Stoking the starmaker machinery

I remember when my graduate school Kevin told me breathlessly about a new indie music website. "They use a 10 point ranking system and nobody gets a 10." Having been reared on the inadequate Rolling Stone five star ranking system, I immediately liked it. The site was Pitchfork.

For that 2003-2004 period it was really my go-to site for reviews and news.  I respected the site so much that I wanted it to reach back and review older recordings so that I can find out their perspective on them. But then it became too overwhelming. Suddenly there was another recording from Xiu Xiu and I didn't know about their last one. And I didn't like Deerhof's latest offering. Then one writer raved about the Wren's  "Secaucus" and I dearly wanted to hear it, but it was way out of print. (It was re-released and it turned out to be great.)


So I veered away from the fold. I don't think the site missed me and I didn't miss it. (For the record, I sought out used CD bins and music blogs like Brooklyn Vegan and Gorilla v. Bear to satisfy that new music itch.) But I had to laugh when there was a backlash to their sanctimonious posturing, which included Subpop records recreating them as Popdork.

Which brings us back to the present: starting mid-month every December music websites issue their "Best of" lists for the year. This is the time that I get to catch up on what I missed the preceding year. It's actually an exciting time because all the work of distilling out the dreck has been done for me. (Largehearted Boy aggregates the lists. What a guy.)

As part of this year-end review I listened to Pitchfork's list of 100 best tracks of 2011. I could only stand twenty of the songs. Many of the musicians seemed preoccupied with textures and rhythms to the exclusion of caring much about the songs. The site used to have more guitar-based bands and now... get this... they give some recordings the vaunted 10.0 ranking. As you can see, things have gone downhill over there. I mean, how is anybody going turn this current crop of chartbusters into the elevator music of tomorrow?

I refuse to think that I'm all crusty and unyielding to the music uber-trends that have all the kids going gaga.

Some people ride the wave

The year 1991, regarded by some as the year punk broke, left me unimpressed. I really think the status quo was improbably upended when Elliott Smith suddenly had a Oscar Awards appearance and nomination for his song "Miss Misery" in the film "Good Will Hunting." What was improbable or punk wasn't the song itself, but that the singer had done little to insert himself onto that larger stage (other than be a homeboy with filmmaker Gus Van Zandt) but nonetheless achieved a level of market place acceptance that many performers with much more ambition failed to achieve.

My contrarian view comes from the viewpoint that punk is more than a music genre, but an ethos that undermines and subverts all that is currently standing. This of course means that it must always be re-inventing itself as the loyal opposition when its ideas, cultural artifacts, etc. become commonly accepted, and thus is subject to being undermined and subverted. For instance, new primitivism became the new totalitarianism completely removed from its original meaning and intent.

Or maybe the meaning of the 'Year Punk Broke' has another meaning than I didn't recognize before. I had interpreted the phrase as when this style of music burst upon the national media consciousness, but maybe it is simply a statement of the time when a music style became disfunctional because its success fixed its meaning in so many people's minds and it lost its fluidity. It had become a commodity to be marketed and sold.

And the silence was astounding

It is a much repeated axiom that what isn't said/played is as important or more important than what is said/played, whether it's prose, politics or music. I don't think I've experienced this so acutely on a few recordings that begin with a slight stir- a brush on strings or tinkle on a piano-such the initial songs of Sufjan Steven's Illinois or the Mountain Goats' Get Lonely. I felt those intimate beginnings just suck the wind out of my lungs and I had to gasp to recover and wonder: what in the hell happened?

In a similar vein, the quietness is equally compelling when restraint far exceeds the volume, as on Slint's Spiderland. I mean, those dudes were in a third tier southern midwestern town(Sorry, Louisville shares more with Cincinnati than Memphis) in the nascent years of "grunge." They either should've been worshipping Pavement or Amphetamine Reptile bands. So they release this thing that has melody, roars, and has this oroboros ability to snake around and eat it its tail. I guess Tortoise coming out of its shell wasn't that unprecedented.

Life during wartime

Evidently, there is a surge in porch music overseas.

Talking about revolutions

When he was young at the beginning to the 20th C my grandfather sang temperance songs with his family. My dad birddogged to the Red Tops at high school dances in the Mississippi Delta. But by the time I was growing up he only hummed country tunes from AM stations.

My budding music tastes were nurtured by Don McClean's "Miss American Pie," (B'rer Bob received it for Christmas) and the Stylistics' recreations of the '70's pop parade (mail order). My neighbor Charlie introduced me to "Rubber Soul" and "Mystery Tour" in 5th grade. I had my brief Kiss infatuation, via my older brother, when I was in 6th grade. Then by 7th grade it was the Blues Brother's album, Jethro Tull's live "Bursting Out," another Aerosmith's "Bootleg"- another live recording that disappointed me because it didn't have snippets of Joe Perry addressing the crowds. By 8th-9th grade it was all over. I was gaga for prog rock- Yes, Genesis, King Crimson- and Skynyrd live and Black Sab's "Paranoid" for those special Genessee Cream Ale moments.

My brother's music tastes were highly influential in those early years. It wasn't until I was 17 that I became fixated on Elvis Costello's "My Aim is True" and Adrian Belew's "Twang Bar King" that I ventured on my own. Then senior year it was all Beatles all the time with the Fra.

By the '80's and'90's I tried to label a certain recording as my favorite, or in hindsight I can identify favorites by their heavy rotation that year:

1985: many Windham Hill artists

1986: Sweet Honey in the Rock

1987: The Feelies "The Good Earth"

1988: tie- Tar Babies "No Contest" and the John Water's Hairspray soundtrack

1989: any Galaxy 500

1990: Pere Ubu "Modern Dance", "Dub Housing"

1991: Talk Talk "Laughingstock"

1992: Victoria Williams "Swing the Statue"

1993: quadruple tie: Uncle Tupelo "March 16-20, 1992", Jayhawk's "Hollywood Town Hall, Boredom's "Pop Tatari", and Bettie Serveert "Palomine"

1994: Liz Phair "Girly Sounds"

1995: K. McCarthy "Dead Dog's Eyeball"

1996: Mary Lou Lord and Palace Brother's firsts

1997: The Olivia Tremor Control "Dusk at Cubist Castle", Elliott Smith "Either/Or"

1998: Neutral Milk Hotel "In the Aeroplane Over the Sea", Tortoise "TNT"

1999: Jim White "Wrong-Eyed Jesus"

By the new millennium swung around I was in way too deep to identify anything but the main veins that I continue to mine: Elephant 6, '70's punk, 60's pysche, just about anything out of New Orleans, delta blues, field recordings, Richard Thompson, Montreal bands, krautrock, and indi pop favorites like the Decemberists, Sufjan Stevens and Yo La Tengo.

Somehow I've managed not to list James Blood Ulmer, Patti Smith, Dinah Washington and Dylan, but so it goes. At this point, my collection database lists almost 2,200 CD's (that doesn't include vinyl or mp3's).

But, I assure you: All of them are special to me.

Entertain Us

K and I went to the grocery store on Sunday afternoon. After we were done shopping, and since I wanted to make it something of an outing for him, we went to the nearby record store. I thought we could find some Farmer Jason. That's Jason from Jason and the Scorchers in his new gig. With some help from the store clerk, we did find that disc. Meanwhile, Kieran piled in my hands many other discs that he wanted. Because he can only recognize a dozen or so words, he was simply going by the cover images for what he preferred. It is a study in marketing. Invariably, he chose recordings that had colored drawings on the covers, reminiscient of his beloved comic books. It's no wonder Joe Camel was so successful.

So Kieran got his reformed punk rocker kid music CD and I found one as well. When we arrived home, I showed Mrs. B our finds. "Here's one for Kieran, and this other one with a underwater baby chasing a dollar bill on the cover- I think that's some kid music too."

Mrs. B. peered at the cover. "What's that?"

I tried to hide my disbelief that she didn't recognize the iconographic image from THE album of the '90's- an album that launched a fleet of Led Zep-Black Sab soundalikes and made "alternative music" mainstream. "It's Nirvana."

"Oh, I'm into more obscure bands," she sniffed.

"But they only sold 30,000 copies of their previous album," I countered.

We had a little dustup about my failing to hide my disbelief - I imagine Harold Bloom had the same difficulty with his wife - but I had to chuckle in the end. When Nirvana broke, I wasn't into them; I was too cool. It was fun to do "Teen Spirit" karoake on Bourbon Street, but I couldn't take it seriously as music. I had seem them live the year before and it didn't appeal to me.

Later I put the CD on and it is good. It didn't get K doing his hot foot wiggle leg dance like he does for R.L. Burnside, but I enjoyed it.

Update: Today I was able to pass off Led Zep's "Mothership" collection as family music.

Sorry Ma, I took out the tracks

Often tripping on the shadows of others when it comes to timely cultural appreciation, I find myself suddenly inexplicably (well, thanks to Mrs. B) able to offer a timely review of a cultural artifact. The book is the new Replacements oral history. I didn't really grow up with that band as an integral part of my psycholgical or aural development (concept dramas like "Quadrophenia" did the trick for me), but have appreciated them since the mid '80's. But I was a dilletante: I have fragmented versions of "Trash", "Stink", and "Hootennanny" where I excerpted the cuts I found pleasing, leaving much of their punkness out in the cold. Thus was the state of my classic rock-infested musical tastes.

A couple weeks ago, I hauled out "Trash" and spun it on the turntable- it rocked! It has a jagged spin art sonic madness that I never noticed before. I can't even remember buying the album.

Then I read the book and love its compendium of gushing fan notes, august puffery from rock aristocrats, and loose chronology. Lacking a strict chronology, it has the uneveness of tone and timing, but devotion to passion, that a recording of a drunken wake of the band would possess.

The dramatic center of the book is the character of Paul Westerberg. He comes off as a cranky inscrutable genius and posterchild of punk petulance. He is a figurehead of an unresolvable tension that the band represented: the choice between respected permanence (music career, bulky catalog of recorded material) and blazing comet ephermality (frenzied live shows that owe all to the moment).

The band itself could not figure where it stood in this matter. In their history they vacillated between the poles: Say Yes to a Saturday Night Live performance but piss off Lorne Michaels; kick out the founding guitarist for being fuckup but continue to revel in beer-soaked live sets; make a video but it is a guitar amp still life portrait.

In the end I felt a little dirty after reading the book. I can't say that I personally liked the main protagonist (Westerberg) but found the book compelling. And now I'm on the hunt for recordings of live shows from different eras and am having fun with what I found.

I especially like this photo of the Placemats on the abandoned couch on the rail line. That particular rail line has been revamped to be a bike trail (part of my route to work) and sadly has lost the ability to be a backdrop for a punk band publicity photo. Makes me nostalgic for blight I never knew.

Wheel in the Sky

After moving into the New House, I found myself a shelf in a basement room that was ideal for storing my vinyl that I had been estranged from for six years. (They had lain fallow in a Cleveland basement.)

I cleaned off the shelf (finding local newspapers from 1943 and 1966- boy, those celebrants of the Greatest Generation omit mention of the deadly race riots that occurred during the war) and loaded up my collection.

Shortly after I had re-established this connection, Mrs. B, feeling guilty about an imminent Target buying spree, volunteered to buy a retro turntable. I said Yes and she came home with a 4-in-1 gizmo that could even play my 78s. I was psyched and started pulling out the old ELO, Carpenters, Wishbone Ash, ZZ Top, Big Star, and K-Tel gems.

Sadly, however, I alphabetized the records and am at a loss to explain the absence of many blues, R & B, and colored ELO vinyl. Wha? I did cull out some records along the way (bye bye Doors bootlegs), but would I have really jettisoned Ginger Baker and Fela jamming together?

Making the Rounds

Yesterday I drove home while blissful strains of Four Tet surrounded me. I bought the album while living in Maryland. It is significant how different it is listening to it in my nordic nirvana. I used to listen to it as succor, to provide me with beauty anchored by Modern Sounds as a bulwark against the Unbeauty. Now it is a supplement- the very cherry on the sundae.

Or to phrase it another way, I used to cling to it as a fundamental element of the Food Pyramid rather than the sprig of parsely framing the plate of an already delicious meal.

I'm Just a Singer in a Rock'n'Roll Band

As many things as I've collected, I've shied away from amassing many band/concert t-shirts.

The trend started early, when I bypassed t-shirts celebrating "Long Distance Voyageur" or "Broadsword and the Beast" as my friends enthusiastically scooped them up.

To whit, I can offer a brief roster of the rock t-shirts I now have: Bettie Serveert, Olivia Tremor Control, Tortoise, Clem Snide, Jennie Stearns, Elephant 6, and most recently Akron/Family.

I don't know if that selection reflects on who I am, but it is a sign of how NOT to chart a successful music career. Collectively, those bands have sold about 100,000 albums and been together for about 50 years.

I gave up trying to forecast the success of bands when I saw Mazzy Star in 1990 and predicted them as the Next Big Thing. Yeah, I know... Mazzy who?

I've seen fire & I've seen rock'n'roll

While one can find much comment on the presence of fire in Greek myths, there is less mention of it as an everpresent staple in rock'n'roll. Some connections between rock and fire are legendary albeit unintentional, such as the flaming Lynyrd Skynyrd album cover or Michael Jackson shilling for Pepsi and setting his hair on fire.

My favorite uncanny rock reference to fire occurred when the Austin instrumental group Explosions in the Sky decided to release an album entitled "Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Die, Those Who Tell the Truth Shall Live Forever." Innocently enough, the album cover had a flying biplane illuminating a rising angel, with the silhouettes of soldiers massed below. The first song on the recording was "Greet Death" and the the gatefold image was a flying plane captioned with the phrase: "This plane will crash tomorrow."

Did I mention that album's official release date was September 4, 2001? Needless to say, it didn't top the charts.

Sometimes fire is simply divine retribution for imposing disco upon the world.

Mac Rebennack and transit

Doctor John, in asserting his bona fides in his song "Qualified", sings:

"Your Cadillac ain't no hipper than my busstop."

Amen, brother.