S/FJ

LATER

LEE'S TRIP

Jessica Hopper with a little art update:

"Lee Bontecou is a lady sculptor, a contemporary of all the drunken New York men whose names we know, the one ones who've already had movies and documentaries about their art. She thought it was all retarded (again with that word!) and sometime shortly after Vietnam, she was like "f this" and reclusiated. (Made that one up.) She just had her first retrospective in, like, 30 years here in Chicago at the MCA. She did these canvas/steel constructions, big squares that looked like a war/womb/topographic relief map made of things you would find in a DMZ: heavy brown and army green canvases and huge industrial zippers buckling and contouring. They're the only sculptures I have ever seen that truly evoke sadness and anger over war. Scroll down and there is a longer bio and a picture of the stuff I am talking about here.

This is prolly her most famous piece. It's huge—maybe 15 feet by 5 feet. It's a relief, lit from within, and it looks like a seashell made from paper."

EEW! THE INTERNET!

It is SO WORST when bloggers click each other on the back and say "So true," so I am going to try to make it seem like I am not doing that because I do not want to think I am one of the people who would do that. Franklin is so right on Dylan (though he had this actual thought and I only had the fake thought in retrofit mode b/c I didn't know Dylan until the last few years) but much more pleasingly right about The English Beat. Can't shake my pom-poms hard enough for I Just Can't Stop It and Wha'ppen? I am beginning to think that whole 78-72 English/Jamaican thing is my secret dilithium crystal. Beginning to think? No. I've thought it a million times. But it's remained true, tangibly, over time, unlike my 6 million other generalizations.

ADVENTURES IN PARENTING (BRIXTON RE-LICK EXTRA PRESSURE SNARES REMIX)

"Can we hear 'Dark of the Manatee' again?"

"'Dark of the Matinee'?"

"Yes, that one."

"No, no, no, no. No. Dad. No. Do 'We are Devo'!"

"Next."

[Plays song.]

"Dad, this part sounds like your band, the one Clem and Wilbo were in."

[Completely stunned silence.]

"You remember what we sounded like?"

"OK, not now, not now, with the 'white finger' part."

[Listening.]

"I can't hear it."

"It's loud enough."

"Dad, I like 'Dark...of...the...Matinee' more than Junior Senior and Devo COMBINED. But just the chorus, just that part. That's the part I like more than Junior Senior and Devo combined."

"Dad? Do you know that when I fart sometimes, it's like thunder?"

[Music drowned out by howling.]

LADIES AND GENTLEMEN...

I give you the CEO of Sticker Shock. You'll have to wait until September 13th to find out what that means, but you don't have to wait a second longer for baseball, violence and anti-mentoring. The most gully teacher in Cambridge, number 24, Hua Hsuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu:

"The summer between my third and fourth years of college, I accepted a summer job teaching writing, math and history at the Richmond Youth Project. I had spent a lot of time there the year before as part of a mentorship program and I welcomed the idea of a summer job consisting of big brotherly tasks like taking sixth-graders to see The Player’s Club, or scolding them about drug or gun use.

The summer turned out to be a truly terrible one, for reasons I won’t get into here.

The months grew very taxing and I limped toward the finish line. Whatever sassiness I could muster was directed at the students, who had challenged the staff to a baseball game on the last day of classes. This would be the perfect way to close my summer: I would redeem my spirit on the diamond.

The big day came, and after a night spent visualizing positive things, everything was lining up perfectly. We entered the eighth inning trailing by a run, and I was first up. I had played a solid but unspectacular game with a pair of singles and an error-free performance in the field. But this was crunch-time, and when my team needed me the most, I rapped a groundball to second. I’d like to say I lined it, or that the students had put on the over-shift, or that it was at least sharply hit and short-hopped the second baseman, but it just sort of moseyed toward the dirt, harmless and impotent. I busted tail up the line, conscious that I had just bragged to the program administrator that I would be standing on third when he came to bat.

“I’m going to hit a triple, no matter what. Yeah. That’ll look good in the box-score: a triple.”

“Okay.”

“It’s the hardest hit in baseball.”

“Ah.”

“So knock me in, I’m going to be in scoring position. We need to put up a crooked number this inning.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“We need the runs.”

“I’ve never played baseball before.”

Luckily, the second baseman, like many of the other people at this baseball game, had never played baseball before either, and he threw wide. I took a liberal turn around first and arrogantly ran through second base: Fuck it, I was going to leg out a triple—I was going to make them make the play. As I strode toward third, thinking to myself how fantastic John Fogarty’s “Centerfield” sounds at a ballpark, and how heroic it would be if this very song played as I rocked a perfect pop-up slide into third, clapped the dust from my hands, pointed at the dugout and shouted, in the simplest language possible, for the administrator to take us home.

As I thought about the imaginary pat on the butt the imaginary third base coach would soon be giving me, I saw something: It was the ball. The ball soon passed me. I was soon running as fast as I could, trying to catch the ball. I sized up the third baseman, one of my brightest, toughest students. The thing is, Mindy, who was then thirteen, was not what one might consider an athletic girl. And considering she had been tossing the glove into the air during my at-bat, it’s safe to say she was probably more surprised than I was that the ball was coming toward her. I made a decision: I’ve put a lot of good hours into these kids, and who would I be to teach them that life is easy or fair, or that one should trust authority. Sometimes, shit happens. Teachers flip out. Cops harass you for no reason. Parents go off. Your twenty-something mentor comes running at you, spikes up, ready to kick the ball out of your mitt. At least I’m not wearing spikes, I assured myself, so I’m going to kick the ball out of Mindy’s mitt. The throw beat me by a good five feet and I went into a premature slide. Mindy stooped awkwardly to receive the ball, similar to the way one might clean up after a dog: Her body was completely stiff and upright, and she was looking the other way, her face striking a disgusted scrunch. By now, my knee was completely torn up (the field we’d been using was more suited for crime, joint-smoking and glass-breaking than baseball) but I eyed Mindy’s extended mitt and gave a swift kick. Sure enough, I connected with her hand, but then again, I was already bleeding, so I figured I’d already suffered my own debt. The ball dribbled out of her glove, I tackled this twelve-year-old girl to the ground, mouthed the word “Sorry” (in my head), stepped on third and went into a slow, one-flap-down trot toward home. I defiantly slammed home plate with my right foot and lamely threw my arms in the air. I noticed that my clothes were covered in dust and blood. I also noticed that none of my teammates had come to greet me after this most unlikely (and totally genius, you have to admit) inside-the-park home-run. Rather, my teammates (administrators, teachers, other mentors) stood there in shock. My boss’ mouth was agape; she seemed too terrified to be angry. The other teacher tried to disguise her disgust with a frightened smile. She tried to clap but her hands just sort of hung in the air. Other adults were covering their faces. The students cackled, since most of them loved violence.

We would eventually win the game, because the students let us. Mindy turned out to be fine. Like I said, she was tough, and I’d like to think she was even tougher after our little run-in at third. I strolled back to the dugout, wondering if it was the dirt or the broken glass that had ripped open my knee. Eventually, a huge, gruesome, lunchmeat-sized scab formed on my knee, and I wore that shit like a badge. A month later, the scab decided to go solo, floating into the warm waters of the Gulf of Mexico, and I felt a lot better."

BUYING THE INFRASTRUCTURE OF THE INTERNET FOR .05 CENTS ON THE DOLLAR? A STEAL. LAUGHING AT WALL STREET? PRICELESS.

When they don't involve corporations subcontracting countries to subcontract corporations to subcontract armies to prepare new markets (a.k.a. "securing the perimeter"), the failures of the free market are some entertaining shit.

DON'T GET TOO DEEP BECAUSE YOU MIGHT GET LOST

The new Prodigy album is as fruitfully back-to-core-strengths-and-punch-in-the-stomachy as the new Fatboy Slim album is pathetically drowning-not-waving-with-a-$15-dollar-margarita-out-of-a-bottley. There's a simultaneous release of a Prodigy remix album done by bootleg guys. Good work from Pop Razors and cry.on.my.console, but trading the crass force of the originals for mousey detail is the dictionary definition of "Holding Tool By Wrong End."

Also a bit hard to get excited about laptoppy bends and smears when you're listening to Woebotnik's Grime 04 CD. (Check the August 04 archive if you don't see the Grime 04 entry.) I'm sorry—if your job is putting out records, your FIRST JOB is putting out two or three Grime comps NOW, before the lame sex talk takes over. (Not as in "sex talk is lame," but as in "a wack version of something dancehall artists, especially women, do really well".) If your job is buying records, be careful, because things like this can happen. (Caution: Don't click that link unless you have time to spare. It takes a long time to load.)

Oh, and get this now.

ADVENTURES IN PARENTING (RADIO EDIT)

"Is today Crazy Hair today?"

"Yes. You read that thing yesterday."

"Right. Well, your hair looks kind of crazy right now."

"No, Dad. Not bedhead or born hair. It needs to be gel or something."

"Wait, let's try something. Come here."

[Soap and water mixture, hands, patient child.]

"Is it going to stick up?"

"Well, your hair is curly and doesn't want to stick up. Let's just put some more on."

"Can I just dry it off? It's not working."

"Yeah. We'll get you some gel at CVS. You'll just be a little late."

[In the car, "The Dark of the Matinee" comes on. I switch it, but there is protest.]

"No, leave it. I like that music. What is it called?"

"'The Dark of the Mat-i-nay.'"

"'Dark of the Matay'?"

"'Mat-i-nay—it's when you see a movie in the middle of the day."

"I like it. It sounds like the Beatles."

"Where?"

"Right here. This is the chorus. It gets louder and they say the real name of the song. I wanna hear it again."

[Long-suffering brother removes thumb from mouth.]

"No, 'Whip It'!"

"After we drop him, we'll switch to Devo."

[Nods, replaces thumb.]

"OK. Stay in the car, I'll be right back."

[Grabs tube that says "spiky".]

"OK. Let's try this."

"Can you make it a mountain like Tristan in Yu-Gi-Oh? His hair was born like that."

"Wow. Your hair is really really curly."

"Will it stick up?"

"Maybe after it's been in the sun."

"Dad?"

"Yes?"

"Can we just put colors in my hair next time?"

"Sure."

"Play 'Girl U Want.'"

[Long-suffering brother takes thumb out of mouth.]

"No! 'WHIP IT'!"

"OK, Dad, but then play 'Girl U Want,' please."

[Nods, replaces thumb.]

PRESENT ARMS

Three songs I really adore, especially the Toups, which is bivouacked in my head and unwilling to deal with negotiators.

LIGHT & DARK

Saw thee mightee Keren Ann last night. All seltzer and sugar and fumes. Dude, I was lifted. "None of these are love songs," she pointed out. Don't come back later and tell me it's too lightweight—you nail that pommel horse routine and then tell me becoming light is easy. Bwah.

NUTRITIOUS AND DELICIOUS

John Shaw gives two examples of the rock lyric gone right, both of which make us say hell yeah and yee-haw. And yes—early R.E.M. is a meme for boggy cop-outs, no matter how much I like early R.E.M. Was that the first time lyrics were incomprehensible, repeatedly? It felt that way, but there must have been someone before that. Not an occasional mumbler, or an instance of excessive surrealism, but someone with a full-on commitment to concealment. Troggs? Early Beefheart? Screamin' Jay Hawkins? Those are just hungover guesses. I assume if we put the records on the words would be clear. Anyway. Sheryl Crow, fucking A, and here's some rock to start your day.

UNREAL IS HERE

After the war against numbers—extremely Deleuzian of the Bush puppets—will come the war against time, wherein Wolfowitz enlists Rumsfeld's poetry of contradictions and convinces Bush to convince the public that it is always Tuesday with Morrie, thereby freezing the length of the war and preventing it from dragging on.

WAIT—I DIDN'T ORDER THE WELCOME BACK TO COLLEGE SPECIAL!

I think Carl's got me upside down like The Reid brothers. The last thing I want to do is blame rock radio for fucking up rock lyrics and celebrate a faithful subset situated somewhere inside "college-appropriate rock." Maybe I moved too quickly and read Carl's own wishes as a response to something I said, but I think I have it right. College-appropriate rock is my personal Nightmare Island, if I had to pick just one.

Franklin's dripped some typically precise thoughts onto this sand castle, making me feel even more the poser, popping out of the foxhole only to dodge. When work dies down, I want to do the thing I regret not doing more often—go through all the relevant posts and try to address the questions brought up, one by one. I think we can drop the whole "rock is bad" or "x is bad" frame and move towards a group critique of what kind of lyrics changed how and maybe some stabs at why. (Don't mean to get all Sunday coach up in here—just suggestions.) I still like a 15-year sample length, and I still think hateration is crucial. I'll still love you if you call me a knee-jerk booster crackpot. Or a dimwit bigot!

I'D LIKE TO ENABLE THE WORLD TO VOTE (DOESN'T SCAN, DOES IT?)

OK, but why is Jeb Bush vacationing in Niger?

WAR? WHAT IS IT GOOD FOR? (OTHER THAN ANNEXING OTHER PEOPLE'S NATURAL RESOURCES)

Unlike some, I know when to admit I've started the wrong fite. (Maybe the fite started a productive discussion, but it's premised on a phony war cry.)

I should have stopped at "'lit-hop' already exists and it's called hip-hop," because that's what needed saying. But I continued on, because I get amped. I went on to say "rock lyrics have sucked so much ass in last 15 years." I typed this because I wanted to drop some hateration on the rock lit crew. Drop the bomb, drop the bomb. But I do not believe this thing that I said. Not only did I give a free pass to the taxonomical clusterfuck that is "rock" or "hip-hop," I made it sound like I have measured the progress of rock lyrics along the axis of time. I have done no such thing. I'm sure there's a moment where much of Le Rock went all pear-shaped, but there's got to be a better opening statement than "fuck rock huh huh." There are bags and bags of rock lyricists from the last 15 years that I love—Britt Daniel, Joshua Todd, Jack White, The Matrix &c &c. If I was going to write something on an umbrella it might be more frutitful to lipstick "LONG LIVE ROCK" and work with that until I got wet. Hitching a ride on the parade float of hip-hop is likely to be as circular and slow as hating on "pop rappers." Much as I believe in a generalization, when ineffectual, it's just a mudslick in the middle of the field that everyone's gotta deal with. It's no fun and slows play.

None of this should read as refuation of hateration. To quote UB40, "love is all is alright, but you've got to find a little more hate." (Check here on Wednesday for an expansion on this theme, and check here on Tuesday for more rock-related information. ) I look forward to having the time to potato the cardigan crew, bodydrop the moaners and clap back at the anti-pop crew. But I must live by the rules I enforce, and this hairtrigger gasbaggery is not its own reward, no matter what I tried to tell you. Don't try it at home, kids. (Back to the regularly scheduled tennis match.)

Jocks vs. geeks? Never that. The strongest folks I know are geeks. The asleep vs. the awake I call it.

TO DO LIST

If you like rappers from Minnesota, you will want to read this. If you live in, and support, New York City, you should see this. Neil Goldberg's work is always supa tite. Below is the in-house synopsis:

Urban Eden: Three Videos by New York Artists. (July 01—October 31.)

The metropolis is a complex refuge for exiles, immigrants, and other outsiders who use the urban landscape as a laboratory to test new ideas, identities, and lifestyles. Despite economic challenges, artists and other "rootless cosmopolitans" embrace New York City's energy, creativity, and diversity. In this collection of videos, three artists examine the pleasures and pains of city life:

Jem Cohen, Lost Book Found (U.S., 1996, 37 min., video). The result of over five years of Super-8 and 16mm filming on New York City streets, Lost Book Found melds documentary and narrative into a complex meditation on urban life.

Neil Goldberg, Hallelujah Anyway No. 2 (U.S., 1996, 2 min. 41 sec., video). Near his home in the East Village, Goldberg videotaped merchants opening their storefront gates in the morning: "For me, Hallelujah Anyway is about the pleasure and sadness of being in a body in New York City."

Shalom Gorewitz, Levinas in Yorkville (U.S., 2001, 6 min., video). Texts in Gorewitz's video—shot in a former German neighborhood on Manhattan's Upper East Side—are based on the writing of Emmanuel Levinas (1906-1995), a philosopher who embraced the Jewish concept of tikkun olam (the repair of the world).

HOT POTATOES

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DRIVING ONE OF OUR CARS

Here are a few landmines we can all step on together: Are writerly lyrics the same kind of lyrics as, say, Girls Aloud lyrics? Doing which kind best is what kind of acheivement? Are knee jerk reactions a fruitful kind of thinking? What category of thinking are they? Are they worth checking in with, even when you think you've "dealt" with them? Is there any point in making popular music if it's going to sound like you and your friends talking over the Magnolia DVD? Is this about "good" and "bad" or about what each form is good at? Should we really make up a list of winners and losers? Isn't this more about trends and ontology—where the music is going and what function it serves beyond giving or not giving us jollies? Why does evil money-making pressure foster good music and bad movies?

Here's where blogs not paying really interferes, because the questions deserve not my snarky gasface but surgically careful, meat-locker cold parsings. This is, like, a book and shit.

I just now—plate of shrimp—heard Les Savy Fav's "Your Fading Vibe" and there's an almost direct quote from Pavement's "In The Mouth a Desert." After that, there's also a distinct hip-hop influence, which makes me think we should talk about different generations of lyric generators.

Click below for that Fela email I told you about, and some further thoughts.

Boris follows up on Keith: "Isn't "Afrobeat" a reification by critics grouping together what's actually a fairly organic Nigerian phenomenon: kinda like indie rock, only in Nigeria?" And in many more words, but the same spirit, a man named Sam Sweet sends the note below.

A word, first, though:

There is a point to saying things like "James Brown and funk are the same thing." Or, I think it's frutiful to approach the issue that way, from a low but distant magnification. Huge cables sometimes rise, glowing, from the water of perception when you sight along the blunt edge of a big-ass generalization. The reductive grouping that advocates resent is the same grouping that the same advocates reach for when celebrating whatever it is they're celebrating. There's a reason it's called Afrobeat, and it's a pattern that, though tweaked and variated upon, runs through all this music. Same way garage rock is all trebly and has little or no bass. There may be infinite distinctions within all that headache stuff, but to deny a larger identity is simply daft. You may think, for instance, that rejecting hip-hop because it has a lot of cursing is an entire nursery going out with the bathwater. That doesn't mean hip-hop isn't committed to profanity in a deep and consistent way. I do think that saying "James Brown" and "funk" are the same thing is a certain type of organization, and not false because there are dissimilarities within what's being organized. (And do various organizations cancel each other out? We say no! Bring the tools.) I also maybe think Afrobeat and funk are not equivalently varied and roomy. But enough—let's hear from Sam, who is in many ways more right than I am. (I also think his questions are good, so maybe this isn't the last we'll hear about Fela. I am going through the records now.)

Sam Sweet:

"The fact that you don't dig Fela (it'd be impossible for anyone but you to modify your distaste for Fela—it's your tongue, after all) isn't nearly as befuddling to me as your proposed rationale. That you just can't funk to it is completely reasonable. The music doesn't give you that "frozen vein feeling"—fair enough. Affirming that Fela's music generates "an absolute flatline" is slightly harder to bear (whether or not you dig Fela, there is little about him or his music that could logically be compared to flatlining, or flat lines, for that matter), but acceptable; but for an astute and well-versed listener such as yourself to loosely combine Afrobeat, the "afrobeat pattern" (still can't decipher what you mean by this exactly), the music of Fela Kuti, and the music of Antibalas into a single monolithic (and uninteresting) music is downright disturbing, almost enough to give me that frozen vein feeling, but not in a good way. Sloshing all these things/terms together makes as much sense to me as affirming that James Brown, American funk, the "funk pattern" (again: whut?) and neo-JB'ers The Sugarman 3 are one in the same. To use "Afrobeat" and "Fela" interchangeably is as sloppy as using "James Brown" and "funk" interchangely; while both Fela and Brown are the seminal practitioners of their genres, and while the music of both is emblematic of the genre as a whole, there is no way the name of either alone can accurately connote the diversity of the respective genre.

Perhaps proper discernment and respect for diversity even within seemingly narrow genres requires a degree of passion for the music at hand. The Buzzcocks, the Ramones, and the Misfits will likely sound the same to someone who hates punk; Herbie Hancock, Sonny Clark, and Horace Silver will likely be indecipherable from one another for someone who can't get into Blue Note; and God knows Gigolo Tony, Tony Rock, and the Miami Boyz are easily confused among 99.9% of the American population, although a groggy Dave Tompkins wouldn't confuse them for a second. But surely even the unannointed of us music lovers have ears wide enough to decipher and distinguish even in genres in which we're not fully immersed. Right? I thought so. I think so.

I think it's interesting you immediately connected your disinterest in the Antibalas record with your distaste for Fela (and the two combined seemed to ignite your conviction that Afrobeat on the whole, is off the mark); I found the Antibalas record to be one of the most contrived, uninteresting, and downright awful records of the year, but if anything, it illuminated everything that was great about Fela's music for me (not to mention artists such as Segun Bucknor and Orlando Julius, both of whom have seen reissue in recent years). As your friend Boris confirmed, backstory counts for a lot: the contrived imitations of the Antibalas record (everything from the political naming of names to the sound of the keyboards moves way beyond Felatic inspiration into wholesale replication) undermine the "revolutionary" political position the band assumes (more like de-volutionary), and while the band confirms they are maintaining Fela's political/musical approach for the 21st century, their music serves more as a clear, contrasting reminder of the very real, directly dangerous context from which Fela was operating in the 1970s and 1980s. Fela was not working from a template, politically or musically—even if you don't dig it, his contributions are strikingly unique. As much as one could pontificate (beautifully, in fact) on the similiarities/affinities between JB and Fela (there was much more than a "vague musical link," as the two men listened, visited and watched each other perform), even a superficial listen will demonstrate how individualized the two were. James Brown played James Brown music, and Fela Kuti played Fela Kuti music. To reference you friend's note about "folks' assumptions" the two sound as alike as the Louisianan Robert Pete Williams and the Malian Ali Farke Toure. And Antibalas and Fela...man, they are about as similar as Stereolab and Electrelane. As for being a bad person: marking Antibalas for what it is seems entirely positive and necessary to me. The real mistake comes with confusing them with Fela/Afrika 70.

I'd be more interested in hearing about your personal reactions to the music itself, rather than large-scale theorizing and claims. What is it about JB's sound that you find so lacking in Fela? Do any individual parts of the music (besides Tony Allen's undeniable drums) speak to you? How do the lyrics strike you? Does the political element dis/interest you in any way? Far worse than essentializing musics is essentializing perspectives on music; why does a personal reaction need to be justified by a large-scale truth? It seems odd for Keith Harris to put down the essentialist understandings of "folks" (most folks?) in the same breath he uses to label the entire Afrobeat genre "boring, stodgy, and generic"- fundamentally predictable? If we were talking about Antibalas I'd agree, but this description simply can't be applied to the all the music of Fela Kuti, Peter King, Orlando Julius, Bala Miller, Segun Bucknor, Blo, Joni Haastrup, Sir Victor Uwaifo, Mariata, K. Frimpong, Ebo Taylor, the Third Generation, and countless others any better than it can be to all the music of Blue Note, or all the music of Specialty, or all the American funk music of the late 60s and early 70s, for which James Brown was (arguably) the primary inspiration."

COLLECTED COLUMNS

December 19, 2005: "Qué Caliente," reggaetón.

November 28, 2005: "Damon's Day," Damon Albarn and Gorillaz.

November 14, 2005: "A Place In The Sun," Bun B and Houston.

October 10, 2005: "Extraordinary Measures," Fiona Apple.

August 29, 2005: "Straight Up," Emiliana Torrini.

August 22, 2005: "Overdrive," Kanye West.

August 1, 2005: "Brazilian Wax," Diplo and DJ Marlboro.

June 13, 2005: "The Gift & The Curse," The White Stripes.

May 16, 2005: "The Declaimers," The Mountain Goats and The Hold Steady.

April 11, 2005: "Slow Fade," Slint.

March 21, 2005: "True Grime," Run The Road, Kano, Lady Sovereign.

March 7, 2005: "Ring My Bell," ringtones.

February 7, 2005: "New Morning," Bright Eyes. (Related web-only interview with Conor Oberst: "He’s Wide Awake, He’s Talking.")

January 17, 2005: "When I’m Sixty-Four," The Pixies, R.E.M. and David Bowie.

January 10, 2005: "1 + 1 + 1 = 1," mashups.

December 13, 2004: "A Clear View," Keren Ann.

December 6, 2004: "Fifth Grade," Eminem.

November 22, 2004: "Bingo in Swansea," M.I.A.

November 1, 2004: "1979 ," The Clash.

October 4, 2004: "Four Singles," Beyoncé Knowles, Kanye West, Usher, and Gretchen Wilson.

August 9, 2004: "Mother Tongue," The Streets and Dizzee Rascal.

June 28, 2004: "Singles," Nina Sky, Hoobastank, Usher, Mario Winans and Jay-Z.

May 24, 2004: "Fireworks, " Nellie McKay.

April 12, 2004: "Doom’s Day," Madvillain.

March 29, 2004: "Slow Burn," Norah Jones.

March 8, 2004: "Let's Go Swimming," Arthur Russell.

IT'S LIKE THAT SHOW WITH ALL THE WOMEN AND THE TABLE, EXCEPT YOU CAN'T SEE US AND WE DON'T HAVE ANY DECENT GUESTS

Response from Franklin about my snapping on rock. This immediately made me think of several very thorough and thoughtful responses I got when I snapped on Fela.

One thing among many I like about Le Blog is the lack of a safety catch. Swoosh. Out it comes. Unmediated bark, unfunded research project, expulsion of gas, etc—I assume the distinguishability of these forms is high but I am wrong and the bad probably has my name on it.

The difference between "rock sucks ass!" and some other, more measured entry is the difference between, say, that time I wrote you a long, windy letter that burned in my gut for months and that other time when we got together at South's and I was a little saucy and put my arm around you and said "My friend, David Carradine is SUBLIME. You're right—he is the best kung faux actor ever."

There's an unfair assumption in all this, and it's linked to all those email lack-of-affect problems, aka The Reason We Have Emoticons: I assume you'll know the voice I'm using when I use it, which is just dumb. (Which is of course why things work better when we stick to reasonable and thought-out, but is that so much fun? Would we get to the good stuff if we checked everything first? Isn't that part of the newspaper vs. blog debate?)

Again—this isn't to say I'm not not a fan of most recent rock lyrics, or Fela's take on funk; just that I would build the house differently if I thought we were all going to walk around in it a lot. (See "treehouse versus A-frame.") These yawps of mine also reveal tendencies of thought. I am more interested in your DNA than the hat you're wearing. Larger movements and Oz-like engines are my thing. If Fela has one song out of thirty four that kills, that doesn't much change my take on his aesthetic. (Listening, more slowly and generously, I am not disposed to change what I said the first time, which was specific to his records and the basic Afrobeat pattern, which for Pete's sake does exist. If Bootsy said Fela was the best live show he'd ever seen, which he did, the ENTIRE Fela experience is likely a whole 'nother thing, but I was talking about records. And it seems like there are two barriers between me and the serotonin goodies. 1) The whole band is not as good as Tony Allen. 2) The basic template isn't—of itself—enough my thing enough to get me enjoying the basically OK tracks. It's obviously pleasant and if I had a restaurant I'd play it, but funk is not background music for me.)

Sorry to gas on–I am addressing these issues in another venue and this is sort of spilling over. (Snag on me—blogs maybe not so ideal!) Blogging just doesn't seem worth doing if we're going to be reasonable all the time. There's more than enough reasonability out there.

Going medium speed, Franklin's long list tells me some stuff. 1) I don't listen to as much rock as he does. 2) My football cry is an averages thing. Of course there are still great rock lyricists. But, averaged out and controlling for influence and significance, my gut feeling is "feh." A lot of it is Malkmus' fault, and a lot of it is an internal memo on hip-hop itself, i.e., "What other markets can we move into, now that hip-hop's taken over the rhyhmic fire and rebel yell markets?" But this is my hobbyhorse and let's just leave it alone for the moment. (PS: Because of my blabby and unchecked nature [and my hobbyhorse promenades], I'm not surprised I've left the impression I don't like Malkmus. But that ain't right—just because I point out that a lot of wacktards copy Pavement, and Pavement themselves didn't hold my attention for long, this doesn't also mean I never dug Malkmus or his lyrics. I am extremely in love with Westing and Slanted and often can't get SM's scansion out of my wee Kylie head. Whatevs—I love Jimi Hendrix and look at the poop stream he started. That was my original point.)

Yeah, Darnielle, above pretty much everyone out there. Franklin's made records with him, so he knows. Kurt I don't reckon needs including, though he's as good a place as any to start with the whole music v. lyrics problem. I love PJ Harvey without needing to think I like her lyrics qua lyrics, though I also wouldn't change a word of them. That doesn't mean I don't think they're good lyrics because they wouldn't look good on the page, just that they dont take on a second life in my head, which is more my yardstick for lyrics than any transitive lit(mus) paper test. Many of the writers on Franklin's list I don't know or know only in passing, a passing that suggested I would never like the music enough to hear the words, so I am probably disqualified from opinining about any of this. Maybe Graeme Downes is a great writer, but I just can't fuck with The Verlaines. (Is that even the right group?)

M.E.S. and Prince, 4ever of course, but I have them filed with an earlier class. Arab Strap = not music. Craig Finn and Luke Haines I love love love. A lot of these others I don't know. Kristin Hersh = no fucking way. Carol van Dijk—yes, happy to admit that oversight. Serveert! Thalia Zedek? I can't remember a lyric, a singe one, though I like her voice. Forster, yes. Hey, where's Dean Wareham? I love his shit.

There are sturdy and generalizable reasons for why I think who I like is good, and some huge political implications. Crushingly big. But my first reaction is just about me and shit.

Lemme see the list again:

Berman I like depsite sort of not liking him, Refrigerator I have a a cassette but I never listened to it more than once, Hanna yes, her stuff is good, Scrawl I haven't heard since 1987, David Thomas I do not like, ditto Lambchop, ditto YLT, one of my top five snoozers of all time. Azita is great, good one, and I like Buckner, though I think it's the voice—the lit bleed is a little much for me at times.

And when The Sands release a record that is, despite any of my wishes or efforts, an indie rock record, those who want to can hit back with the fury of the scorned and make me wish I'd never brought any of it up. That's baseball!

(Do you all remember Tar? I just put on a Tar record and I can barely remember Tar. Why do I have this record? Look–they made aluminum faces for their guitars. I like that. Who recorded this? What year was this? It sounds 1990, but it's 1993.)

CLIPS

Jace Clayton sends an update, including links to a bio of the mighty Moroccan band Nass el Ghiwane and an article of his own. I quote: "The New York Foundation for the Arts Quarterly asked Jace to write an essay exploring ideas in his musical approach. He discusses DJing in the Persian Gulf, Victoria´s Secret supermodels on Moroccan rai bootleg CDs, and more. It´s intended for a general audience."

The general audience is also the target of this newspaper article. Carl Wilson does as good a job as anybody in the lower 48 of making an umbrella piece not feel streched and patched to accommodate those being sheltered. (Nice Atwood quote, too.) When Wilson reaches the idea of "lit hop," and wonders why there's no such thing, I felt an involuntary response burp out: "There's already a lit-hop. It's called hip-hop." That doesn't mean I disagree with Wilson's take on the relationship between indie rock and its lit cohort. It means the first thing I thought was that indie rockers are reaching out to writers (thought of the miserably obvious sort) because rock lyrics have sucked such massive ass in the last 15 years. This is not one of hip-hop's 99 problems.

THE NIGHT IS LONGER THAN THE LONG DAY

Boot for boot, Mark Vidler is the Barry Bonds of this bootleg game. He's done nothing world-shaking recently, but his game is still tight. Let us now go on a quick (on your end, not mine) stroll through Mark's link section. To mix sports metaphors, GHP is heading for some Phelpsian numbers, but Soundhog and James Hyman could be pulling a South Africa round the outside, round the outside.

Boomselection is back up and offering amazing James Hyman and Soundhog longform mixes. Listening to these, the game clock is very much still running. Soundhog is no longer hosting tunes on his own site, but he does update the News section. Try to find a 45-minute Soundhog set called "Live Mix February 2004". It used to be on boomselection, but it seems to have disappeared.

The board is up, but this bit isn't up yet.

The creepy-looking Frenchbloke & Son site has a radio stream and a link to a long, typically noisy and typically great Superchunk mix. Optimo offers mixes for a limited time, and there's a good roots reggae set by JD Twitch up now. Ultra396 also enjoys the reggae music, and has recently introduced Big Youth to Britney, which is strong (though not very reggae), but the older "Toxic" dub is killer. New Lamb track is good, too. You'll find some Ultra396 back catalog, but very few of the video mashups are on-line. This is all likely to change in the next few seconds.

IDC offers a bunch of tracks, none great, none bad—only the MBV/Lo-Fi track really stuck in my head. Thee mightee Osymyso is not posting anything new, possibly because he is doing a BBC comedy thing called Milk Run which I haven't heard but seems to involve editing a lot of comics together. (The career-establishing tracks like "Intro-Inspection" are still available on his site.) McSleazy is posting stuff slowly but surely, all of it fun but nothing to climb over your fellow man to get. Unless, of course, you download the recent Superchunk mix, in which his A game kicks in and McSleeze jumps into the top seven. Nice to hear some non-English vocalists in the mix. (I said "in the mix"!)

Though Braces Tower hasn't posted anything since September 03, I am still fond of the four tracks remaining for d/l on the site. (The linked EP is a bit fern bar for me.) BT's style is distinct enough from the mashup quo that you might actually recognize his tracks as Braces Tower issue the second time around. (Nicely thought out, less likely to stack up into crosstalk noise, not all pop-derived, bit sad, bit funny—you know).

John Marr/SCO Network's tracks are fun, but most interesting as evidence of being the work of a 2nd or 3rd generation booter. Many of these tracks are conceptually based on earlier boots: a classic rock + "Work It Out" boot, a "Freak Like Me" + X, etc. Lots of the usual suspects—Missy, Destiny's, etc—but this collaboratively filtered verdict of the bootsquad simultaneously asserts and defends the obvious fact that Missy and Beyoncé are geniuses in fact, not just in concept. How thoroughly tested do you have to be before you get your Genius Hat? (Listen for the moment, if you have the stamina, when Kelis takes over from Missy as Acapella Queen of the Mashosphere. [Ew. Bootzone? ugh. Time to abandon neologizing.] Related: N.E.R.D. sure are lucky all these people went and improved their album. Inverse relation: No matter how fun all the "Toxic" boots are, none can smoke the original.)

Poj Masta has loads of tracks up and seems to have stayed in business. Donwloads split between mashups and remixes. All a bit twitchy and DSPy for me, though I did enjoy the Mario Brothers flicker of "Play My Game." Listening to all the tracks from this site, one after the other, is driving me fucking crazy. Not a Poj fan.

I couldn't make any of the d/l links on Andreas Churchill's site work. Also a little hard to tell if the site's being updated with fresh tracks. Seems not.

Lionel Vinyl the cheeky human bootmaker (Yes & Mixalot is still good) seems to have morphed into electroid remixer Fake ID. That's nice. I have to stop now.

This is a big Blur remix bootapalooza. It's great. It's terrible. I can't tell. I don't know why I started this horrible project. These songs are all fine the way they are. Just go back to revising for your exams.

Dunproofin' has a couple of really strong boots. Just a few. Not too many. Only a few. This is how it should be. Therefore, we vote Dunproofin' as greatest masher-upper ever.

(Doing this all at one sitting was not a good idea. I'll finish this later when my head isn't a big throbbing plum tomato.)

GUNS OF NAJAF

Surprised al-Sadr is making a deal. I thought he was going out like Cleo.

THE LONELINESS OF THE LONG DISTANCE RUNNER

Now that Fat Joe & Terror Squad are at Number One, here is a stat question for the volunteer army: Has any other rapper had to wait as long for their Number One? Hip-hop is a department where persistence is not often rewarded. Please correct any mistakes—yes, I want you to—and add whoever I've missed.

Fat Joe's first single, "Flow Joe," came out in the fall of 1993, and peaked at 89 on October 9, 1993. Terror Squad's "Lean Back" came out some time in June and hit Number One on August 21, 2004 (or, rather, in the issue dated August 21, 2004).

Jane offers OutKast and Falco:

OutKast's first single, "Player's Ball," was released in January of 1994 and peaked at 37 on May 7, 1994, which is also when it went gold. On February 17, 2001, "Ms. Jackson" hit Number One. That's seven years. "Hey Ya!" hit Number One on December 13, 2003 and then "They Way You Move" hit Number One on February 14, 2004.

"Rock Me Amadeus" peaked at Number One on March 29, 1986, but I have no idea when Falco started rocking the mic.

(All chart positions are for The Billboard Hot 100.)

WAKING UP FOR CHRISTMAS ON THE 26TH

Hardly news to some of you, but some of us have things to do. Audioblogs, like many things, are easily organized and digested through the math of meritocracy. Translation: There aren't that many good ones, and once you find a good one and go through the exhausting get-to-know-each-other's-pipeline session, it isn't that hard to stay on top of things. I am now familiar with Moistworks, with whom I share some preferences and opinions, save for one: Will Smith is a genius MC. Easily Top 20 of all time. Don't agree? Ask Harry Allen.

DUH DOWNLOAD HER

Get on over to the iTunes store and download that PJ Harvey iTunes Originals jawn. There are charming interview bits for the faithful (my hand is raised), but more important is the documentation of her current and very kick-ass live band. (Who knows where this band will be when Island comes around again, right?) Best of the best, you get "Uh Huh Her," a stormer which is not on the album of the same name, you noticed. (PJ's explanation is part of the package.) These songs bring back the sensation of being at the Knitting Factory show in June, which is still the best show I've seen this year. Prince included.

THANKS

Thank you to Ange Mlinko for sending me her latest manuscript of poems, which is as consistently pleasing as the weird synthetic blue pillows I got from Bed, Bath and Beyond last week. We recommend her work without reservation. If you want to start somewhere, click on any of these green words, or go for the gusto and get her first book, Matinees. (I encourage you to buy it from SPD or Powell's, but neither have it in stock right now.)

Thank you to Hua for those two Pink Panther-themed mix CDs. He gave them to me months ago but I was a rude bastard and didn't listen to them until last week. They are, as usual, fabulous. (Hua introduced me to Clearlake's "Almost The Same" six months ago, and for that, we have renamed I-95 the Huaway.) Now I know about Claro Intelecto, Extra Produktionen, and the completely genius Red Astaire. Everyone look out for Sticker Shock in the 05.

Thank you to Matthew Ingram for sending me a ripping grime mix CD, unbidden and unannounced. That is some righteous shit. And thank you to grime fans everywhere who emailed to “correct” me and call me a “fucken idiot.” (What a glorious way to spell the word, adding a Middle English whiff to the verb, implying that the act of being fucked is complete and the accused’s lameness is a fait accompli, not an ongoing or fluid process.) You’re right—Mike Skinner, or his character, saw the hair-twirling thing on ITV, not in a magazine. The responsibility for that error is mine alone. As for the repeated messages to “Mrs. Mosley” that hip-hop is “TOTALLY” central to drum & bass, I offer this disagreement: a Winstons break and some Method Man drops does not hip-hop make, any more than a John Denver quote makes dancehall soft Cali rock. Not only does jungle roar along at a completely un-hip-hop-like clip, making the effect and function of the two forms totally distinct, there’s another acute difference that will tip off the close listener that the two genres are only superficially related: the part where nobody’s rapping. Hip-hop is wedded, old school or nu school, to the rapping of words over beats. Jungle has no verses and no hooks—all that yelling is hype man barking, which we love love love, but it is not the same thing as rhyming. (You’d think folks would like having their uniqueness celebrated, but identity is some unique shit.) Witness the fact that drum & bass continued way past the moment hip-hop samples disappeared and was still, correctly, described as drum & bass. The tempo? Still rave. The rhythmic emphasis? Still rooted in dancehall. Feel free to return to fuckenism and Go Home Yankee threats, but we cannot and will not stop. We will always love you.

(Not thanks, but a subtheme that someone can weigh in on: I've gotten three distinct and totally hot grime compilations in the mail from hardcore fans. How come some young millionaire funding a mindie hasn't put out one of these things? God bless Rephlex for adopting early, but that instrumental thing wouldn't convince anyone to stay past the first commercial. When d&b hit, we got a blazing and timely comp from Polygram/London/ffrr, for Hype's sake. Is this failure just evidence of the economy tanking? Is this the electronica dollar gone south? Couldn't DFA or somebody do this? Call Ingram, Jess and Luka, let them each curate a hot biscuit? Come on, trustafarians! Your destiny is waiting!)

Thank you to the mighty Julianne Shepherd for moving to New York, and also for starting a Lauryn Hill newsflash service. Is L boogie buying a Torah? Losing weight? Losing her religion? Tune in for hourly updates.

And thank you to Jennifer Lena for this link. Unlikely to swing Ohio but pressure is pressure.

Here's a small thank you to everyone, which will only seem like a gift if you don't already have it bookmarked and digested:

You can get cute little book summaries from print.google.com, though it isn’t immediately apparent how. I asked the folks at Google, and they told me: “To target your search to Google Print pages only, you can use the 'site:' operator to restrict your search to the Google Print domain, print.google.com. For example, to search for a book titled "Superfudge," you would enter the following in the search box:

site:print.google.com superfudge

And you will get your results.”

Oh—and thank you to Hugo Chávez for being so goddamn gangsta. Fuck 537—you've got millions of chads to burn this time, Georgie.

WHY DOES SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE STILL EXIST?

Is there any difference now between traditional TV sketch comedy and, say, a corporation "secretly" enlisting bloggers as promo frontliners, both desperately trying to ride a wave that mocks the very idea of surfing?

TO THE RESCUE

Since s/fj's editor is on some Wilsonian production schedule now, Joe Gross is stepping in with a bite-size theory that will shake your cubicle like Charley and make you throw your shacket high in the air like you just got hitched to an heiress.

Joe Gross:

"So, I had to see Boston for work on Friday, and I had something of a revelation while watching them.

Shellac and Boston are pretty much the same band, to the point where I can't imagine I'm the first person to notice this.

Both are obsessed to the point of mania with sonic perfection (as they understand it) whilst recording albums. Because of said mania, records (and indeed, the band itself) seem to appear on project-to-project basis, often with years between albums.

Both have a dominant personality at their center that the public perceive as the leader/aesthetic figurehead. (In Boston's case, everyone in the band openly acknowledges this. Shellac goes out of its way to deny this, insisting the band is a group effort; nevertheless, the public perception remains.)

Both band's figureheads have outside jobs that involve engineering (Albini's studio and production work; Scholz's patents).

Both assemble the band when they feel like it, tour when they feel like, almost on an ad hoc basis.

Both have a strict moral code when it comes to the presentation of their respective bands, steadfastly ignoring the rules of modern rock/pop, that demand one focus on the music rather than the image, which in turn crates its own anti-image.  

Both play through custom built amps their tech-head leader designed and built to exacting specs (or, in Shellac's case, just look like they do.)

Because of their devotion to sonic perfection, the songs end up being this strange abstraction of rock music, as much about the state of rocking as actual rock.

With occasional exceptions, both have a very male fanbase, to the point that the band playing with a woman in its ranks is cause for note and possible concern from the hardercore, more misogynist fans. (Shellac has never had this problem, but in Boston's case, there is an actual woman bass player now, and man, to read some of the 238 reviews on Amazon of the band's last album, some of those male fans are none too happy.)"

EMAIL SPAM OF THE NEAR FUTURE

November 5, 2004

DEAR FRIEND OF FREEDOM BORNE ALOFT:

Good morning, young partner of the truth, hero of the American future. I need your help. Because of dark and unsavory forces, I am stranded in a place where America has not prevailed. (I am actually in my own backyard, locked in a personal security space that I purchased from a friend. It was rated as “gently used,” and is in tip-top shape, except for the grab bars, which are slightly sticky. My composition, “Let The Eagle Soar,” is playing on a continuous loop on the in-house speaker system, and the air conditioning doesn’t entirely do what the guy from Halliburton said it would do, but a soldier does not fear things but instead concepts, which are frighteningly conceptual.) We have fallen prey to a leftist, unbirdlike conspiracy called “the election.” Terrifying, earthbound forces have prevented my close co-eagle Tony Scalia from personally counting by hand—like the threadcount of a set of fine sheets—the results of this so-called “election,” a word which itself has a profane ring. Some uninformed, flightless lunatics were recently heard to say that the Emperor of America has been deposed and disgraced. Hearing this calumny, I flew into the bunker and cried tears of freedom and prevailingness. I will remain here, fortified, until such time as someone soars to my side with the true truth clutched in his beak. I know that outside, in the common street, America is not prevailing. America cries. Caw. Caw.

One problem for freedom, and also for me, is that I do not have my bank card with me.

I do have a sophisticated, proprietary channel on a wireless military network, and can load the International Network, repeatedly, without problem, but I am bereft of America’s most eagle-like symbol of freedom: my money. All over the world, in the coffers of the willing and winged, you can find avian bank accounts in my name (or the name of a holding company I cannot be legally linked to). There is a problem, though. I cannot access this money because I do not trust the left-leaning HTML Trotskyites to make the connection between freedom and my weird-looking, bulky military PDA. This is why I need your help, co-babysitter of the eagle. I have credible intelligence that there is money somewhere near you and that, with your help, I can raise the $5,000,000 needed to open my bunker vault. Lost somewhere in the wilds of the weakened and unfree, along with my bank card, are my keys. (They might also be in my left front pocket of my chinos, which are hanging in the guest house bathroom, where America still prevails.)

I am the closest of friends with Emperor of America. We are like two yolks in the lucky, lucky egg of the American Eagle mother. The egg that has not been born yet. The egg will be an eagle one day. Two eagles, actually. Twin eagles. This is how well we know each other. Please keep reading.

Please send me your bank account number and a high resolution picture of you in bathing trunks, perhaps reaching up with both arms extended to a shelf slightly out of reach, and I will make you rich. I play the banjo with my chinny chin chin and can make the girls say Good God Almighty. When I get back to America I will write a song for you called "Mighty Little Lady, Not Unlike An Eagle." (If you are a man, please forward this masculine plea for unity and strength to your closest female friend.) I enjoy candles and long walks in the rain. I am sweating. I do not want to hear my own musical composition any longer.

Do you have fortitude and the courage of your convictions? Have you withdrawn more than 20 dollars from that one ATM you frequent, the one where you buy pre-cut chunks of melon and chat, charmingly, with the cashier about something our omnidirectional microphone could not record? It is just my emotional hunch that you have. Paula Abdul once said I had "soft hands." Oh my! That was not recently. I find popular culture exciting.

You have to give credit where credit is due. I brought back cabaret with that soaring eagle tune. Norah James owes me a hot nickel. When I get out of here, I am going to put the smack down on all these helium-sucking chimpanzees. Real music takes real men, and should be played at ear-splitting volume. I will peel your cap with nothing but pure freedom and my new 4000 watt Freedom Hummer. Lord, it is hot in here. I have no idea what time it is.

Please wire me $45 for a soda. I am not allowed to carry my own money. I don’t know my own phone number. Please, please please ask my undocumented house worker to turn on the A/C in here. All I have to read in here is the Constitution and it is awfully dull.

Soaringly,
John Ashcroft

(Contains a sample from the composition "MESSAGE FROM CURRT ROZENWINKLE," written by S. Frere-Jones, I. Net, K. Rosenwinkle. Performed by s/fj, and published by Abstract Dynamics.)