do." This statement presupposes that music was something he didn't have the necessary self-esteem or chutzpah to try in the first place. That mode of thinking is the dominant paradigm in rock music today and has been since about 1992: it's still not cool to know how to play your instrument.

For a few decades, from the arrival of Jimi Hendrix, to the death of Kurt Cobain, playing guitar well was the goal of most teenage guitarists. Most of the kids in the hard rock/heavy metal crowd gravitated to that school of playing because it offered an abstract language with which to express themselves, as well as a competitive sport for communal competition. They didn't have to put their emotions into words through song, they could use pure music – tones, scales, arpeggios. Of course, since almost no teenage girls are into instrumentals, these guys tended to write crappy songs about partying or being angry. And they used their instruments as tools for building self esteem. Like cavemen, the first kid who could play "Eruption" was immediately the alpha male in his group.

None of this, of course, appealed to the alt rock/indie kids. They weren't into being typically male. Robert Smith, Morrissey and Michael Stipe were more their role models. For one blessed year, though, the two groups coexisted. It was transitory of course, but around 1992 you might just as easily have seen Nirvana on Headbanger's Ball as you would Steve Vai.

Of course both camps would hate on each other. The Megadeth fans would complain that Oasis were crap, and the Pavement fans would call out the guitar wankers on their own self-importance. Neither side recognized the other's sovereignty. Musical genres are like religions in this way; their most enthusiastic adherents are the least tolerant of other methods of transcendence.

But here's the kicker: Metal might be the purest form of what we still call rock and roll. It's the most adolescent, hormonal form of music yet devised. Punk might like to think it is, but punk is too socio-politically aware to truly represent for the 14 year olds (Green Day notwithstanding). If rock and roll is defined exclusively as teenage music, and if teenagers are defined as those who like to alternately party and scream in angst, then metal has the bases covered. No band made great party music like Van Halen and no band was as frustrated as Metallica.

In many ways, metal is about empowering the unempowered. A skinny gay kid who likes leather and has a really high singing voice can start a band called Judas Priest and become one of the biggest badasses in his world. A Swedish nerd with a funny name who loves classical music and Deep Purple can dominate an entire guitar community simply by practicing relentlessly until his name, Yngwie, is synonymous with virtuosity. You can point out the inherent silliness of these guys, but you cannot deny how they have fashioned their own universe wherein they are kings. And as tempting as it is to decry them as masturbatory or self-indulgent, be first absolutely certain that you're not secretly jealous of the intense hours of practice that they have put in to accomplish something that you fear you never could.

This isn't to say that practicing an instrument is the only path to musical excellence, but you have to admit that it is a valid path. Math rock, a distinctly indie rock phenomenon, really isn't possible without it. Bands like Don Caballero and Pelican are proving that there is value in instrumental virtuosity. And stoner-rock bastards like Mastodon are clearly cribbing their balls-heavy guitar tones and riffs more from the thrash metal community than from punk.

Admit it.  Metal is nothing to be ashamed of.  To not enjoy metal is to not appreciate the timeless appeal of adolescent music.  If you're not ready to admit that you love some metal, you at least have to give its practitioners their props.  It's just another of the many peculiar languages contained within music.

Thursday, January 1, 2009

Our New Year

Well, looking back on it, 2008 was a year of dichotomy. There were many moments of once-in-a-lifetime greatness met with a counterbalancing number of truly awful things. Both margins were ridden something fierce, in retrospect. I'm heading into 2009 with the same sensation one has after a particularly grueling theme-park ride: exhaustion tempered with a lingering mixture of exhilaration, delight, and terror.

Right now, I guess I'm too dazed to take any sort of stab at what the coming year will hold in store for us. But, in light all that's taking place, good and bad, I've been thinking about this poem quite a bit. It encapsulates my hopes for the New Year well enough. My apologies if I've already sent it out to any of you:

Sometimes
by Sheenagh Pugh

Sometimes things don't go, after all,
from bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
faces down frost; green thrives; the crops don't fail,
sometimes a man aims high, and all goes well.

A people sometimes will step back from war;
elect an honest man; decide they care
enough, that they can't leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.

Sometimes our best efforts do not go
amiss; sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
that seemed hard frozen: may it happen for you.