On paper, Idan Raichel ticks so many of the right boxes. His music combines Middle Eastern, funk, klezmer, and a host of other world music elements that I wouldn't even be able to name into a multicultural fusion that few other artists anywhere in the world can compete with. That approach has made him into one of the few Israel musicians with a legitimate global profile.
What else? His "Project" is a true melting pot with a cast of some fifteen people on stage. His songs are a mix of Hebrew, Arabic, and Amharic. He's a proud Zionist. He seems genuinely humble and takes his role as a cultural ambassador seriously. Instead of having an opening band, he plays really long shows, with tonight's gig running about two and a half hours. He's as comfortable playing solo behind the piano, or accompanying one of his singers on a ballad, as being a cog in a full band churning through steamy grooves.
And yet, I've never found Raichel's songs to be all that good, save for some of his ballads. The uptempo stuff shows off a dazzling display of cultural virtuosity without being truly catchy. Unfortunately, the idea of the Idan Raichel Project is far better than the reality. I hoped that the spectacle of the live band would breathe more life into the songs -- plenty of bands sound OK on record but slay on stage, and a fifteen piece cross-cultural, cross-generational spectacle seemed like a good bet to fit that bill. The spectacle is there, but the songs aren't. It feels like the concert could be best enjoyed via a series of clips, where one can feel the power of the full band without having to press through the entire two hour plus journey.
Friday, June 21, 2019
Friday, June 14, 2019
The indie/jam band merger
This past week, Chris Richards detailed the slow conversion of indie rock bands into jam bands in an article for the Washington Post. Certain bands with which he chose to make his point are questionable (The National aren't jammy at all, curating an album of Grateful Dead covers was a side interest and doesn't feed back into their music) but his thesis is sound. Ten years ago, everyone was talking about "corporate indie", i.e. the commercialization (and/or watering down) of indie as masterminded by major labels looking to capitalize on indie's cultural cachet. Now? Indie bands are jam bands. Liking the Dead is certifiably OK in the indie scene, as noted by Richards, the only problem is that indie (and rock in general) has never mattered less as a cultural force.
The mainstream mostly ignores the jam band scene, except when they rake in obscene amounts of money (see: the 50th anniversary Dead shows), which I guess makes them truly countercultural again after all these years? At the very least, today's indie jammers can look forward to many more decades of successful concerts if they play their cards right.
I first became attuned to this issue when reading a Yo La Tengo message board probably about fifteen years ago. Somebody made the point of comparing YLT and the Grateful Dead, and sure enough, they ticked off many of the right boxes -- concerts stretched out to epic lengths, long and improvisational concert jams, different set lists every night, covers, covers and more covers, tolerating and even promoting tape trading of their live shows, etc. I was slightly horrified, less so because of the Dead comparison, and more because the comparisons were completely on the money.
There wasn't a specific incident that helped the Dead became more "palatable" for indie fans, as noted by Richards, it was a glacial process. The prior generation of music critics had exhumed and dissected the music of the 60's one too many times, and the Gen Y and millenials were tired of hearing about how nothing would ever be better than the 60's. They moved onto examining the critically underrated pre-punk 70's, the Dead released their most well known albums during those years, and away we go. Along those lines, the new Scorcese documentary about Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue (which I am itching to see) couldn't have existed fifteen years ago. Dylan's "indie phase" ended after his motorcycle accident, and save for "Blood on the Tracks", 70's weirdo troubadour Dylan was too jammy and weird to be taken seriously next to his 1962-1966 output.
Finally, I think Wilco's crossover happened a lot earlier, as I recall them getting a lot of cred with the hippie crowds through their album of Woody Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg. This may have contributed to their breakthrough with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" many years later, that is, Wilco had broad, underappreciated appeal beyond the usual indie scenes. Oh, and how did War on Drugs not get mentioned in the article?
The mainstream mostly ignores the jam band scene, except when they rake in obscene amounts of money (see: the 50th anniversary Dead shows), which I guess makes them truly countercultural again after all these years? At the very least, today's indie jammers can look forward to many more decades of successful concerts if they play their cards right.
I first became attuned to this issue when reading a Yo La Tengo message board probably about fifteen years ago. Somebody made the point of comparing YLT and the Grateful Dead, and sure enough, they ticked off many of the right boxes -- concerts stretched out to epic lengths, long and improvisational concert jams, different set lists every night, covers, covers and more covers, tolerating and even promoting tape trading of their live shows, etc. I was slightly horrified, less so because of the Dead comparison, and more because the comparisons were completely on the money.
There wasn't a specific incident that helped the Dead became more "palatable" for indie fans, as noted by Richards, it was a glacial process. The prior generation of music critics had exhumed and dissected the music of the 60's one too many times, and the Gen Y and millenials were tired of hearing about how nothing would ever be better than the 60's. They moved onto examining the critically underrated pre-punk 70's, the Dead released their most well known albums during those years, and away we go. Along those lines, the new Scorcese documentary about Dylan's Rolling Thunder Revue (which I am itching to see) couldn't have existed fifteen years ago. Dylan's "indie phase" ended after his motorcycle accident, and save for "Blood on the Tracks", 70's weirdo troubadour Dylan was too jammy and weird to be taken seriously next to his 1962-1966 output.
Finally, I think Wilco's crossover happened a lot earlier, as I recall them getting a lot of cred with the hippie crowds through their album of Woody Guthrie songs with Billy Bragg. This may have contributed to their breakthrough with "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" many years later, that is, Wilco had broad, underappreciated appeal beyond the usual indie scenes. Oh, and how did War on Drugs not get mentioned in the article?
Thursday, June 13, 2019
The UMG warehouse fire
I don't have much to add to this story beyond expressing the same feelings of shock and sadness as everyone else. I do think that this may well be the biggest music-related story ever, with no exaggeration. At the very least it must be the biggest musical *recording*-related story ever. Between the astounding, beyond all words loss of precious musical data and incomprehensibility of such a thing being successfully covered up for over ten years (in the internet + social media era no less), I can't imagine anything as significant and far-reaching as this happening again in my lifetime.
People who think that the music "lives on out there digitally and in people's collections so nothing was really lost" are missing the point. First of all, loss of the master recordings means no more remastering/remixing of any of these works, ever again. No self-respecting label would ever remaster from a copy, which is why UMG reissues had dried up to nearly nothing in the past several years (now it makes sense why). And nobody who buys the remastered recordings would want to pay good money to hear something remastered from inferior copies. Second, and more importantly, the loss of the originals of any work of art is an irretrievable loss of human culture. Imagine the Mona Lisa burning up in a fire, and someone claiming that it didn't matter, countless reproductions of it live on in print, in everything from art textbooks to postcards, so it's going to be OK. Imagine all original copies of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays going up in smoke, and claiming that it's fine because we have the Penguin editions. Every generational copy picks up omissions and errors that weren't in the originals. When the originals are gone, a tangible connection to the spirit and intention of the artist goes with it, never to return.
People who think that the music "lives on out there digitally and in people's collections so nothing was really lost" are missing the point. First of all, loss of the master recordings means no more remastering/remixing of any of these works, ever again. No self-respecting label would ever remaster from a copy, which is why UMG reissues had dried up to nearly nothing in the past several years (now it makes sense why). And nobody who buys the remastered recordings would want to pay good money to hear something remastered from inferior copies. Second, and more importantly, the loss of the originals of any work of art is an irretrievable loss of human culture. Imagine the Mona Lisa burning up in a fire, and someone claiming that it didn't matter, countless reproductions of it live on in print, in everything from art textbooks to postcards, so it's going to be OK. Imagine all original copies of the First Folio of Shakespeare's plays going up in smoke, and claiming that it's fine because we have the Penguin editions. Every generational copy picks up omissions and errors that weren't in the originals. When the originals are gone, a tangible connection to the spirit and intention of the artist goes with it, never to return.