CRIMES AGAINST MUSIC

Talking 2011 on WFUV

2011-12-28T16:27:00.006-05:00

As part of my critic rotation duties on the WFUV Music Review — after doing it every week for a few years, I now alternate with Anthony DeCurtis and Josh Baron — I went on the air the other day to talk about three of my favorites from 2011: Tinariwen’s “Tassili,” Laura Marling’s “A Creature I Don’t Know,” and James Blake’s self-titled debut.

As always, I had fun with Claudia, but unfortunately they (she?) edited out all her wisecracks to get the thing down to the five allotted minutes. I could have blabbed on for so much longer.

You can listen to it here, and subscribe to the Music Review here.

Some recent reviews: Band of Bees, Cass McCombs, Jayhawks, Beirut, Glen Campbell.

Who I buried in 2011

2011-12-21T07:46:00.003-05:00

Don Kirshner, Brill Building-era music publisher, TV host
Roger Nichols, sound engineer for Steely Dan
Gil Scott-Heron
Clarence Clemons
Amy Winehouse
Nick Ashford
Frank Dileo, Michael Jackson’s manager
Jimmy Norman, songwriter who fought for credit on “Time Is on My Side”

My best of 2011

2011-12-19T13:59:00.015-05:00

Top 10:

1. Cass McCombs, Wit’s End (Domino)
2. James Blake (A&M/Atlas)
3. PJ Harvey, Let England Shake (Vagrant)
4. Tune-Yards, Whokill (4AD)
5. Laura Marling, A Creature I Don’t Know (Domino)
6. Wye Oak, Civilian (Merge)
7. Tinariwen, Tassili (Anti-)
8. Low, C’Mon (Sub Pop)
9. Beirut, The Rip Tide (Pompeii)
10. Matthew Herbert, One Pig (Accidental)

Also good (in alphabetical order):

Adele, 21 (XL/Columbia)
Keren Ann, 101 (Blue Note)
Antlers, Burst Apart (Frenchkiss)
Alison Krauss & Union Station, Paper Airplane (Rounder)
Bon Iver, Bon Iver (Jagjaguwar)
The Civil Wars, Barton Hollow (Sensibility)
Jolie Holland and the Grand Chandeliers, Pint of Blood (Anti-)
Jeffrey Lewis, A Turn in the Dream-Songs (Rough Trade)
Nick Lowe, The Old Magic (Yep Roc)
My Morning Jacket, Circuital (ATO)
Lou Reed and Metallica, Lulu (Warner Bros.)
St. Vincent, Strange Mercy (4AD)
Washed Out, Within and Without (Sub Pop)
Wilco, The Whole Love (dBpm)
Yuck (Fat Possum)

You're still someone if Steve Jobs never called you at 3 a.m.

2011-10-07T13:09:00.010-04:00

I was just sitting at home late one night, counting my money, when the phone rang. "It's Steve. That column you wrote was a piece of crap. Here are my ideas for the next iPod, iPad, manned space station and cure for AIDS. I am telling you all of this because this is what I do. I'm Steve Jobs, and I reveal myself in mysterious ways, especially when I confide in you. Now here is my plan for conquering Hollywood."

That never happened to me, of course. Like millions of others, my closest contact with Steve Jobs was in watching Apple's carefully choreographed video feeds, and through reading his endearingly curt, deus ex machina messages to customers on emailsfromstevejobs.com. ("Yep." "Nope.")

But in all the coverage of Jobs's death — a couple pieces of which I have been responsible for — you get the sense that everybody else in business or journalism had some kind of special lifeline to the great man, randomly accessed but always deeply meaningful. Writers of all kinds recalled Jobs phoning at odd hours with specific reactions to their pieces, underscoring the significance of their work. TV personalities dangled meaningless connections. Business leaders beamed about the abuse and cajoling they regularly got from him; like groupies recounting their encounters years later, they always eagerly gave in.

Many of these connections were surely real. Jobs did of course have a habit of calling some key journalists, like Walt Mossberg. But make no mistake: there are very, very few Walt Mossbergs out there. It reminds me of something my esteemed former colleague Bernard Holland once wrote about the many spurious claims of familiarity after the death of Glenn Gould, another famously private and irascible personality:

In death, Gould came to life. Music business operatives appeared suddenly and in hordes, claiming hitherto unnoticed intimacy with the great man and eager to share their experiences in articles, interviews and books. It was amazing how many had known Gould so well, spent so many hours exchanging deep thoughts during marathon middle-of-the-night phone calls to area code 416.

So take those stories of late-night calls from Jobs with a grain of salt.

A conversation with Brian Eno

2011-07-04T21:13:00.014-04:00

I had the great privilege of interviewing Brian Eno about his new album, “Drums Between the Bells.” He’s one of the gods that I can now cross off the list, and he was a completely kind, charming athlete of brilliance. I was terrified that I would wind up coming across like Chris Farley, but I think I did OK.

It’s always frustrating, though, how few of those kind, charming, brilliant words actually make it into a newspaper article, so here is a more thorough transcription. This is still not complete; it was just too long. But I think you get the idea.

❧

How did “Drums Between the Bells” and your collaboration with Rick Holland come together?

I started working with words against music, rather than songs, quite a few years ago. Even in the ’70s I did a few early things where I was using spoken word rather than sung word. I became more interested in that direction as time went on. And I think it’s because I’ve spent a lot of time trying to look toward alternatives to conventional song structures. So if you think of “My Life in the Bush of Ghosts,” that was a sort of an alternative to ordinary songwriting in that it deliberately used voices that weren’t ever intended to be part of that song. So that collage thing was one of the ways I thought of getting away from ordinary songwriting.

You may be thinking, “Why did he want to get away from ordinary song structures?” Well, the reason was because I was thoroughly bored with them. The whole history of pop music had rested on the first person singular, with occasional intrusions of the second person singular: [singing] “I am this, I think this, and you do this, and you are this...” I was so bored with the idea of the whole song being based around some individual’s narrative. So I started working on ways to try to get rid of the idea that the voice in the song was the voice of the song — that was the center of the meaning of the song It’s a little bit like when people started melting figures into landscapes, so that you stop looking at a picture of a person against a background and started looking at a picture of a whole field of things, which happened to include a person.

I experimented many times with the idea of seeing what happens if you stick a spoken voice against a piece of music. And now, because it’s 2011, I was able to do a little bit more than that. I could choose exactly where the words fell and I could move them around and stretch them a little bit or change their pitch, or do all sorts of other things with them. So what I wanted to end up with was something that occupied a slightly different part of the spectrum between speech and song. So it wasn’t just speech and wasn’t just song, but it was some new hybrid in between.

Why Rick?

About eight or nine years ago I was thinking about this project, and in fact I had written quite a few poems of my own and tried this approach with them. I liked the approach but I wasn’t that keen on the poems, so I thought, “I need a poet!” I went to this event one evening, and there was this young man, Rick Holland, reading a couple of his poems, and they struck me as just the right kind of poems. They were short, which is important because I didn’t want the language to dominate the scene; I didn’t want a continual, wall-to-wall voice going though. And I wanted poems that were fairly unspecific in their language. Again, I didn’t want the whole thing to necessarily center around the voice any more than I’ve ever wanted it to do in anything else.

Some of the voices on the album reminded me of the robotic voices on GPS machines, where it’s often a female voice, which is often considered friendlier, giving help to a person using it. Did any of that enter into your mind, the character of the voices or what a voice type would imply about the kind of person?

One of the things that I kept listening to, and I’m always been fascinated by, are those automated announcements you get at railway stations. [Robotic voice:] “The — 5-4-3 train — from — platform 5 — is ...” Where it’s obviously all electronically collaged together from different recordings that weren’t made consecutively. And I think, “Ooh, that’s really nice. That’s a new way of voices sounding.” So I was quite consciously artificializing some of the recordings, and in fact almost the only instruction I gave the readers was, “Can you read it more slowly? Can you separate the words more?” Because I wanted it to feel that each word was individually pasted in, even though most of these poems were actually read consecutively.

Did you imagine it sounding strange or emotionally disconcerting to hear a voice like that?

I think what it does is it separates the voice from the kinds of emotions you might normally associate with it, so it becomes more emotionally ambiguous; it means there’s more interpretive space given the listener. Obviously, since it’s a voice we respond to it, just as any circle with two small circles and a curve inside it is going to look like face. We don’t have to have much information as listeners to make us interested in what a voice is doing and saying; we already are interested, just like we’re interested in faces. So I think what I was doing was playing on the fact that people have an inclination and a taste toward voices, and toward trying to interpret what they do, and seeing how far I could stretch them from being normal voices and still...

Sorry, I’m trying to switch a light on as I’m talking...

So can I ask you how many Brian Enos it takes to screw in a light bulb?

[Laughs.] In this case I only have one, and he’s failing... There, I’ve done it now. I’ve succeeded, so the answer is one.

Getting back to traditional versus nontraditional songwriting, did you even think of the words here as being lyrics that you set to music, or as a different kind of material?

I don’t think of them as being set to music. I like to think about them the same way as I like to think about film music, when I’m occasionally asked to do it, which is as a separate and parallel reality. I can’t bear Hollywood film music, because it seems to me it does the most pedestrian and obvious thing: it locates a single emotion in the film and then does its best to exaggerate that. It’s exactly the opposite of what I want from film music. I want film music to expand the film, to make it broader and vaguer in terms of its emotional implications. I don’t want to be told when someone’s crying that they’re sad, by some twit playing strings in the background, which is always the Hollywood resort. [American accent:] “Oh, this is a sad scene, let’s make him really sad.” And I think, “Don’t be so stupid!”

A lot of music is called experimental even if the audience already knows what it’s going to be like, and there is no actual experiment happening, for instance in idioms like free jazz or noisy electronica. Do you have to fight against doing something that is “experimental,” versus doing something where you don’t know what’s going to happen?

I don’t feel it’s a fight. I sort of take that as my brief that I’m always so thrilled when I find myself somewhere I haven’t been before. In my normal life I’m a very unadventurous person. I take the same walk every day and I eat in the same restaurants, and often eat exactly the same things in the same restaurants. I don’t adventure much except when I’m in the studio, and then I only want to adventure. I cannot bear doing something again, or thinking that I’m doing something again. Of course, like anybody I repeat myself endlessly, but I don’t know that I’m doing it, usually. [Laughs.] So when I’m in the studio what I really want to do is to find myself somewhere that I don’t recognize, and then try to see what’s there and what I can do and how I can get back, and whether I can successfully turn it into a useful experience of some kind. And I guess all of that is what is called experimental music, really.

I think of it as cowboys and farmers. Like in “Oklahoma!": “Oh, the farmer and the cowman should be friends.” So I think of cowboys as people who go out and look for new territory; prospectors, perhaps that’s the word I should use. And they use the territory for a little bit and then they move on to find new ones. Then there are other people, who have an equally important role to play — who for the sake of this metaphor are called farmers — who exploit the territory and look after it and nurture it and get slightly better results each year, and so on. So that’s another kind of temperament: craftsmanlike. I’m not really of that temperament. I like the thrill of putting two things together that nobody ever thought of putting together before. Or like a chef who uses some daring new combination of ingredients, black currants and sausages or something. That’s my thrill.

Is that in any way a reaction to your work as a producer, working with other people in a studio, where you might have to do the same thing over and over again, trying to get to a very specific result?

I don’t do that kind of producing. I don’t sit in the studio watching every overdub. I’m just not interested. I’m no good at that, actually. That’s a different kind of skill. What I do is, I walk in every so often and I listen and I say, “That piece fails in the middle. This piece is very exciting but it’s hasn’t realized its potential. This only has one good idea, and it’s that little flick in the drums at this point, and we should just start a new piece from that.” I tend to not talk on the detail level so much, but just have the benefit of not having been there during the nuts and bolts of the process. So I can walk in without any sentimentality and say, “I don’t think the guitar is working,” even though the guitar took two and a half weeks to record.

On the album, a lot of the lyrics — for lack of a better word there — kind of sound like artistic manifestos: “Pour it out in new ways,” “Invent new colors that fly,” that sort of thing. Was that the intention, instructions or a pep talk for artists? “Do something new”?

That’s a very good idea but it wasn’t the intention. No, I think that’s just in the nature of Rick’s poems. Something I’ve realized lately, to my shock, actually, is that I am an optimist, in that I think humans are really almost infinitely capable of self-change and self-modification, and that we really can build the future that we want if we’re smart about it.

I used to be much more pessimistic than I am in the way that most of us are quite pessimistic, civilizationally, don’t you think? Most people think, “Things are getting really bad, and it’s getting worse, and things are never going to be as good as they were X years ago.” So lately I’ve started to think that that is a bad civilizational habit that we’ve inherited. And it goes back a long way, right back to the Greeks. There were people saying exactly the same thing: things can only get worse, it’s going to get really bad, the whole place is falling apart. So I’ve stopped believing that, and I’ve started to think, “No, actually, the whole place is not falling apart. The whole place is consolidating, and getting better and better.”

I’ve been particularly influenced in this by few friends, Stewart Brand and Danny Hillis, both from the Long Now Foundation. Also by a couple British writers: Matt Ridley, who wrote a book called “The Rational Optimist,” half of which I think is a brilliant book, the other half I don’t quite agree with. [Laughs.] Matt’s point is that cultures have always been pessimistic because it’s very easy to extrapolate the bad news, as Thomas Malthus did, saying, “Oh look, population is rising exponentially but agricultural production isn’t increasing exponentially.” So, crisis looming, as Malthus thought. But what Malthus didn’t see was that there were going to be a series of agricultural revolutions. And of course he couldn’t see that; those were creative breakthroughs that nobody was in a position to anticipate. So the reason we have this cultural pessimism is because we tend to extend these trends into the future and think, “Oh dear, that looks bad.” But we don’t offset them with the possibility of the incredible creative power that the collective mind that we’re becoming has.

Matt Ridley used this term “collective mind,” and in fact that’s what we’re becoming bit by bit. We’re all becoming increasingly helpless as individuals. You and I — well, unless you’re quite a different man than I imagine you are — you and I would be dead within days if we had to fend entirely for ourselves. We’re part of this huge, rich network of human intelligence that keeps us all alive. In fact Matt Ridley has a beautiful illustration of this at the beginning of his book: he has a stone-age hand axe and a computer mouse. The point he makes is very simply that the hand axe was made by one person, but the computer mouse was made by millions of people. It’s impossible to know how many people were involved in the making of it, because the oil that made the plastic had to be discovered and mined and refined, and then turned into plastic, and then that had to be molded and shaped; somebody had to invent the computers, and so on. Every single object we use — this phone I’m holding now — is the result of this huge collective intelligence that we’re evolving.

A English writer called David Deutsch, he’s a physicist, has a new book called “The Beginning of Infinity,” and he has written chapter called “Optimism,” and it is so completely thrilling for me. I keep going back and reading it again, because suddenly I think, “Oh my gosh, the human race could not only save itself and save the planet, but really there’s no limit to what we can do.”

Anyway, all of this is a long diversion in answer to your question about were we writing a manifesto. I think Rick, like me, is an optimist. He has a kind view of humans. He thinks that we’re not doing a bad job, and we could do a better one, and we will do a better one. And so I think that that sort of suffuses what both of us does. There’s a sort of optimism in what we’re doing. Christ, that was the longest and most roundabout answer to your question, I’m sorry.

No, you just gave me about three books to read, so I appreciate it!

The collective hive mind idea, is that what you’re thinking about when you mention Spotify, and the fact that digital music lets us churn through decades and decades of music like we never have before?

Yes. The only problem with phrase “the hive mind” is that it gives you the impression of interchangeable units, of cells that are really quite irrelevant to each other, that don’t matter. But in fact what humans are doing is really a very different sort of experiment. This collective mind is actually filled with specialists, people who increasingly are becoming good at unique things, in the sense that you’re a specialist writer, I’m a specialist musician. Probably nobody’s going to replace me exactly. I don’t mean I’m irreplaceable. [Laughs.] But nobody else is going to do exactly what I do and nobody else is going to do exactly what you do. So it’s not really a hive in the sense of being filled with Orwellian drones. It’s a different kind of hive. It’s a hive full of singular intelligences.

I read something very interesting recently, which is that in last 40,000 years the human brain has deceased in size by about 10 percent. I think that’s because we’re all becoming better specialists, and we don’t need to be generalists in the same way. You don’t have to know how to find meat or to cook bread or to plant this or to chop that. You don’t have to know that because you know other people who know how to do it. What you have to know is what you do, and you have to be good at that. So I think we’re actually turning into a different kind of creature, and I rather like the creatures we are becoming.

❧

Ancient futurism: Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, Thurston Moore, Al Green, Lou Reed, Questlove, M.I.A.

Elvis Zeppelin

2011-04-23T11:21:00.001-04:00

Some ‘Un Chien Andalou’ posters

2011-04-19T23:28:00.005-04:00

Charles Thompson ‘Doolittle’ interview, 1989

2011-04-19T23:25:00.003-04:00

Conducted by Roy Trakin, and available on Rock’s Backpages.

Today the pond, tomorrow the world!

2011-04-17T12:01:00.001-04:00

Questlove on Clyde Stubblefield

2011-03-29T08:42:00.021-04:00

I interviewed Clyde Stubblefield, who was one of James Brown’s key drummers from 1965 to 1971. He played on “Cold Sweat,” which needs no introduction, and “Funky Drummer,” perhaps the most sampled beat ever.

It was an honor to talk to Clyde. It was also an honor to talk to Ahmir Thompson, a.k.a. Questlove of the Roots. We all know how great a drummer Ahmir is, and most probably also know that he’s a scholar and a very thoughtful guy about music. But I was still surprised by how insightful and eloquent he could be just speaking off the top of his head. Perhaps I shouldn’t have been. But his interview was too good to leave at two short quotes.

So here’s our full conversation, minus some shop talk at the end when he referred me to Alan Leeds, who was Brown’s tour director at the time and is a primary historian on all things James Brown. (With Quest’s help I did reach Alan, who was awesome. He has one of the more incredible behind-the-scenes careers in music: after Brown, he worked as the tour manager for Funkadelic, then for Prince for most of the 1980s, and later for D’Angelo.)

One thing that did surprise me about Quest, though, was that he talked a little like Mr. Micawber.❧

Ahmir: In short, there have been faster, and there have been stronger, but Clyde Stubblefield has a marksman’s left hand unlike any drummer in the 20th century. The thing that defines him, that sets him apart from other drummers, are his grace notes, which are sort of like the condiments of what spices up the main focus. The main focus of music is always the 2 and the 4, especially with the snare drum. And what lets you build your personality is how you dance around that 2 and the 4. The technical level of dynamics of his left hand, his ability to flam a 32nd note very silently, but a 16th note very loud and commanding. It takes a very, very specific marksman, in their Navy SEAL precision, to execute it perfectly. In short, it is he who defined funk music, more than anything.

Me: Was Clyde James Brown’s best drummer of all?, Better than Jabo, Bernard Purdie, etc.?

I’ve learned that to use good and bad, or to use best and worst, is not apropos. I believe that Clyde was the most effective drummer that James Brown has ever utilized. Jabo was his most powerful drummer, but Clyde was the most effective.

James Brown used all his musicians as percussion players; it’s just that the other nine musicians were melodic players. They basically played a loop. Very rarely would a James Brown song go to linear thoughts, where you didn’t know what was coming next. It’s a four-bar loop every time, very disciplined, very tight. Clyde’s whole gift is that he was able to incorporate everyone’s role in it. The main kick and main snare are kind of like the traffic cop, but the hi-hat could emulate what the guitar was doing. His snare work really emulated Jimmy Nolen, and a lot of their rhythms were very precise 16th and 32nd notes.

I felt as though Clyde was the most effective in completing the puzzle. His grace notes, his softest notes, defined a generation. It’s like the kind of ketchup you use, the things that surround the burger, as opposed to the burger itself.

Did Clyde have more influence as a drummer, on actual James Brown records, or as a sample?

More influence as a sample, hands down. Clyde’s influence is more unique than his actual work for James Brown.

It’s kind of weird, but I think his work with James Brown is too potent. As a DJ, I rarely play “Funky Drummer.” I rarely play “Soul Power.” But probably the record of choice, that has just enough sugar for the medicine to go down for most DJ’s, is the live version of “Give It Up or Turnit A Loose.” That’s a b-boy anthem, for most dancers. That song right there can be handled in a single dosage in a club. It’s like a jalapeño: you don’t want to just eat up the whole jalapeño, you want to cut it up and use it to spice your foods. And no, I won’t just use food metaphors here!

What about other popular samples, like the “Amen break”?

“Amen” and “Apache” were also very influential, and they had an influence in Europe, on jungle, drum ’n’ bass. But for the true experts of drum ’n’ bass, the “Soul Pride” break is hands down the go-to break. And that has really inspired a movement of great dance music: drum ’n’ bass, not to mention Baltimore house music. Baltimore house is still a subgenre; it might not be the next big thing that people predicted three or four years ago. But it’s still a phenomenon.

“Funky Drummer” has done miracles for hip-hop. It’s the traffic cop. The greatest hip-hop album of all time, “It Take a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back” by Public Enemy — it’s all over that record. And that was intimidating to me. On Tuesday we’re doing “Fight the Power” with me and Clyde on drums, and Chuck D. That song is basically “Soul Pride” on steroids.

Does that mean that Clyde’s whole influence through the “Funky Drummer” sample distorts who he was as a musician? Since people weren’t really hearing the whole picture of who he was, just hearing a five-second break?

He’s like the ghost in the machine. When you talk about the most perfect beat, it’s not even that “Funky Drummer” wins in a technical aspect. But in an artistic aspect, it’s hands down the most perfect beat you can loop — it’s very lyrical, very melodic, very rhythmic. It’s perfect. It’s magical. Everyone I know as a producer, that’s gotten their start hip-hop production, they all have their story about the first time they heard “Funky Drummer.”

When I first heard “Funky Drummer,” I had James Brown’s “In the Jungle Groove” album. I gave it to my father as a Christmas gift. I knew he liked James Brown. I had that album for like four months. I don’t know why or how we let it sit for so long without investigating it. Maybe it’s because “Funky Drummer” was the only single during James Brown’s hit period, of roughly 1965 to 1975, when he had something like 70 top 10 hits, it was the only single that never reached the top 10.* Ironically, it was also one of Clyde’s last sessions with the James Brown Orchestra before Bootsy and his team came in.**

On Tuesday we are getting him to sit in with us. But any time I’ve seen Clyde footage of him playing somewhere, I’ve always been chagrined they have him on a new drum set that’s horribly tuned, so it sounds nothing like Clyde from the 1960s. So this time I am personally bringing out my 40-year-old Yamaha kit for him.

* Not quite, but you get the idea. Between 1965 and 1975, James Brown had 65 songs in the R&B top 40, and 44 of them reached the top 10. (“Funky Drummer” reached No. 20.) On the pop charts for the same period, Brown had 37 top 40 hits, 6 in the top 10.

** In March 1970, most of Brown’s band mutinied, demanding better treatment and pay. Brown fired them and put together an almost entirely new group, including the young Bootsy and Catfish Collins; that new band became known as the JB’s.

Clyde’s history is a little confusing at this point. According to Alan Leeds, Clyde was not present during the 1970 mutiny; he had left in December 1969, and he returned in June 1970 for a stay of about six months. (Note that Clyde played on “Get Up, Get Into It and Stay Involved,” recorded in November 1970.) Leeds says that Clyde next left again in late 1970: the band was going to Africa and Clyde had a problem with his paperwork. He returned for a short period in late 1971, and then left for good.

Who I buried in 2010

2010-12-28T11:41:00.003-05:00

It will also always be sad to me that on Christmas day last year I excused myself from my family dinner to write Vic Chesnutt’s obituary.

‘Mean Old Jews Who Crucify My Lord’

2010-12-23T13:20:00.003-05:00

A holiday classic, by Sister Albertha Harris Lewis.

Label image from TheHoundBlog.

Best of 2010

2010-12-22T15:33:00.000-05:00

My top 20:

1. Sufjan Stevens, The Age of Adz
2. Laura Marling, I Speak Because I Can
3. Sleigh Bells, Treats
4. Sharon Van Etten, Epic
5. Teenage Fanclub, Shadows
6. Best Coast, Crazy for You
7. Kanye West, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
8. Sade, Soldier of Love
9. Beach House, Teen Dream
10. Man Forever, s/t
11. Marc Ribot, Silent Movies
12. Mumford & Sons, Sigh No More
13. Arcade Fire, The Suburbs
14. Janelle Monáe, The ArchAndroid
15. The Roots, How I Got Over
16. She & Him, Volume Two
17. Los Lobos, Tin Can Trust
18. Jenny Wilson, Hardships!
19. Mountain Man, Made the Harbor
20. AfroCubism, s/t

‘Vampires Ripped My Flesh’

2010-11-07T11:45:00.001-05:00

By Norman Saunders.

Huh?

2010-10-31T14:23:00.002-04:00

Four-word reviews from CMJ 2010

2010-10-25T17:00:00.001-04:00

Marnie Stern: Mix buries guitar. Crime!
Dent May: Despite shtick, lyrical songcraft.
DOM: Garage-rock as vidgame.
Baths: Falsetto humanizes wobbly chilltronica.
The Loom: Appalachian garment, angst-y stitching.
Lucius: Luscious, luminous, lilting lullabies.
Wild Nothing: Name is half untrue.
Yo La Tengo: Indie endpoint? Irrelevant: wonderful.
The swag (not a band): Improved bag, dwindling stuffing.
Woven Bones: Fun/evil feedback vortex.
Times New Viking: Faster, chantier, unison-er, better.
Braids: Patterns enthrall, tinkering offputs.
David Vandervelde: Leon-ine, hirsute space blooze.
Phantom Band: Perfect indie choogle + melodica(s).
Robert Lester Folsom: Belated debut; kinda “Margaritaville.”
Homeboy Sandman: “Ohhh, freestyle o’ mine.”
Atomic Tom: Equipped, competent; heard before.
Shilpa Ray: Sounded fearsome, looked weary.
Prince Rama: Postpunk tribalism; Ari echoes.
Shrag: More Ari. (Or Headcoatees?)
Martina Topley-Bird: Right rasp, soul, sex.
The Body: Cranial drill volume. Whaaat?
Oberhofer: Designated marathonners, surfin’ Blood.
No Joy: Haze — feedback or hair?
La Sera: Simplicity, but not grace.
Cloud Nothings: Basement melody liberated, bashingly.
Viva l’American Death Ray Music: Greasepaint roar, Fall scrape.
Lower Dens: Slow cloud, affectless cry.
Cough: “Play slow, die ignorant”?!
Lia Ices: (Kate + Joanna) / (Arwen − Stevie)
Kanye West: Can he say no?

How to read Pitchfork’s Corin Tucker review

2010-10-08T14:37:00.022-04:00

Earlier this year, my colleague Jon Caramanica suggested that Pitchfork had entered its establishment phase: no longer a scrappy upstart with an outsider perspective, it now effectively defines tastes for its young demographic, and it knows that. By implication, Pitchfork now has a reputation to protect.

The same thing happened to Rolling Stone at some point — some people trace it to around the time it moved to New York in 1977, some a little later — when it became clear that it was no longer a “countercultural” publication, and it began to prop up a chosen pantheon by putting the same people on the cover again and again, the magazine reinforcing the stars and the stars reinforcing the magazine. That leads to a sort of eternal status quo, an attitude that extends to its famously cautious review section, where almost everything gets 3.5 stars and “legends” amazingly never make a bad album. The classic joke here is Bob Dylan, who gets 5 stars for a good album and 4 stars for a bad one.

Perhaps one sign of the aging of Pitchfork is that it has begun to coddle its heroes. It’s been around for 15 years now, and has had wide influence for 10, which means that right about now it is coming around to the sacred cows of the mid to late ’90s as they attempt their comebacks and await/enter/deny middle age. These are the figures who define the Pitchfork sensibility, and it’s only natural that the publication would protect them.

Today Pitchfork posted a review of “1,000 Years,” the first solo album by Corin Tucker of Sleater-Kinney. It got a 6.5, the Pitchfork equivalent of Rolling Stone’s 3.5 stars, and the piece is a textbook example of how to write a negative review in the nicest, most tentative and most indirect way possible, with all kinds of escape clauses to allow the writer to feel that she wrote a negative piece and the publication to feel that it still published a positive one. (I’m leaving out the byline; my problem is with the writing, not the writer, whom I don’t know at all.)

On a quick read it’s full of flattery, but looking closer the flattery is mostly about Sleater-Kinney, and the negative judgment of the album is dispatched as quickly as possible low in the piece. The blow of that negativity is softened by lots of foreshadowing, a cushion of nostalgia for Sleater-Kinney and friendly, almost sycophantic gestures toward Tucker. What this means is that 6.5 out of 10 was the lowest score Pitchfork was willing to give Tucker, even if she may have deserved less (I haven't heard the album so I have no opinion). After all, Tucker’s a star; she can do no wrong.

❧

So here’s what goes on in the review, which I present line-by-line and complete:

Sleater-Kinney went on indefinite hiatus in 2006. Since then, drummer Janet Weiss released albums with Quasi and Stephen Malkmus' Jicks, while guitarist Carrie Brownstein embarked on a comedy career with Fred Armisen and became a music blogger for NPR. (The two women also recently announced a new project together, Wild Flag, alongside Mary Timony.) But Corin Tucker has been strangely quiet-- which is ironic given that she was the shrieking-banshee warbler of the group. Out of the spotlight, Tucker has spent the last four years attending to her family in Portland, Oregon-- she has two children with filmmaker Lance Bangs-- and, more recently, working on her own songs around her kids' school and playgroup schedules with a new eponymous band that includes former Unwound drummer Sara Lund and guitarist Seth Lorinczi of the Golden Bears.

Long, throat-clearing news lede; affirmation of Tucker's elite status and establishment of high expectations.

These new tracks, which now comprise 1,000 Years, are recognizably Tucker's, though they derive their intensity not from volatile guitars, driving rhythms, or brash vocal melodies, but from their surprisingly muted, slow-burning intimacy.

Foreshadowing of disappointment and failure, hedged by evocation of a lost golden age: No matter what Tucker comes up with, it couldn't possibly compare to the “volatile,” “driving,” “brash” riches back in those good old days.

So be forewarned, though: fans jonesing for a Sleater-Kinney fix will be disappointed.

Shifting of critical burden to “fans” whose “jonesing” functions as an arbitrary threshold giving critic and publication plausible deniability: “Hey, it’s the fans who have those expectations, not us.”

Instead of bursting into the expected shrieking choruses, these songs smolder. Melodies meander, encouraging patience in their listeners. Tucker uses her bold caterwaul sparingly, which is partially a shame since we are so starved for it, but also gives great weight to the few moments when she finally unfurls the full force of her yelp (as on "Riley", one of the few tracks that recalls Tucker's more incendiary Sleater-Kinney past).

Imagistic pseudo-poetics disguised as deconstruction; more nostalgia for Sleater-Kinney's old glory (“bold caterwaul”), which reinforces the prejudicial high bar; suggestion that Tucker is actually capable of providing that S-K “fix” that “fans” have been “jonesing for” — and thus if she doesn't, her endeavor is a failure.

Yet these songs have a quiet power of their own, and many surprise listeners by relying on gently finger-picked guitar lines or dreamy, sparse piano arrangements (as on the originally-made-for-Twilight: New Moon track "Miles Away" or the opening of the life-during-recession tale "Thrift Store Coats"). Without Weiss' fierce fills and Brownstein's fiery riffage, Tucker's tunes sound tame and downcast.

More critical peacocking and S-K remembrance; catalog of mild praise for Tucker, and foreshadowing that “without Weiss' fierce fills and Brownstein’s fiery riffage,” she ain’t shit.

Sometimes that restraint is lovely, as on "Half a World Away", a spare, staccato track about the difficulty of being separated from Bangs while he's traveling for work. That song is a bit of a fake-out for S-K fans, as it's built on a hiccupping vocal melody that recalls One Beat's "Combat Rock" in its verses, but fails to explode into a hollered chorus, which only makes its lyrical longing more palpable.

Yet more irrelevant, prejudicial "my favorite Sleater-Kinney moment" commentary, disguised as the faintest compliment for Tucker's album that the writer can muster.

But sometimes that restraint disappoints,

Here comes the dis

as on the wilting, acoustic "Dragon",

“Wilting” is bad

whose cutesy string pizzicatos

“Cutesy” is bad

only add to its overworked

“Overworked” is bad.

chamber-pop ambiance.

“Chamber-pop” in this context is a dis, implying a hard rocker who has gone soft.

The dis here is a quick barrage of specific negative judgments like one-two punches, which in terms of argument obliterate the wishy-washy praise that preceded it. These are the only concrete judgments in the entire review. But to protect the critic and the publication from the impression that they have bashed Tucker, whom they obviously love to pieces, those criticisms are immediately softened, and the argument that forms the basis of the piece — that Tucker's solo work does not compare to Sleater-Kinney — is withdrawn:

This album's strengths-- its intimacy, its containment, its subtlety-- are not the qualities that made Sleater-Kinney great, but it would be ungenerous to dismiss this because it's not as thrilling, confrontational, or exuberant.

“To be sure...”

Plus, 1,000 Years is clearly a personal collection-- it's hard to not hear songs like the aforementioned "Half a World Away" or the loneliness-tinged "It's Always Summer", with its lines about hotel bars and counting the days, as autobiographical tales of a marriage that is often plagued by work-related distance and separation.

“I mean, we still like you, Corin.”

And the comparably subdued nature of the album's music complements such lyrical confidences.

“And we think you are still capable of good stuff.”

So, if you are looking for catharsis via Sleater-Kinney, pull out your copy of Dig Me Out or The Woods,

“...which we gave a 9.0.”

but if you are interested in where Corin Tucker is now, 1,000 Years provides a thoughtful, subtle snapshot.

Polite dismissal, avoidance of critical summation, careful calculation not to burn bridges, and passing of buck to "you" fans, who will be disappointed by this thing that is not a Sleater-Kinney album, but is done by someone we still like a lot. World, meet Corin Tucker, solo artist.

Haunted ATP

2010-09-13T23:15:00.002-04:00

Cool ‘Boardwalk Empire’ posters

2010-09-10T05:00:00.000-04:00

I was stopped in my tracks at Grand Central Station the other day by these posters for Martin Scorsese’s new TV thing, “Boardwalk Empire.” These are the only ones I was able to easily track down online, but there were at least four or five other designs, including this great “Vaudeville” image that seemed to have stunned another commuter.

Carpets of Kutsher’s (part 2)

2010-09-08T11:45:00.000-04:00

Carpets of Kutsher’s (part 1)

2010-09-08T00:08:00.003-04:00

Effed Up @ ATP

2010-09-06T22:27:00.003-04:00

Here's a video of the great Fucked Up performing yesterday at All Tomorrow's Parties/New York. Just a random 2 minutes 30 seconds of Pink Eyes and crew (and fans) doing their thing -- this video could have been snapped from any 2 minutes 30 seconds of the set and it would have been equally as amazing.

More photos and video from ATP coming soon. In the meantime:

To be a reptilicus, and to chomp a babe

2010-09-06T05:00:00.001-04:00

Weird Philippine posters: 1980s

2010-09-04T05:00:00.001-04:00

’Eto na naman si Asiong Aksaya! (1980):

Agent 00 (1981):

For Y'ur Height Only (1981):

Da Best in da West (1984):

Weird Philippine posters: 1970s

2010-09-03T05:00:00.002-04:00

Bakekang (1978):

Chopsuey Met Big Time Papa (1978):

Weird Philippine posters: 1960s (Part 3)

2010-09-02T05:00:00.003-04:00

Hamon Sa Kampeon (1965):

Batang Iwahig (1966):

Bandana (1968):

Weird Philippine posters: 1960s (Part 2)

2010-09-01T05:00:00.001-04:00

Ako'y Iyong-Iyo (1963):

Ang Sangano at Colegiala (1963):

Ang Lihim Ni Gagamba (1964):

Captain Barbell Kontra Captain Bakal (1965):

Weird Philippine posters: 1960s (Part 1)

2010-08-31T05:00:00.005-04:00

Dayukdok (1961):

El Filibusterismo (1962):

Diegong Tabak (1962):

Bakas ng Gagamba (1962):

Weird Philippine posters: 1950s

2010-08-30T05:00:00.000-04:00

Diego Silang (1951):

Dyesebel (1953):

Bituing Marikit (1957):

Monster-about-to-chomp-babe poster of the day: ‘Malibu Shark Attack’ (2009)

2010-08-28T05:00:00.000-04:00

Bad Hollywood poster of the day: 'Air Bud'

2010-08-27T05:00:00.000-04:00

With apologies to Jesse.

‘Fong Chuen Gong Yu’ (2010)

2010-08-26T05:00:00.001-04:00

A.K.A. Curse of the Deserted.

To be a bat, and to chomp a babe

2010-08-25T05:00:00.000-04:00

Neat posters from ‘Inception’

2010-08-24T05:00:00.000-04:00

Click for full size.

‘The Man Who Reclaimed His Head’ (1934)

2010-08-23T05:00:00.001-04:00

‘Buried’

2010-08-22T05:00:00.001-04:00

Czech ‘Barbarella’ poster

2010-08-20T22:10:00.003-04:00

By Kája Saudek:

(Via.)

Statistics

2010-08-19T22:11:00.000-04:00

(Via.)

Bad Hollywood poster of the day: ‘Sex and the City 2’

2010-08-11T05:00:00.000-04:00

To be a deadly spawn, and to chomp a babe

2010-08-10T05:00:00.000-04:00

Bad Hollywood poster of the day: ‘Space Jam’

2010-08-07T05:00:00.000-04:00

To be a piranha in 3-D, and to chomp a babe

2010-08-06T05:00:00.003-04:00

Bad Hollywood poster of the day: ‘Killers’

2010-08-05T05:00:00.000-04:00

Bad Hollywood poster of the day: ‘Little Fockers’

2010-08-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

(Via Ain’t It Cool News.)

‘The censors must be pleased’

2010-08-03T07:55:00.001-04:00

Happy Fourth of July

2010-07-04T05:00:00.000-04:00

From Piper Laurie!

‘Chapter Eight: Tides of Trickery’

2010-06-21T18:23:00.002-04:00

(Via.)

Beware the Mothman!

2010-06-19T18:08:00.001-04:00

168 words about 42 bands at Bonnaroo

2010-06-17T00:01:00.009-04:00

Here are all the four-word reviews I wrote at the Bonnaroo festival, including a few that didn’t make it onto ArtsBeat. Many of these shows — but not all — have been archived by NPR.

Once again I acknowledge the inspiration of Coolfer Glenn (now Billboard Glenn). But of course nobody’s making any claims about originality here; it’s just fun to work in miniature.

The sets I enjoyed the most are in bold.

Non-Commissioned Officers: Shouty kickoff, afternoon steam.
The XX: Cold, beautiful, boring mask.
Manchester Orchestra: Scale, grandeur, pathos. Songs?
Fanfarlo: Proof ArcFire’s more’n fiddles.
Entrance Band/Baroness: If hippies hate Slayer, is heavy’s success failure?
Neon Indian: Didn’t really chill me.
Blitzen Trapper: No longer simply derivative.
Needtobreathe: Pushing Southern groove buttons.
Calexico: Mariachi horns = soothing refreshment.
Jamey Johnson: Deadpanned, rehabbed soothsayer. Understood?
Regina Spektor: Charms multitudes like friends.
Zac Brown Band: Skynyrd + Dave + Daniels + “Margaritaville”?
John Fogerty: Indelible songbook; confusing riffage.
Kris Kristofferson: Stark, strong, wise, silly.
Weezer: Caustic, candied pop. Antijam.
Thievery Corporation: Globalist blockrockers. What chillwave?
Norah Jones: Soundbleed obscures her grace.
Lissie: Her Gaga tender, raw.
Mexican Institute of Sound: Ambassadorship served hot, booming.
Clutch: OCD riffing, insistent barking.
Deadmau5: Appropriately cartoonish hau5. Ka-pow!
Stevie Wonder: True jamming, humanism. Magnificent.
The National: Ennui too complex here?
Tori Amos: Rhapsodic psychocabaret: unscary entertainment.
Nitty Gritty Dirt Band: Conservative, but right on.
Les Claypool: Worst dancers (so far).
Kings of Leon: A carnal sorta homecoming.
Black Keys: Trying open-mindedness. Trying.
Daryl Hall & Chromeo: Jukebox dancealong: Bonnaroo gold.
The Flaming Lips: Dull side ofthe ’Roo.
Galactic: Aggressive, phattish Nawlins funk.
Conan O’Brien: Smaller stage, bigger love.
Umphrey’s McGee: Oh, so thaaat’s “jamming.”
Local Natives: The mustaches speak louder.
Nneka: Drowned by Bud logos.
She & Him: Muggy vibes’ perfect breeze.
Lucero: Bruce > Gaslight > Marah > Lucero.
Ween: Strangely flaccid. What’s wrong?
Martin Sexton: Quite lovely, if tame.
Bomba Estéreo: 2010’s Bonde (that’s good).
Phoenix: Non-DMBers’ effervescent closure.

Whoa: New Vaselines album

2010-06-10T14:51:00.003-04:00

Sub Pop announces:

Seattle, WA – The Vaselines will release their second record, Sex With An X (CD/LP), on Sub Pop Records September 14th, 2010. This is the band’s first album in 20 years and will coincide with a 10-stop tour through the UK ending in their hometown of Glasgow, Scotland (dates below). For your listening pleasure, the band is offering a free download of "I Hate The 80's", the debut single off the new record at http://www.thevaselines.co.uk. Now you can find out for yourself why this band has long been celebrated by musicians and music enthusiasts across genres and across the globe, including super-fan Kurt Cobain.

For band photos, bio and press links please visit: www.subpop.com/artists/the_vaselines

About Sex With An X
Recorded outside Manchester at the Analogue Catalogue studio in Mossley with Julie McLarnon engineering and produced by Jamie Watson who produced that first album Dum Dum, Sex With An X was recorded the old-fashioned way: twelve songs in thirteen days (plus two b-sides). The Vaselines ca. 2010 is Eugene and Frances with guest musicians Stevie Jackson and Bob Kildea from Belle & Sebastian on guitar and bass, and Michael McGaughrin from the 1990s on drums. It may have taken The Vaselines 20 years to get round to making this baby, but it was worth the wait—bringing their solo careers to a climax. The irony has not been lost. Who says indie music can't be fun? No hand-wringing on these tracks—just good clean smut with a twist of bitter.

V.I.P. ticketing on Soundcheck

2010-05-27T23:13:00.006-04:00

I was honored to talk about V.I.P. ticketing today on Soundcheck, where I uttered an unintentional howler: artists, I said, are “horrified and jealous” by the prices scalpers get for their tickets. John Schaefer didn’t miss a beat on that one.

Here’s the show, in a nifty embed.

And here is my story from the other day on the same topic.

Talking ‘Exile’ on WFUV

2010-05-25T08:34:00.004-04:00

The good people at WFUV asked me back to chat about the reissue of Exile on Main St. Listen here, subscribe here.

I’ll be back there next week to review the new Teenage Fanclub.

Golden girls

2010-05-20T14:46:00.003-04:00

Macy Gray and Betty White backstage at Leno, via The ’FUVblog.

Somebody at the AP is too big of a Snoop Dogg fan

2010-05-20T13:30:00.002-04:00

An Associated Press report in the Sports Briefing column on Wednesday about a guilty plea to a felony drug dealing charge by Emanuel Mayben, a former Binghamton University men’s basketball player, misstated the given name of the team’s coach, who was suspended last season. He is Kevin Broadus, not Calvin. (Go to Article)

Kevin Broadus ≠ Calvin Broadus

Right on, anti-social media bros

2010-05-20T12:55:00.003-04:00

(Photo via NYT. Turns out, though, that these bros dislike more than just when their third-grade classmates bug them to be friends again.)

Press release of the day: Rhino Remembers Dio

2010-05-17T20:51:00.009-04:00

Quite touching, actually:

R.I.P. Ronnie James Dio
The Rhino family is deeply saddened to hear about the passing of Ronnie James Dio. As a member of Elf, Rainbow, Black Sabbath, Dio, and Heaven & Hell, Ronnie was truly a pioneer in rock ’n’ roll, with one of the most powerful voices in the history of music.

Ronnie had a nearly 50-year relationship with the Warner Music Group family, from one of his first singles on Atlantic in 1962 to his platinum albums with Black Sabbath and Dio on Warner Bros. Records up to his final release with Heaven & Hell last year on Rhino.

Not only was Ronnie a true legend in rock ’n’ roll, but he was also a sincere, gracious man that we were proud to call a friend. One of our favorite memories from Ronnie’s many visits to the Rhino offices was the time he personally went from office to office to thank people individually for all the hard work they had been doing on his behalf — a truly sincere gesture that demonstrates what a generous, caring person he was. Today we take the time to celebrate his life and music.

Ronnie, your Rhino family is raising our horns up for you today. We know that is the way you would have wanted it.

My Dio obit here.

Extry, extry! Get the latest Hustler!

2010-05-14T16:35:00.005-04:00

They’re juicy and ripe and oh so sweet, those Hustlers. Great if you’ve got an oral obsession!

Hustler brand Bartlett pears, that is, packed and supped by the Sacramento River Association in Courtland, California. Why, what did you think I meant?

That and many other vintage fruit-crate labels are available for your enjoyment — with reproductions for sale — at Vintagraph. There are also some racist and racy ones out there too, in addition to all kinds of bizarre and delicious crates like these:

Sweetback: the ‘hood opera’ version

2010-05-12T05:00:00.002-04:00

For a limited (?) time, the French TV network Arte is running a complete web video of Melvin Van Peebles’s musical theater/‘hood opera’ version of his classic 1971 film “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song,” as done earlier this year at the Sons d’Hiver Festival in Paris.

Back in January I interviewed the endlessly fascinating Mr. Van Peebles as he prepared a few workshop performances of the piece at BRIC Studio in Brooklyn. Fans of the film will find the plot alterations and additions interesting; everybody else will just dig the baadasssssness of it.

Arte has helpfully tagged a few highlights in the video, like Beatle’s “public relations business” spiel (47:00), a new speech and song about that unattainable “sweet old utopian American apple pie” (37:30), and, for the pervs out there, the bordello sex party (27:50) and the fucking contest (68:00). At the end, maestro Melvin grooves onstage and addresses his crowd en français.

A big addendum to the “Fame ’90” 90

2010-05-11T12:26:00.011-04:00

Can’t believe I missed this one before. But Sam McPheeters’ fascinating Vice interview with Glenn Danzig prompted me to add this to my running tally:

Danzig, “Mother ’93” (Buscuitsploitation)

Also, this is a less exciting one, but:

Mudhoney, “Fuzz Gun 2001” (a reference to, if not really a version of, the dated-upon-arrival “Fuzz Gun ’91”)

‘New York, New York, New York, New York’

2010-04-26T07:41:00.004-04:00

My dear friend Hiro Ito has a brilliant photo slideshow on the New York Times’ Lens blog today, called “New York, New York, New York, New York.”

It’s a series of 17 grids, drawn from the gigantic archive of black-and-white street photography — like tens of thousands of images — that Hiro has built up over the years. (He takes other kinds of pictures, too, including arts performances for the Times.)

Here’s one image that is part of slide #10 (I am flattered to report that yours truly makes a cameo in that slide as well):

You can see another Times slideshow of Hiro’s work here, and read an interview with him here.

Dirty Jersey

2010-04-13T08:18:00.001-04:00

(Via, via.)

Disco Soccer 3

2010-04-09T05:00:00.001-04:00

Disco Soccer 2

2010-04-08T11:08:00.002-04:00

Disco Soccer 1

2010-04-07T08:24:00.001-04:00

The sad origins of ‘alternative rock’

2010-04-02T21:48:00.003-04:00

Note the first cited example by the Oxford English Dictionary. Paging Jesse Sheidlower: somebody’s gotta right this wrong, because we built this city on far, far better things.

alternative rock n. orig. U.S. rock music characterized by an unorthodox or uncommercialized style or approach, esp. as distributed by an independent record label.

[1981 Washington Post C11/3 Jefferson Starship is an alternative rock group. That is, they give an audience a taster's choice of stancesthe psychedelic origins, the sci-fi middle ground and the metallic dead end.] 1986 Los Angeles Times 19 Jan. (Calendar) 74 Listeners..loyally supported the Long Beach-based station's eclectic, *alternative-rock play list. 2000 C. H. HANSEN & R. D. HANSEN in D. Zillmann et al. Media Entertainm. x. 181 They grouped the videos into eight types of music (rap, soul, country, heavy metal, pop, classic rock, alternative rock, and other).

VHS youth: ‘Screwballs’ (1983)

2010-04-01T05:00:00.000-04:00

Happy Stop Arthritis Day (?)

2010-03-30T05:00:00.001-04:00

(Via the fantastic If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger, There’d Be a Whole Lot of Dead Copycats.)

Times Square, 1978

2010-03-29T05:00:00.000-04:00

(Via Lost City. Click through for full size.)

‘Japan: The Strange Country’

2010-03-26T17:09:00.001-04:00

(Via Cool Infographics.)

‘Kick Ass’ propaganda

2010-03-24T05:00:00.001-04:00

envenom, v.

2010-03-23T20:34:00.003-04:00

1. trans. To venom (a person, an animal); to poison by contact, bite, inoculation, etc. Also absol.

c1300 K. Alis. 5611 Addres, guiures [printed quinres], and dragouns Wolden this folk mychel and lyte, Envenymen and abite. 1340 Ayenb. 26 e eddre et alenuenyme. c1400 MANDEVILLE v. (1839) 54 The serpentes byten hem & envenyme hem. c1450 LONELICH Grail lii. 240 Thanne sawh he wel that envemyned he was.1535 MORE On the Passion Wks. 1274/1 Being..so sore envenomed with so mani poison spottes. 1665-6 Phil. Trans. I. 391 A Toad may envenome outwardly. 1665Flagellum; or O. Cromwell (1672) Pref., That poyson of Asps under his lips which..will envenome even those of the Species that come near it. 1725 BRADLEY Fam. Dict.s.v. Vives, Do not touch them with your Fingers, for it will invenom them.

fig. c1380 WYCLIF Sel. Wks. III. 272 Weiward disciplis, at envenymyn and distroien holy Chirche. c1386 CHAUCER Wife's Prol. 474 But age, allas! that al wol envenyme. 1612 W. PARKES Curtaine Dr. (1876) 6 He in-venomes all the eares that heare him.

2. To put venom or poison on (a weapon, etc.); to taint (the air, ground, etc.) with poison; to render noxious or poisonous. Cf. ENVENOMED ppl. a.

c1325 Coer de L. 4349 Envenymyd ther takyl was. 1393 GOWER Conf. I. 234 An arwe..Whiche he to-fore had envenimed. c1450 LONELICH Grail l. 603 A knyf..the wheche envemyned was. c1500 Melusine 161 The king was wounded with a dart enuenymed by the sawdans hand. 1555 EDEN Decades W. Ind. III. IX. (Arb.) 177 The women..vse to inueneme their arrowes. 1602 SHAKES. Ham. V. ii. 332 The point envenom'd too, Then venome to thy worke. 1616 SURFL. & MARKH. Country Farm 291The Caper-tree inueniming the whole ground, and making of it barren. 1675 TRAHERNE Chr. Ethics xxvi. 405 Because the colours are envenomed wherewith he painteth his face. 1871 G. H. NAPHEYS Prev. & Cure Dis. I. ii. 73 Plants which thus envenom the sweet.

b. To infuse venom or bitterness into (actions, relations, etc.); to impart bitterness to (the feelings or words of a person); to embitter, make virulent.

1533 BELLENDEN Livy v. (1822) 395 Knaw ye nocht how thir wageis war invennomit be poisoun of inemyis. 1568 GRAFTON Chron. II. 634 Their wordes were swete as sugar, and their thoughtes were all envenomed. 1658 Lady's Call. II. §3. 87 It rather envenoms the crime and adds unnaturalness to deceit. 1859 MILL Liberty iv. 152Nothing in the..practice of Christians does more to envenom the hatred of Mahommedans. 1866 FELTON Anc. & Mod. Gr. II. viii. 424 The complicated passions that envenomed the strife.

3. fig. To impregnate with moral ‘venom’; to corrupt, vitiate.

c1374 CHAUCER Boeth. IV. iii. 120 e vtteriste wikkednesse..infecti and enuenemy hem gretely. c1400 Rom. Rose 7474 For men may finde alway sopheme The consequence to enveneme. c1440 Gesta Rom. ii. 7 e devill had envenemyd all mankynd. 1641 MILTON Ch. Discip. I. (1851) 19 A universall tetter of impurity had invenom'd every part. 1705 STANHOPE Paraphr. III. 433 We will hope..that no Minds so invenom'd can be found. 1883 I. TAYLOR Fanat. iv. 71 The imagination..envenomed by hatred.

‘2033’

2010-03-23T05:00:00.000-04:00

Epitaph

2010-03-22T18:11:00.000-04:00

David Yow?

2010-03-22T05:00:00.001-04:00

To be almost human in Dunwich, and to chomp a half-witted girl

2010-03-22T05:00:00.000-04:00

120 words about 30 bands at SXSW 2010

2010-03-21T11:55:00.003-04:00

Tanlines: Afro-enabled synth bacchanal.
Best Coast: Buoyant, Deal-y melodic grunge.
We Were Promised Jetpacks: Masculine emo road untaken.
Frightened Rabbit: Jangly Scots Duritz mutation?

Wye Oak: Heart-piercingly honest alto.
The Boxer Rebellion: U2 > Radiohead > Doves > TBR
Thee Oh Sees: Roadhouse paddywhacks; enticing stink.
The Drums: Joy Division again? Really?
Anita Tijoux: Chilean memoirist, Bronx language.
Ben Gibbard: Alone, narrative bleakness underscored.
Total Abuse: Brutalist hardcore, unintentional vaudeville.
The Coathangers: Cavegrrrls squeal, shake, roar.
Garotas Suecas: Carefree groovicália, young hearts.
Hole: Aged into “scary” character.
Real Estate: Rollin’ downriver, beery haze.
Golden Triangle: Lily Munster meets B-52’s?
Surfer Blood: Workin’ hard, hardly workin’.
Besnard Lakes: Credo in rockum sacrum.
Robert Francis: Never left Hotel California.
Nas/Damian (Junior Gong) Marley: Surprise! Bob samples galore.
L’Orchidée d’Hawaï: Surfin’ Rhône-Alpes. Absolument charmant.
Sharon Jones: “Soul phenom.” Time machine?
Broken Bells: Dreamy comfort, sleepy pace.
Spoon: Effortless lordship, small kingdom.
Freelance Whales: Could be Lemmy’s breakfast.
Scorpion Child: Feelgood retro heshercore, re-retro’d.
Free Energy: Wholesomely sleazy, courageously dumb.
XYX: Freakout duos: universal language.
Los Amparito: Sunbaked, pan-Latin laptopism.
Dark Castle: Guttural roars, cavelike shadows.

SXSW: In the Dark Castle

2010-03-20T12:35:00.001-04:00

Surfer Blood-y shadows

2010-03-19T16:17:00.000-04:00

To be a triffid, and to chomp a babe

2010-03-19T05:00:00.002-04:00

To be a colossus of New York, and to shoot eye beams through a babe

2010-03-18T05:00:00.000-04:00

To be a leprechaun, and to chomp Jennifer Aniston

2010-03-17T05:00:00.002-04:00

To be a cosmic monster, and to chomp a babe

2010-03-16T05:00:00.001-04:00

Times Square: G.R.E.E.D.

2010-03-15T19:27:00.001-04:00

To be a crab monster, and to chomp a babe

2010-03-15T05:00:00.000-04:00

To be a tarantula, and to chomp a babe

2010-03-12T16:38:00.003-05:00

From 1955, which is way pre-.

Myrtle Avenue: National Bolt & Nut

2010-03-09T05:00:00.005-05:00

Vanderbilt Avenue: Hood rich

2010-03-08T05:00:00.000-05:00

A conversation with Philip Glass and Robert Thurman

2010-03-01T16:20:00.007-05:00

“There are forms of idealism which may not be realized, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t functional and important.”

Two conversations, actually. I was honored to interview two of the founders of Tibet House US, for a story about their 20th benefit concert.

Robert Thurman is a professor (and a dad), and Philip Glass you know. They, along with Richard Gere, started the New York Tibet House in 1987 — there are others around the world — “to ensure the survival of Tibetan civilization and culture, whatever the political destiny of the six million people of Tibet itself.”

So from the beginning it had a cultural mission, but with a fraught political context. Tibet was invaded by Mao’s Communist forces in 1950, and the Dalai Lama has been in exile since 1959. Today Tibet is still a forbidden word in China — it symbolizes the ugly truth about authoritarian rule, which can’t be erased by free trade and tourism.

Both Thurman and Glass indulged me with long, thoughtful conversations that couldn’t be summarized in an 800-word article. They have revealingly different perspectives. Thurman believes that political reconciliation with China is inevitable; Glass, less sanguine on that point, is interested in how a refugee culture survives, and the effect it has on the rest of us. (“What we’ve gotten good at as human beings is surviving outside of places where these things began,” he says. “It’s maybe not ideal, but it’s actually what really happens.”)

Here are excerpts from these conversations, which took place separately at Tibet House in Manhattan on Feb. 22, 2010.

❧

1. Thurman

Two decades in, how do you see the success of Tibet House as an organization? Things have not gone so well for Tibet in that time.

I know, yes. People say that the fame and the popularity of the Dalai Lama haven’t helped Tibet, because China is still oppressing Tibet, and they’re still doing basically ethnocide — trying to absorb and assimilate the Tibetan people into the Chinese people. So they say, What’s the point?

But we don’t feel that’s an accurate analysis. People often say that this nonviolent approach, hoping for dialogue with an oppressive colonial invading power, and preserving culture, appealing to positive causes, even appealing to Chinese positive side — is pointless, that you have to actually fight for independence. Even some young Tibetans say that.

On the other hand we would point to Afghanistan and the Palestinian situation, and many others around the planet where violence has not helped in 30 years or 40 years — or 50 years, actually. Although the Tibetans periodically resist, they are oppressed daily. Many have been imprisoned. Over 1 million have been killed. Tons of their cultural treasures and monuments have been destroyed. There are still 6 million Tibetans alive in Tibet and they are somehow surviving. It takes long time to get a dictatorship to change its behavior, but it is changing. And the Tibetan culture is quite popular underground in China. The Chinese people have been oppressed themselves for 60 years, since Mao. If they do another violent revolution like Mao led, that wouldn’t necessarily get them a better situation.

So in other words nonviolent change is something the world not used to. And change by preserving culture and cultivating people’s positive attitude, people are not used to. But we feel it is quite successful. The people of the world, most of them know about Tibet. They care about Tibet. Even many people in China know and care about Tibet. So it’s a matter of time before the world system changes, where the governments will actually have to listen to their own people, which they still are not doing. They are basically militarists, most of them, corporate-driven. And democracies are not working well — look at ours. The world is being pushed to its own limit.

I like to think since James Cameron’s brilliant work that the Tibetans are like the Na’vi. They’re hanging in there. Maybe not fighting with bows and arrows, but they still are staying connected to nature, and we think they will prevail.

Is the political situation in Tibet discouraging?

Sure, it’s discouraging for everybody. But the one thing I find encouraging is that the oligarchies controlling all the different countries and running the planet into the ground for money are so incompetent. They keep screwing up! It’s so wasteful. Their banks are crashing, their wars are failing — everything is going wrong for them. The fact that they’re acting so desperately and so irrationally I find encouraging, because it seems they somehow sense that beneath the goose-stepping and marching around that they are losing their hold. Like China for example, trying to be popular by doing the Olympics and then goose-stepping around, arresting old ladies who protest their houses being bulldozed, and running around the planet frantically trying to prevent anybody from having tea with the Dalai Lama — supposedly super-powerful guys afraid of a little monk who cracks jokes and wanders around in sandals in the snow. Come on. It’s so silly.

But last week when Obama met with the Dalai Lama, they still kept it semiprivate, and whisked him out a back door by the garbage.

People make a lot of that, but the only reason the garbage was there is that they had a snowstorm in Washington that they don’t know how to deal with. I don’t think people should get overly worked up about that. I’m sure the Dalai Lama himself would have urged Obama, don’t rile them up too much, you don’t have to make a big fuss. People around the Dalai Lama can make a fuss and say he was treated with indignity and blah blah blah. But the Dalai Lama doesn’t care. Look at him, wearing sandals with a big grin on his face.

The point is, he’s not into confrontation. Years ago the Dalai Lama refused to go into the UN, a building he’d been dying to visit for many years, because he loves that kind of thing. But he refused to go with the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, who was known as a super right-winger neo-con, because he didn’t want the Chinese to be able to shout and scream that he was a neo-con himself. He never asked to condition most-favored-nation status. He never challenged their right to hold the Olympics. He tries to be super-conciliatory. He’s happy to go in and out of back doors.

He was glad to meet Obama. I know he had met him before as a senator, and it is important that he does meet him and that China fails in their efforts to prevent him from meeting heads of state. Because that’s how he keeps alive the awareness of Tibet. But he doesn’t want to do it that confrontationally. He wants to give the Chinese face-saving things, and he wants them to relent. Because after all they are the ones who are paranoid about him, and they are the ones who have never met him. If they met him they would calm down. They would stop being so freaked out. They might feel a little guilty and penitent about some of their bad behavior, because you do in the presence of a person like that. But they would relax. Unfortunately their system is such that they are scared to meet him, and they never do.

You wrote a piece for the Huffington Post last week saying that “the Dalai Lama wants Tibet to be a fully contributing part of China,” that the Chinese are wrong to accuse him of wanting to split Tibet away. But why doesn’t he? This is the force that has occupied his country for decades, killed thousands of his countrymen.

Some of them have done that. The head of the secret police; Hu Jintao is himself very guilty of harshness and violence and murder when he was there, and is condoning it even today. A guy named Changchun Li who is in charge, is a complete thug, a Communist party boss.

So yes, the Dalai Lama acknowledges that everyone in the world likes to be free. The Tibetans are famous for their complete individualism, being semi-nomadic people living at high altitudes, wandering in their tents. But the Dalai Lama says to his people — and I think he’s correct — that at this stage, the way Tibet has been handled, it is better for Tibet to be affiliated with one of the big powers. Especially because that power has de facto been in control of it, has a lot of people there, has a lot of military there, and has done a lot of damage — and has the means to repair that damage should they turn their policy around. That means it would function better for the benefit of China in a federation, as China pretends that it is in federation with what it calls its minority nationalities.

Furthermore, the Dalai Lama is fully aware that the Tibetans can relate positively to the Chinese. They have been a helpful neighbor to the Chinese in past centuries. They have ameliorated the harsh control by Mongolians and Manchurians when they conquered China, and got them to treat the Chinese more nicely. The Tibetans are Buddhist masters, and the Chinese like Buddhism. There are hundreds of millions of Chinese Buddhists. The Chinese desperately need spirituality.

The Dalai Lama is aware that if the Chinese continue in their neo-colonial and neo-imperial behavior with Russia, with India, with Central Asian Islamic republics and their own Muslims, then there will be so much violence going in Asia that even a free Tibet would be overrun with nuclear war. Imagine the millions of Chinese Buddhists who would appreciate teachings from the Dalai Lama. Westerners come in the tens of thousands nowadays, but the Chinese would come in the hundreds of thousands. And they would benefit from the Dalai Lama’s representations and his walking the talk of Buddhist ethics. So as a peacemaker and as a religious leader he likes to have a hand in China. And it would be a tremendous help to the reawakening of China as a spiritual entity, which they desperately need, because their greedy consumption of the world’s resources and their overproduction of crappy goods, etc., for consumers is part of the planetary destruction.

To change China into a cooperative 21st-century power, and get it out of imitating the 19th-century behavior of Britain and the 20th-century behavior of the U.S., is a really important thing. The Tibetan people can be of more help from within China than they can as some kind of bereft, isolated, autonomous and wrecked, devastated place. So the Dalai Lama is politically and socially and historically deeply insightful. But it’s hard for people to recognize it because they think of powerful people as having tanks and planes and bombs. Those he doesn’t have and will never have. [Laughs.]

❧

2. Glass

How did you first get interested in Tibet?

Totally by accident. I went to India in 1966. I had just been working with Ravi Shankar in Paris. I got interested in his music, and I was interested in some of the teachers there. I was up in northern India and I saw a refugee camp. And I said, “What’s this?” I didn’t know. They said, “It’s a Tibetan refugee camp.” I said, “What are they doing there?” I missed that bit of news. It had only happened a few years before, and many of us didn’t know about it.

I began meeting people there, and when I came back to New York I wanted to know more about it. I met the Dalai Lama’s representative in New York at that time, and I just got to know people. At the time there were three Tibetans living in New York; I knew the whole Tibetan population. Very soon other people came and then I began going back. At that time I was going down to Freehold, N.J. That’s where Bob Thurman and a number of these guys were studying Tibetan. The first wave of translators were studying in Freehold, N.J., not with a Tibetan guy but a Mongolian guy, Geshe Wangyal. He was teacher for a lot of these people. These were the really early days. It was really quite a few years later, in 1987, that we started Tibet House.

It started very small. It’s astonishing how it’s grown. I was at the Rubin yesterday giving a talk. I was at bookstore, and you look at that books that are published. I can’t even find the old books anymore. It used to be that there were only about eight books on Tibet, and I had them all. Now there are 800 or something like that. It’s a measure of how attractive this culture and these people have been to Americans that it has grown and taken root so widely.

How successful has Tibet House been with its mission over the last 20 years?

It’s changed over time. When we began, the refugee community was not nearly as well established as they are now. You had men who had spent their lives studying religious texts wrapping packages at Macy’s, and stuff like that. You had these very disproportionate things where people of great education and stature were starting at entry-level jobs that were way beneath them. You have to remember also that most people didn’t know where Tibet was, let alone that it had been invaded.

We began Tibet House at the request of the Dalai Lama. His idea was to have these cultural centers that would keep alive and make people aware of the authentic and independent culture. I’m not talking about the politics, just the culture. We’re talking about a country with its own language, its own history, the whole thing. So Tibet House as a whole has been functioning in that way. Now we have been upstaged in a wonderful and a magnificent way by the Rubin Museum. I love that museum. [Laughs.]

We’re a rather small place, but we go public very big at the concerts. And that has been helpful to make people aware of Tibet House as an institution, and what the mission of Tibet House is. And as I say, that has changed. Over the years the Tibetan community has been very successful in getting integrated economically in America. Now we have a generation of Tibetan kids who were born here. They have Tibetan summer camps, just the way all the immigrant communities have maintained their identities, whether they’re Italian, or ... I was going to say Jewish, but it’s hard to say what the Jews were, a country or a tribe. You know, we talk about doctors without borders — we’re talking about a country without borders, until recently. [Laughs.]

As this has evolved people have become more aware. The Dalai Lama getting the Nobel Peace Prize and becoming truly an international person, someone that people acknowledge in a spiritual and ethical and moral way as a world leader. You have to go back to Martin Luther King and Gandhi to find a person of that stature in the world. And as his stature has increased, so the visibility and credibility of an independent culture has grown. We began as a kind of beacon: “Here we are, don’t forget us!” Now it’s become like a celebration of a culture which is surviving in a way no one expected it would.

Do you think people in America view the Dalai Lama and the Tibetan cause as a losing battle?

I don’t think so. A losing battle politically, geographically, perhaps. But culturally, no.

Those are important, though, the political and geographical sides of it.

It’s one slice of it. But don’t forget, in this country we have all kinds of refugee cultures that come here. The Jewish people came here, the Armenians came here, the Ukrainians came here. All these cultures that had to leave. We have a big history of that.

But isn’t the whole thing with Tibet about exile and the hope to return?

Of course. And you go to a Passover thing, they’re still talking about returning. We’re talking 2,000 years. That doesn’t mean it’s going to happen; it also doesn’t mean it isn’t important. There are forms of idealism which may not be realized, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t functional and important. The idea of return is also a way of hanging on to a cultural history. In other words I don’t take it literally. But I’m not Tibetan and I don’t have to. And I think many people don’t actually expect it to literally happen. But what we’re talking about is the survival of a culture, the survival of a lineage of teaching, the survival of a music and an art and a language, and all the things a culture entails. What we’ve gotten good at as human beings is surviving outside of places where these things began. It’s maybe not ideal, but it’s actually what really happens.

The benefits of a refugee culture have been tremendous. It’s had a big impact on America. When the Tibetans left Tibet they took with them an ageless culture. Not ageless exactly, but they had preserved in the Himalayas in a pure form things that had been lost in other countries, and they brought it here. And the benefit in this country is tremendous. How do we look at it as Americans? It might be a slightly cruel thing to say, but we’ve been the beneficiaries of an exiled community, as we have been with the Italians, and with the Ukrainians, or the Jewish people, or the African cultures that came here through slavery. America is a very dynamic and vital place and partly because of our ability to absorb these kinds of things.

In a way you could say I’m begging the question. But this is a question worth begging, because the answer is what we know about. It’s what we’re actually living with. We can talk about going back to Tibet some day, but what we’re really dealing with is the benefits of learning from a culture which no one would ever have even known about.

❧

Ancient history: Tom Waits, Roberto Benigni, Thurston Moore, Al Green, Lou Reed, M.I.A.

Press release of the day: A date with RATT

2010-03-01T15:27:00.003-05:00

“Stay tuned and watch your inboxes for more information,” sez a release received today.

I have to admit that I probably will be checking my inbox on April 20, 2010.

10 other names for Thom Yorke’s new band

2010-02-25T12:03:00.004-05:00

Besides the “obvious” Atoms for Peace, which is basically fine anyway:

The Erasers
EraserHead
New Yorke/The New Yorkers/New Yorke Groove
Black Swan
thosethatarefeelingpulledapartbyhorses
The Drooping Eyelid/Ptosis
Athomicauda
We, Having Hailed the Thief, Will Rock You
’Ronker
Halloweed (seriously)

VHS youth: Data Analyzing Robot Youth Lifeform

2010-02-19T05:00:00.001-05:00

West 23rd Street: Memento mori

2010-02-18T05:00:00.002-05:00

Halloween 2009.

February

2010-02-17T16:00:00.001-05:00

Another one has not bitten the dust: Good Records moved

2010-02-17T10:42:00.004-05:00

I was kind of alarmed the other night to walk past the Good Records storefront on East Third Street and see it all papered up, with a “for rent” sign in the window. Hadn’t been there in a while, but it is always a tragedy when yet another New York record store shuts down.

BUT. Turns out Good Records has only moved, to 218 East Fifth Street. Which means I am now even more overdue to update my old Manhattan record store map. Anybody been the new location?

Hope y’all had a kickin’ Shrove Monday

2010-02-16T16:14:00.004-05:00

Shrove, n.

Obs. exc. dial.

Shrove-tide, or the merrymaking connected therewith.

1579 in Feuillerat Revels Q. Eliz. (1908) 327 During Christmas ... & Shrove. 1621 R. Brathwait Nat. Embassie, etc. 178 In their wakes, shroues, wassel-cups, or tides. 1913 19th Cent. July 133 Nora was to marry Tom Mahony next Shrove.

b. Comb.: shrove-cake, a small cake made to give children who go shroving (Halliwell, 1847); †shrove-cock = shroving-cock (see shroving vbl. n. b); †shrove-prentice, one of ‘a set of ruffianly fellows, who took upon them at Shrovetide the name of London Prentices, and in that character invaded houses of ill-fame’ (Halliwell).

1638 Davenant Madagascar, etc. 29 More cruell than Shrove-Prentices, when they (Drunk in a Brothell House) are bid to pay. 1659 Lady Alimony V. ii. I4, O ye pittiful Simpletons, who spend your days in throwing Cudgels at Jack a Lents or Shrove-Cocks.

Repeat: “O ye pittiful Simpletons, who spend your days in throwing Cudgels at Jack a Lents or Shrove-Cocks.”

Not just Seals & Crofts

2010-02-15T15:58:00.002-05:00

CollectorScum offers a reminder that a lot of punk and new wave albums were on 8-track too.

The sole 99¢ song on iTunes’ list of its 20 best-ever sellers

2010-02-12T12:11:00.003-05:00

The outstanding question: Is its price an implicit admission that the song is 23 percent worse than all the others?

Press release of the day: Music boldly called sexier than farming

2010-02-10T10:51:00.003-05:00

Headline: “Even in This Day and Age, People Would Rather be A&R Men Than Gangsters or Farmers!”

It’s for “the world’s first music based social network game,” a Facebook app called Hit or Not, which goes like this:

By listening to and ranking songs, players accumulate virtual cash they can use to “sign” and bribe artists and various other nefarious music biz activities. If the songs “signed” by the player rise on the Hit or Not charts, that player can “sell” those songs to make a (virtual) profit. The Hit or Not stock exchange is one financial institution that can never go bust, only perpetually up and down!

It’s not quite the first such site, though. In fact this sounds suspiciously like another service I wrote about a year ago called The Next Big Sound, which started off as a social networking A&R game but is now a data-mining sort of thing offering “actionable intelligence for the music industry.”

Either way, I’m not persuaded that people would rather do this than scoop manure or murder people.

‘Headcovers’: Sleeveface goes to the bookstore

2010-02-10T05:00:00.003-05:00

There’s a whole Flickr group.

(Via, via, via.)

‘A Colt Is My Passport’

2010-02-09T18:28:00.002-05:00

(Via.)