Category: Music

Tony reminded me: it isn’t just my birthday today. Yep, today is Britney Spears’s 21st.

(I hesitate to file this one under Music, but hell, why not? As I understand it, Britney does occasionally sing.)

Currently playing song: “Funkentelechy” by Parliament on Tear The Roof Off.

Annie Zaleski reviews the new U2 compilation, The Best of 1990-2000, with mixed emotions in Salon. “Revisionist history” isn’t a bad description. Certainly ten years ago I would have expected “The Fly” to make it onto a best-of compilation. With that throbbing bass line, nasty guitar hook, and curiously vulnerable chorus vocal, it was the pivot away from the wide-eyed Americana into which U2 had stooped in the late 80s, back into a defiant embrace of good old fashioned decadence. It’s not on the compilation, though. Neither is “Lemon” or “Elevation” or even “The Ground Beneath Her Feet.”

Okay, so the disc doesn’t live up to its title. (And the b-side disc is worse. The b-side disc for 1980-1990 was the best part of the package, lots of lost songs (like “Walk to the Water” and “Luminous Times”) that true believers cherished and no one else had heard. This one? Skanky disco remixes of tracks deserving and undeserving. I miss the original mix of “Lady with the Spinning Head” and “Salomé.”) But there are some things it does right. It lays claim to some good songs from the otherwise misbegotten Passengers album, for one. And it reminds me that Pop was a truly dark and magnificent album… in places.

I walk away from this compilation a little disappointed. It, like the new songs “Electrical Storm” and “The Hands That Built America,” is too safe. This isn’t the band that wrote

It’s no secret that a conscience can sometimes be a pest
It’s no secret ambition bites the nails of success
Every artist is a cannibal, every poet is a thief
All kill their inspiration and sing about their grief

A while back I wrote about the Open Music Directory project, MusicMoz. I figured it was time for an update.

The good news is that I’ve become editor of a few categories, including Sonic Youth, Thurston Moore, the Pixies, Gastr Del Sol, and the Velvet Underground. (Thus securing myself the title of “Master of Vaguely Arty Noise Rock.” At least in my own mind.) The bad news, or the opportunity as we positivists like to call it, is that the project still needs volunteers. There are some choice categories open, including Pavement, Liz Phair, the Police, Porno for Pyros, the Psychedelic Furs, Parliament, Public Enemy. And that’s just in the Ps.

Think of becoming an editor at MusicMoz as the equivalent of being a library volunteer. You’re spending your time working with things you love, making it possible for other people to learn about the music that fascinates you, and contributing to the overall usefulness of the Internet. How many opportunities like that are there? Well, I mean, other than blogging in general…
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I came into work this morning and turned on my music software. The first song it decided to play?

Sonic Youth’s “Expressway to Yr Skull.”

Happy Halloween.

(Now I just need to dig up the UK Surf mix of the Pixies’ “Wave of Mutilation” and I’ll be in that proper indie rock Halloween mood.)

I emailed Michael Goldberg today. He founded Addicted to Noise, which in the mid nineties was the coolest music site around. They had Corinne Tucker of Sleater Kinney writing a column for them for a while… Alas, they sold to SonicNet, who sold to the VH1 corporate megalith, and a lot of great content that they had has disappeared (though some of it is still in the Google cache).

That was actually why I emailed Michael. I was looking for good SY and Thurston Moore reviews for musicmoz, but the content was no longer accessible. To my chagrin, Michael confirmed that VH1 owns the rights to all those great stories. There’s a greater point to be made here about the evils of contracts that give all rights to the purchaser of content. You think copyright is bad when Disney owns it? What about a corporation that is bought and essentially ceases to exist, and a new copyright owner who lets all the content rot?

Fortunately this story has a happy ending. Michael’s now at Neumu, a killer little site about music and art that deserves to be a lot better known. Go check it out.
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Enough said, really. I picked up Blacklisted the other day and I’ve forgotten all the other music I was listening to, which almost never happens. If you’ve never heard Ms. Case’s music, do yourself a favor and check out the new album’s second track, ‘Deep Red Bells.’
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Brent, in a relatively rare break from work (the man has been busy since NetNewsWire went beta), wonders where the next Nirvana will come from. Is it maybe the Strokes, the Hives, the Vines, and the White Stripes? I don’t know. I’ve certainly heard words to that effect from various sources.

But the thing that Nirvana did that made everything change was to break down the barriers that the music industry and the audience had created with genres. By grabbing metalheads who were hungry for a change after the self indulgence of Axl Rose howling “Live and Let Die,” alternative music listeners who were disappointed with the Pixies’ Bossanova, and yes, frat boys who knew all the pretty songs and liked to sing along, Nirvana built a huge audience around a youth culture that felt as aimless and trapped and angry as Kurt sounded.

All the Strokes have succeeded in doing is opening the floodgates for a bunch of bands that sound kind of like them. That’s ok if you like that sort of thing, but…

I think the real problem is radio, contrary to John Robb’s assertion that it’s dead. (John, check out the MIT station WMBR the next time you’re close enough to pick up the signal. Or tune in KEXP on the web and pretend you’re in Seattle. :)) With all the radio stations being operated by remote control by some guy in Cleveland or LA who only can remember about five songs at one time, there’s no way that the “O Brother” phenomenon could reach the enormous teen audience that might have taken it and made it their own. I know it was a huge success as a soundtrack, but I have to think the demographics for it skewed way upwards of 25.

I wonder whether there’s enough commonality left in the music listening audience to make another Nirvana possible, or whether the musical universe will just keep expanding infinitely, genres rushing away from each other at the speed of light, until all the energy of pop music is turned into entropy and loss.
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I think the correlation between music and quality of life is absurdly high for me. This morning I hopped in my car–okay, stumbled into is more accurate given the fog I was in–and turned on the radio. KEXP was playing “Dig for Fire” by the Pixies. Right on, thought I, and started driving down the hill. Then they switched to “Alec Eiffel”, then Frank Black’s “Tossed.” Alas, at that point their pledge drive pitch came back on (I’ve pledged, have you?). So I turned on the iPod and it was Daniel Lanois’ “For the Beauty of Wynona.” Then Violent Femmes: “Girl Trouble.” When I got to the office, Liz Phair’s “Support System” was playing.

How could one feel anything but sing and dance good after a set like that?

A lengthy, cynical review of Lou Reed’s performance at Bumbershoot that finds nothing to bitch about save his performance of The Raven. I love the shtick that the author and his friend work up over this one:

This offers the evening’s only opportunity to do shtick over the course of the song, and Ian and I traded barbs over Reed’s rendition:

Reed: “For the rare and radiant maiden whom the angels name Lenore Nameless here forevermore.”

Us: “Because she’s a dirty junkie slut who got what’s coming to her!”

Reed: “Presently my soul grew stronger; hesitating then no longer…”

Us: “So I popped another bennie and fucked the drag queen like a dog!”

Reed: “Soon again I heard a tapping, something louder than before…”

Us: “And it was Andy inviting us to an opening in Soho!”

Reed: “Then the bird said, `Nevermore’…”

Us: “And he stole my TV the next morning for smack!”

You’ll have to read the review for Lou’s “pre-emptive strike” over this one, which makes the jokes look like child’s play.
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Just saw this article from 2000 by Pat Metheny (thanks to Flangy for the pointer) about boycotting Kenny G. Nicely sums up what I felt fifteen years ago about Mr. G, but prompted by a more serious offense than “Songbird”: playing over Louis Armstrong. Sample comments from Pat:

his saxophone style is in fact clearly in the tradition of the kind of playing that most reasonably objective listeners WOULD normally quantify as being jazz. it’s just that as jazz or even as music in a general sense, with these standards in mind, it is simply not up to the level of playing that we historically associate with professional improvising musicians….

but when kenny g decided that it was appropriate for him to defile the music of the man who is probably the greatest jazz musician that has ever lived by spewing his lame-ass, jive, pseudo bluesy, out-of-tune, noodling, wimped out, fucked up playing all over one of the great louis’s tracks (even one of his lesser ones), he did something that i would not have imagined possible. he, in one move, through his unbelievably pretentious and calloused musical decision to embark on this most cynical of musical paths, shit all over the graves of all the musicians past and present who have risked their lives by going out there on the road for years and years developing their own music inspired by the standards of grace that louis armstrong brought to every single note he played over an amazing lifetime as a musician. by disrespecting louis, his legacy and by default, everyone who has ever tried to do something positive with improvised music and what it can be, kenny g has created a new low point in modern culture – something that we all should be totally embarrassed about – and afraid of. we ignore this, “let it slide”, at our own peril.

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Currently playing song: “Angels” by David Byrne on David Byrne.

Currently playing song: “Her Used-To-Been” by Spain on The Blue Moods of Spain.

I sang Arvo Pärt’s Te Deum for the first time in rehearsal last night. It’s the first time I’ve sung a work of that scale by Pärt, but I’ve been singing his music since college.

I was talking with Shel over the weekend about music that we discovered in college. For me, I said, it was the Pixies and Tom Waits. And jazz. But I neglected to mention that I discovered choral music in college as well. Our Glee Club director, John Liepold, introduced us to a broad swath of music from the Renaissance through contemporary works by Pärt (“De Profundis”) and Tavener. I was fascinated by the way Pärt took a simple melodic plan of ascending minor melodies and constructed an achingly beautiful and powerful work.

Later I sang a few Pärt works in the Cheeselords, including “De Profundis” and “…And One of the Pharisees”, and in the Cathedral Choral Society, including “Solfeggio”, “Cantate Domine”, and the haunting “Magnificat”. Each demanded utter concentration and repaid it richly in transcendence. But the Te Deum dwarfs all these. Pivoting between D major and D minor, the work (in seventeen sections) builds throughout from an opening men’s chant through interactions between three different choirs, over orchestral obbligatos of increasing complexity, to a thundering affirmation of God. It then tapers to close with a simple “Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus”: Holy, holy, holy.

I had listened to the premiere recording many times since college and knew what was coming. But as we ran through the piece, stopping and starting occasionally, I couldn’t help but get goosebumps. The Cascadian Chorale, with which I’m singing now, has the ability to perform this piece transcendentally. I’m looking forward to it.
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An unexpected letter today from my friend Dan in DC. A while back when I was singing with Suscipe Quaeso Domine (aka the Suspicious Cheese Lords), we used to joke about doing a joint concert with the Mediaeval Baebes. (The Baebes were founded by Katharine Blake from Miranda Sex Garden and exemplified a female version of our attitude toward medieval music, only with sexy costumes.) Since the group was UK based, I finally, reluctantly assumed nothing would ever come of it.

Fast forward to today, when I receive a card from Dan. He writes, “Now that you’re in the West I’m not sure if you keep up-to-date on the Mediaeval Baebes. This year, they played the Maryland Renaissance Festival, and several of your old Cheeselord clan was in attendance. They managed to meet the Baebes, and they got you the enclosed signed and lipsticked token.”

Inside was a postcard announcing the new album. On the back: signatures and one lip print from the Baebes, including Ruth, Marie, Cylindra, Audrey, and Teresa, among others.

As Opus once said, “I got the best friends in all known space!!!”
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