Aging out of music fandom

December 15 was traditionally the day that I would roll out that year's Top Ten list(s).  For the fifth consecutive year, that won't be happening.  It's become just another day in the calendar.  But this year, I do want to revisit some of my favourite music of the past thirty years -- with a twist.   

Jim Barber and Rick Beato recently discussed age demographics on the latter's youtube channel.  Their main point is that bands tend to be older than their fans and that this has been a constant throughout most of recorded music history.  The reasons are straightforward.  Music sales were typically marketed toward younger people (e.g. teenagers).  Once they got older and stopped buying music, the next generation of teens would be sold on a new batch of stars.  In this model, both fans and artists had short careers.  People stopped buying music after getting married and finding jobs, and the next generation of young fans weren't interested in what their older brothers and sisters had liked, so the artists were often tossed aside by the industry as a whole.  

This trend of disposability seemed to end with the boomer generation bands.  Barber and Beato don't elaborate on exactly why this happened.  I think that the boomer generation coming of age in the mid-late 60's happened to coincide with rise of the album format.  The album became entrenched as the artistic standard for all serious musical acts, the cultural cache afforded to a great album ensured canonical longevity for the music. Bands could, and still do, coast off the reputations built by great albums for years of even decades.  On the other hand, the singles market was more dominant pre-1960's singles market, and the songs were for and of the moment.  Once those songs completed their chart run and fell off the radio playlists, the music and the artists would fade away too. 

After I listened to their conversation, I realized that the truth had been staring me in the face for years.  Maybe everything in the Barber/Beato video was obvious to many music lifers already.  In those moments, my musical past came flooding back, and the common threads couldn't have been any clearer.   With few exceptions, fans are younger than the acts they follow. It describes my entire fandom.  

I was born in 1974.  Here is a table of all my #1 albums, each year from 1993-2009, along with the birth year of the band's frontman or frontwoman.  For duos, or for acts with multiple dominant creative forces, I listed the birth years of each band member.

Year	Artist, album	Birth year
1993	Orbital, Orbital(Brown Album)	Paul Hartnoll '68, Phil Hartnoll '67
1994	Blur, Parklife,	Albarn '68
1995	Spiritualized, Pure Phase	Pierce '65
1996	Orbital, Insides	Paul Hartnoll '68, Phil Hartnoll '67
1997	Spiritualized, Ladies and Gentlemen We Are Floating in Space	Pierce '65
1998	V/A, Skampler; Mogwai, Kicking A Dead Pig	Braithwaite '76
1999	Super Furry Animals, Guerrilla	Rhys '70
2000	Primal Scream, XTRMNTR	Gillespie '61
2001	Spiritualized, Let It Come Down	Pierce '65
2002	GY!BE, Yanqui UXO	Menuck '70
2003	Plastikman, Closer	Hawtin '70
2004	Xiu Xiu, Fabulous Muscles	Stewart '78
2005	Sigur Ros, Takk	Jonsi '75
2006	Bardo Pond, Ticket Crystals	ages not known, but they started in '91, so late '60's
2007	Eluvium, Copia	Cooper '80
2008	M83, Saturdays=Youth	Gonzalez '80
2009	Yeah Yeah Yeahs, It's Blitz	Karen O '78
2010	Third Eye Foundation, The Dark	Elliott, '71
2011	M83, Hurry Up We're Dreaming	Gonzalez '80
2012	Beach House, Bloom	Legrand '81, Scally '82
2013	Eluvium, Nightmare Ending	Cooper '80
2014	Fennesz, Becs	Fennesz '62
2015	Beach House, Depression Cherry	Legrand '81, Scally '82
2016	Moderat, III	Apparat '78, Modeselektor '75
2017	The Caretaker, Everywhere at the End of Time, Stage II	Kirby '74
2018	Low, Double Negative	Sparhawk '70, Parker '72 Parker
2019	King Midas Sound, Solitude	Martin '73, Robinson late '70's

In 1998 (a strange outlier year in many respects), my #1 album was a compilation so I also listed my #2 album (Mogwai) and the birth year of their lead guitarist.  Discounting 1998, there are 26 albums, and only ten of them were made by "younger" artists.  The youngest of those is Beach House (seven and eight years younger).  But most of the "older" artists are only a few years older as well, born in the late 60's or early 70's.  Looking at all 26 albums using the birth years in the table (and using best estimates for unknown ages), the average age of a #1 album creator is two years older than myself.  

Focusing only on #1's doesn't even take into account many of my very favourite bands over the years, such as Pulp (Jarvis Cocker, born in 1963), Autechre (Booth/Brown both born in 1970), Slowdive (Neil Halstead 1970), PJ Harvey (1969), The National (Matt Berninger born in 1971, the other members are a few years younger). Or look at my final top five from 1999: following King Midas Sound was Nick Cave (1957), Fennesz, William Basinski (1958), and Amp (around since mid 90's, so likely born in the late 60's or early 70's.).  As I got older, I wasn't turning to new generations of artists.  The people making my favourite music were staying the same age.  If anything, they were gradually getting older.  This explains a lot, and in particular, it explains how I gave up almost entirely on listening to new music.  The number of artists around my age still actively working is clearly decreasing -- people retire or leave the industry for whatever reason -- and the ones who are left see their glory years fade further into the past.   Counting on them to continue producing the music I love almost exclusively is unsustainable.  Over time, I was choosing from a rapidly diminishing pool of music artists that I cared out.  It also explains the multiple #1's by certain bands -- great artists to be sure, but also facing decreasing competition.   Eventually the pool of artists became too small, with not nearly enough music arriving to replenish the selection.  Faced with a dearth of music I could truly embrace, I started giving up on new music entirely.  

It makes sense to prefer bands that are older than you. As a teenager you look up to people in their twenties as mature heroes living an exciting, musically fulfilling life. But at any age, one appreciates art from older artists who have experiences and wisdom that predates your own, and who can channel those emotions into their art. As a fan, you seek out those perspectives and ideas.  Younger bands bring new ideas and inspiration, but there's an natural and understandable generation gap that creates emotional distance between them and you.  

I still listen to plenty of music daily.  There are even new releases that I intend to catch up with someday, after being almost entirely uninterested in such things throughout all of 2020 and 2021.  But right now I can't foresee a return to yearly best-of lists.  As the data shows, it's not for me anymore.

New Order, Live at Reading Festival 29/08/1993

I'm still hyped up on New Order since finishing both seasons of the Transmissions podcast, so let's drag out this historic live recording from their headlining set at Reading 1993, the 10th in a series of albums that I haven't heard in well over twenty years, since I started this blog.  I started this series in early 2020 as a 20th anniversary feature and absolutely intend to finish with it before the blog's 30th anniversary.  You can easily find recordings of this show online, here is one of many links.   

When New Order released "Republic" in 1993, Factory had collapsed, the Hacienda was soon to follow, and it was an open secret that the four of them couldn't stand working together anymore.  Yet somehow, "Regret" was one of their best ever singles (on many days, I would argue it's their very best), their videos were all over MTV and MuchMusic, they filmed the priceless "Top of the Pops" segment live from the set of "Baywatch", appeared at the Montreux Jazz festival, and released the excellent "Neworderstory" documentary (ignore all complaints about the shoddy voiceover commentary, those opinions are wrong).  Free of the flaming dumpster fire of financial ruin called Factory Records, and finally making decent coin on a properly run major label (London Records), in many ways it was a triumphant comeback for New Order.  

And yet, they quietly only played fourteen shows in support of "Republic".  This was the early 90's, when a band could pump out singles from a well-regarded album for well over a year, make good money from CD album sales (the single was mostly dead), have their videos in daily rotation and thus appear to be everywhere even though they were sitting at home or doing the occasional press tour.  Hitting the road for long tours was not a necessity once you reached a certain level, and New Order had reached it.  Despite their year-long success, heading into their set at Reading it was widely assumed that the band had reached the end of their rope and even could be breaking up.  This time, the rumours were true.  Following this show, the band fractured and essentially didn't see or speak to each other for years.  

I saw the Toronto show earlier in the year -- the first and still the only time I have seen New Order live -- and it was a wonderful experience even if the show wasn't anything special.  I bought a bootleg cassette of that show and enjoyed reliving the memories, as I tended to do with any recording from a show I had been to.  Later in the year, I bought a cassette recording of the Reading show.  The set list was identical, but the Reading gig was unquestionably different.  

New Order were a famously ramshackle band in the 80's.  They'd show up on stage trashed and write out the set list fifteen minutes before they went out.  They dragged computers, sequencers, synths, and guitars on stage years before anyone knew how to make that setup work reliably day in and day out.  Their concerts tended to be octane-filled dance rock parties or mistake-laden drunken embarrassments, there was mostly no inbetween.  The Toronto show was actually fine, but a bit rote.  By 1993, their concerts were slickly programmed and tough to mess up.  Gone were the days of scribbling down the set list based on their mood in the dressing room.  They were a professional band on a corporate-run label now.  They were real celebrities.  The Toronto show was held in a concert theatre in an amusement park.  They brought the roller coasters to a standstill that day -- the park staff brought them in to skip the lines and have private rides (not a joke, this is true).   They spent the day drinking and touring the park and the gig was fine, even though they didn't seem very invested in it.  

Reading was more energetic, more mechanical (in the best sense -- no blips, losses of concentrations, or obvious mistakes) and more magical.  One can sense that they knew it was their final gig as New Order and that they were determined to make it one of their best ever.  Mostly though, you can sense the lack of tension.  They'd been on the road playing the new songs and had worked out the kinks.  They knew the setlist -- it was the same every night.  They were relieved that the journey was finally over.  Listening to this back in 1993, when I heard the pitch perfect harmonies in "World" I knew that I was hearing something special.  Finally New Order had gotten their shit together, just in time for the end.

Well, not exactly.  Rob Gretton coaxed them back together to play live again in 1998.  The results were better than anyone could have expected.  They still sounded relevant, necessary, and wholly unique.  They started playing Joy Division songs every night, finally embracing that part of their history after publicly distancing themselves from it for the better part of two decades.  Other than a few years of uncertainty following Peter Hook's messy departure in 2006, they've been a functioning band ever since.  The post-1998 reunion period now spans a longer period than their "imperial" phase.  And I don't think it's controversial to say that the post-1998 model, in all its iterations, is a much better live band than any version that came before it.  They have a more maximalist, energetic presence now, the re-worked renditions of "Temptation" and "Bizarre Love Triangle" completely slay, post-reunion material like "Crystal" and "When The Sirens Call" come across like peak New Order, "Age Of Consent" and "Regret" are as vital as ever.  

"Republic" was an uneven album with a number of down moments, and the live versions were identical to the recorded ones.  It was the comedown record after the acid house-infused high of "Technique", it was not an album designed to electrify the world over a six month tour.  But for what it is, this set at Reading was the absolute best they could have done it.   It's still a fine recording, but it comes across as a bit lumpy and sterile due to the overly familiar programming and arranging that robs the music of any surprise or spontaneity.  

"Transmissions" Podcast

Having read more than my share of JD/NO books/articles/interviews over the years, including all three of Peter Hook's very candid autobiographies, I was skeptical about this being the "definitive" account that it claims to be.  I can't say it isn't fun to hear these interviews and stories in an easily digestible audio format, but for hardcore fans there weren't many surprises in Season 1, which covers the JD story and the NO story up to and including "Blue Monday".  The lack of new bombshell revelations isn't a negative -- of course most listeners will be casual or lapsed fans who will find plenty to digest, and even longtime devotees of the bands seem to enjoy it based on the responses I've seen.  It features interviews with nearly all the principals plus a healthy number of celeb cameos and commentaries, the episodes are short (30-40 minutes each) and incredibly well paced, and the story arc is wholly unique.  What's not to like?  

Things pick up in Season 2.  The JD story has been told in a myriad of ways and frankly there's not that much to tell, considering how short their career was.  Getting to the bottom of the NO story has always been a more elusive endeavour, considering their aversion to liaising with the press (interviews, photo sessions, videos) throughout most of the 80's.  Hook's biography is still the gold standard, but it's only one side of the story.  "Transmissions" features many other key figures who have never, to the best of my knowledge, talked this openly about the band before.  Chief among them is Tom Attencio, the Qwest label exec who served as their US manager, and Peter Saville, who designed just about everything of note for Factory.  Now that the lawsuits have been definitively settled, with both the Hook-led side and Bernard Sumner-led side enjoying healthy careers, everyone seems to have mellowed out.  Even the tense, bitter moments in New Order's career are recalled with considerable detachment, as if everyone involved has since seen the error of their ways.  Mostly, they are all keen to focus on the good times and the process behind crafting such groundbreaking music.     

Music in "House, M.D."

After about six months (with kids it's difficult to binge watch) I have finally finished watching all eight seasons of "House, M.D." from beginning to end.  For a few years during it's broadcast run, it was my favourite show on television and I wasn't alone -- it was the most watched TV show in the world for a period thanks to international broadcast rights.  At the time, I started watching during Season 2, watched religiously during Seasons 3, 4, and 5, but my interest started waning during Season 6 (spurred by a specific "jump the shark" episode, but we'll get to it).  Frustrated by a frankly ludicrous ending to Season 6, I gave up on the show and never watched any of Seasons 7 and 8 (outside of clips of the finale).  

The show debuted twenty years ago this week, so there have been a number of articles about it on entertainment sites recently.  All of them focus on the influence "House" had on a number of "edgy" shows with flawed, but brilliant anti-hero main characters.  Virtually none of them talk about the music in the show.  And since this is a music blog, I figured I'd pay tribute to my half-year label of love and talk about "House"'s use of music.  This is not a discussion of the soundtrack album released in 2007 as a cash cow tie-in, or an attempt to provide a definitive, comprehensive list of the top ten or twenty musical moments in the show's history.  It's an excuse to write some words about "House" by framing it through a sampling of songs (out of the seven hundred that featured over its eight seasons) that stuck with me for various reasons.

Massive Attack, "Teardrop".   The theme song (but not in most international markets), backed by an intro video with computer generated anatomical diagrams of spidery blood vessels, dissected brains, and x-rayed rib cages all floating through the screen in suspended animation.  The intro is a perfect match for the music and the combination is much beloved by pretty much everyone, but oddly enough it does nothing to prepare you for the style and pacing of the show or the sharp, acerbic personalities of many of the characters.  

Gorillaz, "Feel Good, Inc.", S3E1 ("Meaning").  Season 2 ended on a cliffhanger, with House getting shot and subsequently rushed into the OR for life-saving surgery.  Season 3 begins with a complete turnaround, skipping forward to a few months later with House transformed into a hardcore fitness freak, jogging through parks and up flights of stairs, his life completely rejuvenated by a risky ketamine treatment as a side benefit to his surgery.  

Mazzy Star, "Into Dust", S3E3 ("Informed Consent").   This plaintive, blissful track plays for a full three minutes at the end of the episode, soundtracking the devastating reveal of a fatal diagnosis, a likely euthanasia, and the most genuine and affecting House-Cameron moment of the series.  It's an exquisite pairing of music, scenery and dialogue, seemingly stretching these agonizing few minutes into what feels like an hour.  

"Georgia on My Mind" (Hugh Laurie on Piano), S5E22 ("Saviors").  Anything with Hugh Laurie on piano (or guitar) was gold.  The last minutes of the episode are a montage of different characters finding joy and happiness, which cuts to House at the piano in his apartment, jamming alone in his without a care in the world, celebrating his apparent emancipation from drug-induced psychosis.  But the mood turns on a dime with a slow exhale into a harmonica and a surprise hallucinations.  Jubilant, and then chilling, all within a few seconds.

Norman Greenbaum, "Spirit In the Sky", S4E9 ("Games").  This song bubbles up after House's new team members are revealed.  "House" featured a lot of classic rock, but was always framed as a "let the good times roll" moment or used for comic effect.  This is a rare poignant moment set to fuzzy guitar.  There's little doubt that whoever chose the song went for the full ironic effect due to its equally famous 80's cover by Dr. and the Medics (get it ...)

Bon Iver, "Stacks", S416 ("Wilson's Heart").  The song works as the farewell to Amber, and especially at the very end when Wilson returns home to read her heartbreaking note.  This really makes the list because the "House's Head"/"Wilson's Heart" finale were likely the two best episodes of the entire series, and this was the song that capped it.  

Hugh Laurie, "Cuddy's Serenade", S5E15 ("Unfaithful").  Composed and played by Laurie during the final minutes of the episode, this touching little piece was the peak of the Cuddy/House storyline, in which House deals with his inability to reveal his feelings to Cuddy by retreating to the safety of his home and expressing his emotions at the piano.  

Rolling Stones, "As Tears Go By", S5E24 ("Both Sides Now").  "You Can't Always Get What You Want" appeared in about three episodes, but "House"'s best use of a Rolling Stones song was in the Season 5 finale.  The elation of Chase and Cameron's wedding is blended with the devastating uncertainty of House's trip to a psychiatric unit, having pushed his drug addictions over the edge into full blown psychosis.  This was the logical end point of House's addiction, which had been tolerated and enabled for years by his colleagues and even turned into something of a running joke.  There was no way to get more extreme than this, and as a result House's behaviour was far more subdued in the next season.  But the showrunners tried to top it at the end of Season 7, trying for shock and awe to recover the show's edge (I guess), and failing.    

Radiohead, "No Surprises", S6E1 ("Broken").   The only episode that didn't use "Teardrop" as a theme song (outside of a handful that featured a cold open without any music), this coupled House's brutal detox from vicodin addiction with Radiohead's claustrophobic masterpiece.  Arguably the best minute of television the series ever produced.  

Prince, "God", S6E4 ("The Tyrant").   I would never have guessed that this snippet of stirring, neo-classical ambience was a "Purple Rain"-era b-side.  Taken at face value (Foreman burns the log with proof of Chase's guilt), the music works.  The episode is the jump the shark moment of the show that irrevocably destroyed my devoted fandom at the time.  As I watched the entire series, compressed into a shorter time span, it became clear that this was easily the worst episode of "House" to that point, and likely the worst of the series.  A fiercely apolitical show suddenly developed a moral conscience with each character inexplicably virtue signaling, and breaking with their established character arcs.  In the narrative presented on the show, this should have touched off a major international incident.  Instead it led to weeks of crybaby Chase, the laughably dumb break-up of his marriage to Cameron, and then the whole thing was mostly forgotten about.  As an eerie coincidence, James Earl Jones (who played the dictator) died in real life the day after I watched this episode.  I don't have the space or the gumption to provide a detailed overview of the preposterous premise behind this whole storyline, it was an experiment in political posturing that never should have been attempted.   

Funkadelic, "Maggot Brain", S6E11 ("The Down Low").  There is hardly a context in life or in art that isn't suited to hearing "Maggot Brain".  Here, an undercover cop dies in horrifying agony in the hospital while the criminals he spent months pursuing meet their own ignominious ends at the hands of law enforcement.   

LCD Soundsystem, "No Love Lost", S7E10 ("Carrot or Stick").  This serves as the motivational music during a boot camp scene.  But it really makes the list because I had no idea this Joy Division cover existed, and was startled to hear it pop up during a random Season 7 opening scene.

House and Cuddy sing "Get Happy", S7E15 ("Bombshells").  Now here's an experiment that passed with flying colours.  I never wanted to see House and Cuddy get together and there were many, many cringe-worthy moments in Season 7 as I watched them try to conduct a semblance of a serious relationship.  You know what "Huddy" needed more of?  More FUN, more outlandishness, more camp!  This "Material Girl" meets "Rocky Horror" take on a Judy Garland number was a home run, a dream sequence to remember in an episode based upon increasingly bizarre dream sequences.  

Warren Zevon, "Keep Me In Your Heart", S8E22 ("Everybody Dies").  Chosen by Hugh Laurie himself as the penultimate song of the series, providing a glimpse into all the principal characters' lives post-House.  I'm not a Zevon fan, but the music fits and the final scenes of the series are nothing if not memorable.  

The Cure, "Songs of a Lost World"

This will be my first review of a new album release in about four years ... although one could say that it was sixteen years in the making.

The anticipation surrounding this album has drawn in many casual and lapsed fans.  Even without any new music, their profile has arguably never been higher thanks to regular touring, high profile festival appearances, the RnR Hall of Fame induction, and the overall appreciation of a still-functioning band whose enormous influence is still being felt.  For much of the 2010's, I had the sense that The Cure didn't need to record anything else, that they could continue indefinitely as a legacy act.  I'm thinking of the likes of Billy Joel, who hasn't released an album of new music in thirty years (and has no plans to do so) but sold out MSG monthly for years and received the most glowing reviews of his entire career. 

The new album is out and two more are reportedly on the way, so the Cure are very much a fully active band again.  The early reviews for "Songs of a Lost World" have been outstanding.  The new songs were centrepieces of their last world tour, and the lyrics are sobering takes on the incessant reality of death and aging in a broken, uncertain world.  The Cure are back to help us make sense of it all, people are ready and waiting for this album, and hoping for it to be a masterpiece.  

There has been a lot of criticism about the mixing of the album, and on my initial listen I agree with most of it.  It sounds squashed and overly compressed, the drumming is muffled and lacks punch, the synths are too upfront in the mix and have a confusingly preset quality to them, there is little of the high reverb ambience that I want from such an overwhelmingly sobering album.  

Despite those sonic issues, many truly great songs shine through.  Sometimes they imitate the funereal, dirge-like qualities of Joy Division's "Decades" (e.g. "Alone") and sometimes they beef up the doom-laden inevitability not unlike New Order's "In a Lonely Place" (e.g. "Endsong").  The mountains of synths covering "And Nothing Is Forever" produce one of the most lush and purely gorgeous backing tracks in the Cure's 40+ year recorded history. "Drone:Nodrone" distinguishes itself from the somber majority of the album by featuring a more muscular, funk metal sound.  Throughout the album, Robert Smith's voice is in pristine form.  Perhaps nothing is forever, as the album keeps telling us, but his unvarying voice is miraculously the one constant in an ever-evolving band.

Putting aside the production issues for the moment, this is a very good album, although not the classic I was expecting based on the tour recordings and the the pre-release hype.  When the Rolling Stones reformed for "Steel Wheels" and launched a record-breaking tour, everyone remembered that they were a singular band after they had lost their sense of purpose for much of the 1980's.  Starting with that album, and for much of the next fifteen years, critics and fans were on the lookout for the next classic Stones album, the one that would complete their journey from yesterday's legends to contemporary studio giants, irrespective of their remarkable concert tour successes .  Each album was hailed as the best since "Some Girls", or "finally, a Stones album that you don't need to make excuses for".  I think the Cure are firmly entrenched in that phase of their career.  Remarkably, the Stones in the 90's were a much younger band than the Cure is now.  That entire studio run of the Stones didn't add anything to their overall legacy, that vindicating return to form never happened.  Mick et al laughed all the way to the bank (and still are!).  But there was an outsized emphasis relevance through new studio material, and the Stones were judged accordingly.  If that was happening today, with the album in rapid decline as the definitive musical artifact, I think they'd be judged very differently.  

The Cure are one of those few remaining legacy bands who continue to be judged according to the old standards.  I think we've been here before.  "Bloodflowers" was expected to be a classic following the underwhelming "Wild Mood Swings".  It had the hyped up pedigree as the final album in the trilogy that began with "Pornography" and "Disintegration".  It's a good album and the Trilogy DVD is still one of the best projects they ever did, but who reps for "Bloodflowers" these days?  The self-titled album in 2004 was also praised by fans and earned respectable reviews.  It had Ross Robinson producing, adding a nu-metal sheen to the band's sound that at the very least made for an interesting pairing.  They headlined the Curiosa festival with a cadre of bands that owed them a debt creatively, and it all made perfect sense.  Old meets new, the Cure properly launch themselves into a 21st century context!  At the time I listened to the album a lot, but who listens to it today?   During the "Songs of a Lost World" tour, they played 60 different songs across 89 shows, but not a single one of them from "The Cure" (according to setlist.fm).  

"Songs of a Lost World" feels like a big deal now, not least because it's been such a long wait.   But who will be listening to it in ten or twenty years?   As much as there is to like about this album, I can't say that I hear anything "permanent" about it.  That said, much like the Stones beginning with "Steel Wheels", does that even matter?  Focusing too much on the quality of a new Cure album, and evaluating their worth based on that, might mean that we were asking the wrong questions all along.  

Donna Summer, "Gold" (Disc 2)

For the casual fan, this two disc set would be all the Donna Summer they really need.  For a complete newbie giving the collection a first glance, it would appear that each half of her career is given equal weight -- the first ten years on the first disc, and the next ten years on the second disc.  But even a listener with a passing familiarity of her songs would know that isn't true.  All her most famous songs are on Disc 1 -- and I'd be willing to bet that over 95 percent of what's been written about Donna Summer is centred on the Moroder-Bellote-Summer golden era.  I found myself in the mood to hear her music and even I grabbed Disc 2 completely by mistake and didn't realize it until I was out of the house.  

But as far as my own memories go, I'm too young to remember her 70's peak first hand.  Much like with Elton John, I was aware of who Donna Summer was as early as '79-'80 (my parents were big disco fans and "Bad Girls" was on heavy rotation in our house) but didn't really hear her as a contemporary artist and follow her songs in the charts until the MTV/Much Music revolution started.  So I have a soft spot for those 80's hits, starting with "She Works Hard For the Money" and its accompanying video starring Summer as a bored and exhausted waitress in a diner.  

The two discs of "Gold" form an interesting narrative.  Disc 1 showcases the perfect creative partnership between producer, songwriter, and performer.  The whole was galvanized into more than the sum of its parts, Summer's identity as an artist is fully formed even in the early days, she and her team nailed the formula from their very first record together and spent the rest of the decade perfecting it even further.  

Disc 2 tells a completely different story.  Disco has faded, and Summer looks to stay relevant.  She ditches her production team and tries something new, again, and again, and again.  She spends the rest of the decade trying to see what sticks.  Nothing does, at least not for more than an album's worth of material.  However, for the most part the results are very successful.  Rihanna was a chameleon of sorts, and could easily adapt to the style of her producer of choice.  Similarly, Donna Summer post-1980 could do a little bit of everything.  She had a last hurrah with Moroder, trying out the Minneapolis sound on "The Wanderer".  She did a stint with the "Thriller" crew, working with Rod Temperton and Quincy Jones on "Love Is In Control", which wouldn't have been far out of place on an album during MJ's imperial phase.  She anticipated ambient house with the jaw-dropping Quincy Jones/Vangelis collaboration "State of Independence".  Seriously, this record is a soul-stirring masterpiece, and I'm not exaggerating about the ambient house reference. 

Then she channeled Pat Benetar, going fem-rock lite with "She Works Hard For the Money" in collaboration with yet another superstar producer, Michael Omartian.  She followed that with another Omartian-produced single, dipping her toes into reggae by bringing in Musical Youth to sing backing vocals on "Unconditional Love".  It's yet another underrated single, with a fun and carefree music video to go along with it, kind of like Eddy Grant on an uncharacteristically bright day.  

The next few years were less successful as she experimented with classic rock (covering Lieber and Stoller) and smooth R&B ("Dinner With Gershwin"), a bit desperate to find a new niche.  This was like "Evita"-era Madonna happening ten years earlier, it's as if she wanted to leave the pop world behind altogether and cruise the awards show circuit.  Fortunately, she soon returned to her dance/club roots by latching onto the hi-NRG hitmakers whose names practically defined a genre -- Stock, Aitken, and Waterman.  "This Time I Know It's For Real" was a comeback of sorts, but "I Don't Wanna Get Hurt" is even better in that undefinable way that minimally separates any paint by numbers SAW production from virtually any other.   

She later worked with Civilles and Cole -- correctly identifying them as the early 90's dance music producers of choice.  She later dabbled in smooth R&B, knowing that the likes of All 4 One and Boyz II Men were taking off with that style.  When the winds of change passed through, Donna Summer always knew where to stand.   She even recorded "Con Te Partiro" (albeit in a cheesy dance version) before Andrea Bocelli made it his signature song.   

I can't pretend that any of this material is as incendiary as the songs on Disc 1.  So many disco stars never escaped the 70's, but Summer continued making hits well into the 90's, and in the course of getting there, found about ten different ways to transcend her disco diva image.  She was consistently interesting, always adapting, and never reverting to old formulas.  She was never more than one fluky collaboration away from a full-fledged comeback along the lines of Cher's "Believe".  And you'd better, um, believe, that Summer could have sung the daylights out of that song, in that style of dance music, if the opportunity had presented itself.   

Garbage, "Version 2", why?

I generally enjoy reading the Pitchfork Review.  I enjoy the concept -- in general, it's a deep dive into an album that was underappreciated in its time.  I can also respect the use of creative license by building up an album into something greater than it was, after all, that's what hooks the reader and gets them invested in songs or artists they may not be too familiar with.  But on one hand, there's mild exaggeration and overreach to drive home a point, and on the other hand, there's this ludicrous review of Garbage's second album by Sadie Sartini Garner.  

The first few paragraphs are devoted to woefully overheated prose about the purported trailblazing greatness of Shirley Manson, falling somewhere between a publicists' cry for attention and fanfic-lite.  "Female fronted rock band" was a tired cliche by the time Garbage hit the scene, smart and engaging women leading male-dominated bands was well understood and completely accepted by all.  Manson wasn't the least bit more interesting than anyone else, she was merely more successful than most.  Let's move on, because that's the least of this article's problems.  

The article then struggled to attribute an iota of originality to Garbage.  They were one of the most derivative major bands of the 90's!  Garner even lists all the bands whose ideas they lifted, albeit in an offhandedly vague way, e.g. "Curve had already bridged the worlds of shoegaze and UK club music".  Garbage's entire act -- their sound, image, and attitude -- was a near carbon copy of Curve, and everybody who listened to Curve in the 90's knew it! 

Then there's this howler, "No band did more to shape the techno-utopian vibes of Y2K than Garbage did with Version 2.0."  Even by the logic presented in this article, that sentence is nonsensical.  The final two paragraphs are about Garbage's rapid descent into irrelevance just two years later.  They shaped the future, but when the future arrived (a whopping 24 months later?!) they were unwelcome in it?  Garner tries to write a weepy ending by blaming other bands for overtaking Garbage and stealing the future out from under their noses.  No, Garbage were copycatting poseurs who sold millions of CDs by successfully marketing the ideas of other, better bands, and when their narrow window of commercial opportunity closed, they were done.  They were overtaken by fresher, hungrier bands that sounded different than them.  Everyone got what they deserved.  As for the "techno-utopian Y2K" vibes, it's almost as if dance-rock hybrids with a dash of end of the millennium uncertainty wasn't being peddled by ... just about every rock band that dabbled in electronica from 1997 onward.   

Nitzer Ebb, "Body of Work"

 I listened to this collection for the first time in years, and even for lapsed fans of the band who fondly remember throwing their bodies around on industrial club nights over thirty years, this is really all the Nitzer Ebb you'll ever need.  The remix CD is disappointingly patchy, the William Orbit and Flood remixes are far from their best work, and the George Clinton remix of "Fun To Be Had" isn't nearly as entertaining as you'd hope it would be.  "Hearts and Minds (Mix Hypersonic)", re-constructed by Daniel Miller and Nitzer Ebb, remains indispensable though.

The liner notes fawn over Nitzer Ebb as a visionary band far ahead of its time, which struck me as quite the exaggeration when I bought this CD over fifteen years ago.  For me, they were the quintessential band of their time, a perfect mesh of Euro EBM and Chicago-style industrial thrash.  This music had its moment and faded away like so many other 80's and 90's genres, and that's OK.  On the other hand, when listening to "Come Alive" now, I can appreciate how it anticipates Depeche Mode's "Sounds of the Universe" and other analog synth-drenched warm blippy electronica that was popular in the 00's.  

I still love "Lightning Man", it was and probably remains my favourite song by the band, but if there's another song that affirms this level of awesomeness while overcoming such preposterous lyrics, I have yet to hear it.  Nobody listens to Nitzer Ebb for their philosophical depth, it was always about the robotic chants, but even with thirty years of perspective, literally every line in "Lightning Man" makes absolutely no sense.  And yet, does this matter in the least? 

Oasis reunites, sort of

This has been the biggest story in music over the past few days, even though it's just the Gallagher brothers reuniting without any other original members of the band.  Now, I doubt there's any added money to be made by announcing the names of additional backing band members.  But Liam Gallagher has been performing "Definitely Maybe" with his own band in arenas across the UK.  Does adding Noel produce more than the sum of the two parts, i.e. an upgrade from 10K seat arenas to 60K seat football stadiums?  Apparently it does, although I have been surprised at the demand and excitement for the reunion so far.  With a year to go before the shows actually happen, the hype can only get bigger.  

Of course, (almost) everybody reunites.  Reliable estimates predict that the tour will draw 400 million pounds, with each Gallagher earning 50 million.  And that's just for the fourteen shows announced thus far!  How stupid would Noel and Liam have to be to not mend fences, at least temporarily (or pretend to mend fences!) with that kind of money at stake.  This only could have happened post-divorces (driving the need for extra income) and post-COVID (driving the demand and prices for concerts way up).  Obviously Taylor Swift and Coldplay have been able to print money with multi-year tours and ridiculous demand.  But the better comparison for Oasis would be Guns 'n' Roses, who took two killer albums released decades ago, a bitter rivalry with a miraculous reunion, and milked it for kingly sums of money for much longer than anyone thought possible.  Another example would be Jane's Addiction, whose reputation is also based on two huge albums (the post-reunion material, much like nearly anything released by Oasis after 1996, are fairly inconsequential), who have settled into a lucrative never-ending touring routine with surprisingly excellent reviews.  

And I'll say it again -- Morrissey may be insufferable and perpetually on the verge of being cancelled, Johnny Marr has a successful solo career and never hesitates to throw shade on the idea, and Andy Rourke recently passed away -- never say never to a Smiths reunion.  The money will be there, they just have to want it enough.    

Music in Canada summer '24

What are the hot new sounds in Canada this summer?  I have no clue!  However, I have been listening repeatedly to a top 100 Canadian songs playlist on Spotify, composed of classic Canadian rock from the 70's through the 90's.  Essentially these are the songs I grew up with, and it didn't matter whether you loved or hated them, because they were everywhere and they were the songs you absorbed simply by being near a radio while growing up in Canada during those decades.  

Funny how many of these songs sound better than ever, probably because we all eventually revert back to idolizing the stuff we heard when we were young.  But on the other hand, my six year old spontaneously breaks into singing BTO's "Taking Care of Business", so perhaps there is an objective case to be made for the indisputable greatness of this music compared to whatever the kids listen to these days.  

Amongst the Guess Who and Bryan Adams hits (guess what?  I can even tolerate "(Everything I Do) I Do It For You" these days), still sleek and edgy new wave classics (Rough Trade's "High School Confidential", Spoons' "Nova Heart"), hearing these songs gives me a reason to revisit The Tragically Hip and their complete lack of success in America.  "Fully Completely" was supposed to be the breakthrough, but with "Nevermind" and "Ten" blowing up on alternative radio in 1992, what chance did the Hip have with MOR pub rock and Gord Downie's twisted introspective ramblings?  The production is really thin and reedy too, projecting too many remnants of dated 1980's production.  The drums are absurdly gated and plastic-sounding, the guitar too clean, the vocals too upfront.  There's simply no bite to the music, nothing to grab the attention of the average Soundgarden or Alice In Chains fan.  Perhaps the hope was they'd hop on with REM's audience, but REM had been steadily building their US fanbase for a decade to that point.  The Tragically Hip had no history there.  "Fully Completely" is still a great album once you invite it in, but they needed to blast down the doors to get noticed in America in 1992 and this wasn't the album for it.         

Berry Sakharof, Mosh Ben Arie (live by the water in Rosh Haayin, July 18)

I'm not familiar with many of Mosh Ben Arie's songs, but I did learn that he's an excellent guitarist, much better than I was expecting.  But this is really a post about Berry Sakharof, who was essentially my gateway into modern Israeli rock.  Growing up in the 80's, Israeli music meant Ofra Haza, Nomi Shemer, and many interchangeable folksy ditties in the Peter, Paul and Mary style.  About eighteen years ago, Sakharof's album "Negiot" was recommended to me as a prime example of a maverick talent who had seamlessly adapted his style across different eras, and whose lyrics were thoughtful and edgy.  Indeed, he was as good as advertised.  David Bowie and Eric Clapton went through their electronica phases in the late 90's, so too did Berry Sakharof.  But Clapton and Bowie wanted to capitalize on contemporary trends in the short term, and quickly moved back into styles they were more comfortable with, with the collaborators they were accustomed to working with.  Sakharof's electronica and d'n'b-tinged songs became some of his most beloved and enduring hits. He continued to evolve, working with unexpected collaborators and releasing music in hybrid rock-adjacent genres.

On this night, Sakharof plays a trim 50-minute set of highlights from his deep catalog.  His deep baritone is a bit weathered as he moves into his late 60's, but each performance is impeccable.  You never know how long these great artists will stick around, and it's never too late to see them.     

Max Oleartchik

Yesterday I randomly happened to think about Max and Big Thief (a band whose music I have admittedly never heard).  I believe I was reading about the suspended Harvard and Columbia college students getting their suspensions lifted without any consequences or further punishments.  The naive (or perhaps delusional) university administrators behind these decisions clearly want the whole controversy to blow over, but they don't understand that the next time will be far more tragic.  The next time, rather than merely threatening violence, these perpetrators will be prepared to use it.  When actions carry consequences, escalation is sure to follow.  Then my mind jumped to Big Thief's silly decision to cancel their Tel Aviv concerts in 2022.  Their explanations made no sense -- they had played in Israel a number of times previously but those gigs flew under the radar because they presumably weren't a big enough deal in the US -- and those actions didn't defuse the situation, they escalated it. 

I was thinking about those things yesterday.  Today, uncannily, we learned that Max Oleartchik (son of Israeli classic rock legend Alon Oleartchik) has left Big Thief, or was fired, we don't really know because the band's official statement was impossible to parse and filled with bullshit about infinite love and mutual respect.  Funny, I thought that mutual respect meant having due consideration for the roots and ethnicity of others, and that infinite love would trump selfish careerism and virtue signaling.  Clearly Big Thief's Adrianne Lenker has chosen her side.  Truly, there are many things in her world that are "naive and not thought out", but playing shows in her bandmate's hometown should not have been one of them.  

Big Thief haven't played live in almost a year but have a string of high profile festival dates lined up next month.  Obviously they're not going to bring in a new bassist this late in the game, so clearly Oleartchik's departure happened some time ago and they've managed to keep it secret until now.  

Giving in to the mob has never worked and never will.  I have watched this from up close for nearly two decades.  Artists who refuse to be bullied or threatened are left alone.  Those who give in may think they're promoting peace and understanding, but they're actually inviting more hate.  Big Thief should understand that this isn't over. Max's departure will be the subject of every interview and every in-depth profile for years.  Oh, and do you think that the hordes will go back to adoring you now that the "zionist" is out of the band?  No, they'll excoriate you for associating with him, for playing Tel Aviv in the past, for reaping profits on songs shaped by their former bassist.  It won't end, and your shame hasn't come close to peaking.  

PJ Harvey, "Let England Shake - Demos"

I haven't heard any of the demos or B-sides/rarities collections that PJ Harvey has released over the past few years.  Why not start with demos of one of the best albums of the past thirty years?

These recordings were made at her home in Dorset in 2008.  Remarkably, the melodies and lyrics are nearly identical to those on the proper recording, which was released some three years later.  These kinds of recording usually invite discussion over which demos might be better than the studio versions, but I don't think there is any point in discussing that.  The short answer is that the studio recording is far better because the instrumentation, arrangements, and vocals are immeasurably richer and more innovative.  But the demos offer a fascinating glimpse into what a PJ Harvey solo tour might sound like.  On that basis alone, the demo album rewards repeated listens.  

Sonically, it also offers a number of interesting ideas and gives insights into her creative process.  I had no idea that the opening melody in the title track was a twisted, macabre take on the song "Istanbul (Not Constantinople)".  It's much better that the sample was left out of the studio recording, but the connection is obvious when you hear them together.  Same for the Eddie Cochran sample on "The Words That Maketh Murder" -- the lyric works much better as the surprise ending of sorts, rather than telegraphing it from the start using the sample.  Elsewhere, the lo-fi nature of the demo adds a gritty intensity to songs like "Bitter Branches".  The echo and reverb on many tracks gives a cathedral-like quality and gravitas to many of the songs, despite the sparse instrumentation. 

"The Colour of the Earth" presents probably the biggest contrast between the studio and demo versions.  A big part of that is Polly's vocal, rather than the Mick Harvey lead on the album.  I find Polly's version crushingly sad, it communicates the pity and tragedy of war better (arguably) than any song on either the studio or demo recordings.  The Mick Harvey vocal conveys a sense of pride for the necessary sacrifice, while still placing the song's emphasis on solemnly mourning the dead.  But Polly's vocal strips away any semblance of the heroism involved, only the grotesque sight of dried blood and anguished cries of the soldiers remain.        

One Dove, "Morning Dove White"

I was happy to see this album featured in the Pitchfork Review because it's been largely forgotten by anyone who wasn't around in '93.  And even then it was very much an underground cult hit.  I didn't hear the full album until about fifteen years later, at the time, it because a fave go-to for some of my early podcast mixes, or for fresh all over again downtempo listening in general.  When Andrew Weatherall passed away, I remarked that I'd come to like "Morning Dove White" more than "Screamadelica".  I think the Primal Scream album is a better production achievement, considering that he essentially invented a new genre out of nothing (the dance-rock makeover), but the One Dove record is the superior album.  

Pitchfork got the setting wrong though.  One Dove were not a rock band dabbling in dance, when I listen to them I don't hear a rock band first and foremost.  The suggestion is fairly ridiculous -- they were a rock band because certain songs have guitar solos?  So did Underworld at around the same time, and they weren't a rock band by any means.   I think the One Dove/rock association gets retroactively added because of the Weatherall-Primal Scream connection.  Primal Scream were undoubtedly a rock band whose career was transformed by working with Weatherall, who worked with One Dove around the same time, ergo, the situations for the two bands are similar.  But in my opinion that comparison is incorrect.  

For a few years in the 1990's, "ambient" was a catch-all buzzword to describe all sorts of non-rave dance music and downtempo pseudo-chill out stuff, and even rock/post-rock bands that dabbled in dance or dub (e.g. Seefeel) or lounge/lo-fi (Stereolab).  People were actively seeking out alternatives to the ecstasy/smashed off one's face club scene while still keeping their finger on the pulse of club music.  One Dove fit perfectly into this lazily defined category.  Yes, it was silly and confusing and non-sensical to lump so many disparate acts under the "ambient" umbrella and everyone knew it.  The moniker was openly mocked, even on the scale of expected mockery of absurdly concocted "scenes", but the name was used and used regularly.  well as and people actively sought out mellower downtempo stuff.  Listen to the first "Excursions In Ambience" compilation and you'll hear nothing resembling the beatless extended drone that was associated with the term "ambient" by 1994-5.   One Dove fit nicely into that early 90's "ambient" genre, alongside acts that nobody would possibly confuse with rock music.  

Like with many "forgotten" albums, "Morning Dove White" came around at the wrong time.   Years later, St Germain's "Tourist" became the coffee shop downtempo house album of choice for people who hate dancing.   In an alternative universe, "MDW" could have been that soundtrack. 

"All Yesterday's Parties: The Velvet Underground in Print 1966-1971", ed. Clinton Heylin

I bought this book several years ago with high expectations.  But every time I opened it and began to read, I quickly became bored.  Now, after finally slogging through the entire book after a number of false starts and lengthy breaks, I can't really recommend it unless you're doing research for a VU article.  Nevertheless, it does feel like an important work because almost everything about the VU was written after they split up.  Their massive influence on generations of bands is unimpeachable, but over the years I'd heard conflicting accounts about what people thought of them while they were active.  The basic story stated that they were widely shunned and even hated, outside of the rare visionary such as Lester Bangs who appreciated their genius.   The truth seemed to be more nuanced.  For most of their existence, people simply didn't know who the VU were, and you can't hate what you've never heard of.

This articles in this collection provide a mirror into the development of the music press itself.  In 1966 the coverage was done by entertainment reporters with some general knowledge about music, many of whom feigned curiosity in a band like the VU thanks to the Warhol association.  Half of the book covers the 1970-1971 period, by which point the writing takes on the tone of the modern music press, with music-only specialist writers offering insightful criticism and context.  

Clinton Heylin's introductory essay is nearly unreadable.  Filled with cryptic prose and long, scene-setting description that made little sense, it did nothing to explain or enlighten anything about the articles that follow. 

Given the dearth of  audio and video recordings from the Warhol years, a first-hand, insider's view of the band would be welcome.  But the first person accounts of the Exploding Plastic Inevitable shows are mainly short (less than a thousand words and often not more than a couple hundred) descriptions by baffled and overwhelmed writers.  Although if you've heard the audio of a concert from the time, in order to have a reference point (my first exposure was a bootleg of Columbus from November 4, 1966), you can read the account by Larry Mccombs from Chicago July 1966, close your eyes and almost imagine being there. 

There's an intolerable Lou Reed interview from 1969  in Open City (Reed at his absolute worst) which is balanced by a charming 1970 interview with Sterling Morrison for Fusion.  I didn't know anything about Fusion, but judging by the articles in this anthology, they had consistently good coverage of the VU.

The best material is from the last two years 1970-1971, with contributions from many excellent writers who report on the upcoming release of Loaded, the Max's Kansas City residency in New York in the summer of '70, and its aftermath with Lou Reed quitting the group.  This is where the narrative formed about the VU as an underrated entity that deserved a wider audience.  One even gets the impression that "Loaded" might have been a breakthrough album for them, given its radio friendly sensibilities and a seeming willingness by Atlantic to promote the album properly.  

Reading the 1970-1971 material got me thinking about which VU member "won" their early 90's reunion. Cale's recollections in his autobiography "What's Welsh For Zen" were mostly negative.  He wrote that Reed and his management team took over everything, presenting the reunion as a vehicle for Reed.  Cale didn't like the sound mixing on stage, and felt that the band didn't sound daring or adventurous enough. Cale also insisted that he wouldn't do the reunion without new material, and "Coyote" was written to placate him.  This surely wasn't what Cale had in mind -- a jukebox of their old songs and a single, new song (a substandard composition for either man) as a perfunctory nod toward being a living, contemporary band.  The VU split up only a couple of months into what could have been a creatively and financially successful reunion tour, they didn't play a single concert in the US.  

I have little doubt that the failure of the reunion was mostly due to Reed.  He wanted to rebrand himself as an alt-rock pioneer and get the acclaim that the likes of Neil Young did once grunge took off in 1991.  The VU were the expendable backing band in that pursuit.  But in the long run, Cale "won" the reunion  by successfully repackaging the VU as the Reed/Cale experimental drone rock version, rather than the FM radio friendly Reed/Yule version.  Their insistence at excluding Doug Yule meant that the live sets were heavy on the first two albums and the "V.U."/"Another View" material that Cale contributed to in '68 and '69.  Thus, Cale emerged from the reunion as the irreplaceable soul of the VU, who quietly faded into obscurity when he left.  But "All Yesterday's Parties" (and live documents such as the Quine Tapes) clearly show that the VU's best days as a touring band, and their best shot at national stardom came in the Yule era.  The advance press for "Loaded" was glowing and receptive. There was actual anticipation surrounding the record, and considering its accessibility, they had a finite shot at a breakthrough that would have been impossible with Cale in the band.  

Is Taylor bigger than the Beatles?

This is a reaction to Rick Beato reacting to the NYT's interactive piece about Taylor Swift.  

The charts are simply too different now and any attempt at statistical comparisons feels misguided.  How can we compare physical single and album sales from the 1960's with the mosaic of metrics that contribute to chart rankings these days?  Among other things, as noted by the NYT, in today's market anything on the radio can contribute to a chart ranking, regardless of whether it is officially released as a single.  When Taylor Swift releases an album, nearly every song on it will appear on the Hot 100.  But The Beatles would have done the same had those rules been in effect in their prime. Considering the amount of airplay that even the Beatles' deep cuts receive over the decades, it's not a stretch to suppose that under the current rules, they could have had double or triple the Number Ones or Top Tens that they actually did.  

As you'd expect, Beato tackles the issue from the songwriter and producer's perspectives.  All the Beatles' Number Ones were written by one of three people.  All their best-known records were produced by the same person.  Taylor Swift has collaborated with about ten producers and creative partners.  The claim is that her hits are an amalgamation of styles and ideas (Aaron Dessner/Taylor Swift tracks sound like Aaron Dessner, Max Martin/Taylor Swift tracks sound like Max Martin, etc.), as opposed to the Beatles essentially coming up with all their ideas themselves.  On one hand, producers have been getting the upper hand, credit and fame-wise, for at least the past twenty years in pop music.  Max Martin, Ryan Tedder, and Timbaland are household names who have often overshadowed the artists they collaborated with or produced.  On the other hand, Taylor Swift may have worked with the best, but what was the common thread joining all those disparate elements?  It's too easy to dismiss her achievements by claiming that she had lots of help.  But most artists are lucky to find even two or three outside collaborators who really "get" them, that they can have a deep, creative rapport with.  Swift has found a way to adapt her songwriting to an incredible variety of styles, spanning well over a decade of phenomenal success, while working with an amazing bunch of people who all have precisely one thing in common: her.   Madonna's career could be characterized in much the same way.  When you're the common thread connecting Jellybean Benitez, Lenny Kravitz, Shep Pettibone, William Orbit, and Mirwais, then you're the secret ingredient more so than any single person on that impressive list. 

Personally, at the moment I'm more interested in the legacies of these artists.  When I was growing up, it was practically a given that the Beatles were the biggest band of all time, with a popularity and cultural impact that was unlikely to ever be surpassed.  And now, more than sixty years after their debut record, people are still talking about them.  Will people be talking about Taylor Swift in sixty years?  I think that with the shrinking pool of current pop stars and the startling rise in catalog sales, it's never been harder to predict an artist's future legacy.  Has there even been less of a consensus about which contemporary albums are entering the canon?  Which albums will be most valued going forward, listened to even by people outside of their fan base, simply because that music is considered a necessary part of any serious music fan's vocabulary?  Perhaps that's an ignorant question, considering I don't really listen to new albums anymore.  

In today's climate, you simply never know when a chance meme can boost Fleetwood Mac's popularity thanks to its discovery by a new generation of listeners, or when "Running Up That Hill" can become a megahit after nearly forty years following a placement in a popular TV show.  I happened to listen to some Neil Young this week.  Is Neil Young's legacy on the rise, or in decline?  I have no idea. I feel his critical peak was reached in the early 90's, when he was hailed as the godfather of grunge and lo-fi rock.  But he's released another twenty five albums since "Ragged Glory"!  His career wasn't even at its midpoint in 1990!  Is he becoming more legendary as a timeless elder statesman of rock, or is he watering down his legacy with each passing year and each album that goes nearly unnoticed?  One can list off countless artists in this vein.  Fifteen years ago, it felt like Lady Gaga was a generational phenomenon who would dominate the charts and the tabloids for as long as she wanted.  She's great and hasn't even hit the age of 40 yet ... but it already feels like she's well into the post Superbowl halftime show legacy artist phase of her career.  She hasn't had a non-duet Number One hit since 2011 ("Born This Way").  Will her music be recognizable in 2040 to people born this year?  I really have no clue and am not sure how to even search for the answer.    

Steve Albini RIP

Albini leaves behind an incredible legacy.  From his own music, to the thousands of artists he recorded, to his still on-point essay "The Problem With Music", his passing is a huge blow to the music industry.

There are far too many Albini-engineered records that I have never heard but really should (Breeders "Pod", the Cheap Trick stuff, the Manics record he worked on).  In chronological order, here is a sampling of my favourite and most memorable Albini-engineered records over the years.

PJ Harvey, "Rid of Me" (1993)

Nirvana, "In Utero" (1993)

Two landmark 90's rock albums, released in the same year.  They both represented an extreme from which there was no other way forward but to scale back.  PJ Harvey couldn't possibly have made music more raw, scathing, or caustic than this, so she didn't bother trying.  Similarly, "Unplugged In New York" suggested that Nirvana would have also taken their music in a very different direction had Kurt Cobain lived.  

Labradford, "Fixed:Context" (2001)

Low, "Things We Lost in the Fire" (2001)

Two of my favourite albums of 2001 that I regularly revisit to this day.  These albums are raw in a completely different sort of way.  They're sparse, lonely, tragic, with every note hanging in the air for what seems like forever.  Albini lets you hear everything -- every breath by the performers, the scrape of the guitar pick on the strings, the heavy air cloaking each note in the studio.  

Mogwai, "My Father, My King" (2001)

Godspeed You! Black Emperor, "Yanqui U.X.O." (2002)

These were released at the absolute peak of my fandom for both bands, I ravenously anticipated them both.  However, they turned out to be underwhelming for much the same reasons.  Music this dense, unabating, and expansive simply needs to be felt in the concert hall, not listened to at home.  If Albini couldn't replicate the live experience of these songs on record then nobody could.   

The Ex, "Turn" (2004)

I saw The Ex live around this time and they were a mini-revelation.  They were confrontational but had catchy, swingable rhythms.  They confirmed my Two Drummer Rule for bands.  The album was overly long but that wasn't Albini's fault.  

Sunn 0))), "Life Metal" (2018)

Albini working with Sunn 0))) just made sense.  I think their albums were always superbly recorded, but did anyone do a better job of mixing vocals with their music?

"His 'n' Hers" at 30

Matty Pywell published a great retrospective review of Pulp's finest long player for Paste.  It's an intensely personal look back at how the album influenced his life, and I found myself relating to so many of his sentiments.  Interestingly, Pywell discovered it some twenty years after its original release, which speaks to Pulp's cross-generational staying power.  

He naturally compares Pulp with their then-contemporaries Blur and Oasis, who will be forever linked in any cursory mention of 90's Britpop even though the three bands sound nothing alike and hailed from completely different areas of Britain.  All three bands have been endlessly analyzed, but it bears repeating -- Blur were the most inauthentic of the three, as noted by Pywell, they were "a middle class band who used working class tropes in their songs".  On record, they were content to drift along as sound tourists rather than reveal who they really were, a stigma which they began to shake only around the time of "13".  At the time, I referred to Blur as the "band I liked the most without really loving them", and the standoffish duplicity of their music was the key to the problem.  Say what you will about Oasis, but this was never the issue with them -- what you saw was what you got.  But Oasis were almost a parody of a laddish band, and despite a number of great songs, they were rarely capable of that gut punch emotional rush, or anything beyond an AI-enhanced football chanting singalong.  There has been plenty of talk of an Oasis reunion yet again this year, seeing as it's the 30th anniversary of "Definitely Maybe" (Liam Gallagher plans to perform it on a solo tour), not to mention the regular Blur and Pulp comebacks over the past fifteen years.  But barring the excitement of hearing the hits from the first two Oasis albums played in a massive field by the original creators, does a prospective Oasis reunion really matter to anyone?  To revisit a phrase, was this band ever anybody's life, or is the anticipation more a sort of Knebworth revivalism than anything approaching cultural importance?

Pulp were entirely authentic and were led by the greatest visionary of the Britpop era.  In Brett Anderson's autobiography, he urged fans to not seek out early Suede recordings, insisting that there were no hidden gems in there.  Early Suede, he wrote, was the sound of a band taking the time to find themselves, stumbling their way through any number of lineup changes and recording mishaps and embarrassing gigs and awkward lyrics in order to develop their potential and eventually settle into who they envisioned themselves to be.   Pulp recorded some good songs in the mid-80's, but it took Jarvis Cocker some fifteen years to realize his vision.  Pulp had a sound that was entirely their own (part musical cabaret, part 80's new-wave discotheque) and a master communicator as their frontman and lyricist, who could encapsulate any year in your teenage life in a single line.  

Pywell writes about feeling like an outsider (a common theme in many Pulp songs), expectations of "masculinity" and how Jarvis served as a role model in that regard, and so many more themes that I entirely relate to because I also thought about them in my late teens and early twenties when I was the same as him when he discovered "His 'n' Hers".  He highlights a line from "Someone Like the Moon" (my least favorite song on the record) as the album's most heartbreaking moment, and gave me an appreciation for that song that I has never internalized before.  It shows that we still have plenty to learn about this album, although my basic opinions on it haven't changed much in thirty years:

1) "His 'n' Hers" is a musical waiting to happen, based upon the adventures of a faux-tough guy gang of high schoolers ("Joyriders") in a working class town, and their diverse cast of individual crushes, taking in every variety of uncertainty, angst, and teenage anguish along the way.

2) The high point of the album is "Pink Glove", a five minute pulverization of the heart that has rarely been equaled in terms of pure, chest-crushing emotion.  Note that Jarvis barely takes a breath throughout -- there is hardly a moment in the song without vocals.     

Klaus Mäkelä in Chicago

 This story has been making waves in the classical community, as Makela lands a job with yet another top orchestra.  For a conductor who hasn't even turned 30, the amount of praise and responsibility that has been heaped on him is nearly unprecedented.  But as Alex Ross has noted in his piece for the New Yorker, it's become all too fashionable for conductors to rack up multiple appointments -- a trend that Ross and many other critics find indulgent and counterproductive to the quality of the music.  And with conductors having to jet around the world to fulfill so many engagements, they don't have time to connect with their host cities and build connections to their communities.  That doesn't make sense socially, or financially.

David Hurwitz says that there's no way that Makela understands the music he's conducting better than the orchestras themselves.  But in every profile of Makela (the latest being a prominent feature in the NYT last week), the emphasis is on the blazing first impression he makes on every orchestra he visits.  He wins them over immediately, and the musicians enthusiastically vote to recruit him.  I have little doubt that both takes are correct, so what gives?  Why are orchestras lining up to work with someone less experienced than they are? 

I think the era of the superstar conductor is mostly over.  That is, we no longer see the larger-than-life svengali figure/strict disciplinarian/artistic prophet who molds the orchestra in his image (the use of "his" is intentional, superstar conductors in this vein from prior generations were exclusively male).  In those days, the quality of the orchestra was more closely linked to the conductor's talent and name value, and thus, the conductor was the single biggest factor in drawing money to the concerts.  Now, it's not the conductor who draws the money, it's the orchestra (and star soloists, and occasionally a name guest conductor).  In that sense, the CSO doesn't expect Makela to teach them anything profound, they simply need a conductor who has a few decent ideas about concert programming and some charismatic marketability.  And it's always nice to work with people you really like.  

Post-pandemic, I don't feel that the aging (and aged) audiences for classical music were clamoring to get back to the concert hall, much unlike other forms of entertainment.  The pandemic led to catastrophic financial losses to the industry, and many orchestras has to shut down or make severe budget cuts.  Now is the time to change the presentation of the product, it's the perfect time to take risks and give the public something new while smashing the older stereotypes.  

Or maybe it's like the situation with baseball managers, who also used to be cagey veterans who had paid their dues managing lesser clubs for decades.  They were brought in to mold the team into an extension of the manger's personality and philosophy toward the game.  These days, roster construction and organizational strategy are handled in other rungs of the management ladder, and it's quite common for teams to hire an unproven young ex-player to be their on-field manager.  That's not a knock on managers, or on Makela, it's just that they're not expected to bring the same skills and intangibles to their positions that their predecessors of a generation ago needed to bring.  

It's all about the content, the decline of the album, how to make money off music part XXVII, and a million other things

The title of this post is a twenty word summary of a recent article in musicradar, which tries to cover far too much ground and comes off rather unfocused IMO, but still curates a number of important issues that I often think about.  There's nothing particularly surprising in there (besides, perhaps, the lead singer of the Soup Dragons having a second career as a successful DJ), but consider the following:

1)  I disagree with this quote from the decidedly old-school Cinthie: "Back in the day you could really tour with a good album for two years. At the moment it feels like you only get the attention for two weeks and then the crowd is screaming for new music." 

In the sense that an overarching music press doesn't really exist anymore, and that no album can generate critical discourse much beyond the week before and week after its release, this is correct.  But to a band's fans, the tour is the thing and critical attention is just one hub in the giant PR release to promote their brand, potential licensing opportunities, and any upcoming tours.  There is still plenty of money to be made in touring, especially with the cost of live events being sky high across so many avenues of entertainment (and yet not sky high because demand is through the roof and people are happy to pay the asking price)

2) One of the reasons I have all but given up on new album releases is the sense that the album doesn't need to exist anymore.  Many artists can get by with drips of new singles, EP's and miscellaneous content.  Playlists are omnipresent, many people don't even listen to a specific artist for more than a track or two, let alone listen to albums from start to finish.  You don't need a new album to go on tour if the fan base is up for it.  The album isn't the once every few years grand statement that it once was.  

3) The article correctly laments the notion that music is a basic commodity that one can, and should, get for free.  The demand for vinyl is a reaction to this -- a need to prescribe value to music by people who still value their music collections.  

4) In the 90's the business model for the music industry was simple because for all intents and purposes, there was only one product on sale.  The CD album was sold for exorbitant prices, and those sales could be milked for over two years by staggered releases of singles and music videos to the relevant outlets.  Some major artists didn't even have to tour because their album sales kept them happy, rich, and relevant.  I think many of the lamentations about the lack of a new model come from people who built their careers on the old model.  They don't want to go back to the way things were, but they miss the old sentiments.  Selling music was more straightforward, and you knew what needed to be done to make a living.  Now the business is too fractured, and disproportionate power is held by streaming giants that perpetuate a compensation model that is horrible for the artists.  I don't know the way out of it, but I don't think there's much hope in returning to a simple solution again.  In the same way that I enjoy consuming music in many forms (CD, vinyl, streaming, downloads, social media, at home, at work, in the car, and in various combinations of the above), artists will also need to navigate a complex web of options, and it's quite possible that no "winning" model will ever emerge again.   

Jeff Mills, "Live at the Liquid Room"

Without exaggeration, I believe that  Gabriel Szatan's retrospective review of Jeff Mills' legendary "Live at the Liquid Room" mix is one of the best articles about techno ever written.   He provides invaluable history on the conceptualization and recording of the album, all of which was new to me.  It's so important to get these details written down before such priceless anecdotes from first hand observers are lost forever.  He also hits upon many of the big questions regarding techno's refusal to evolve and its current identity crisis.  In short, when your music is the future, there's a sense that you don't need to evolve, rather, you can play the long game and wait for the surroundings to evolve to you.  However, when you can literally beam hundreds of years of music history to a handheld device in an instant, then technology isn't cool and futuristic anymore.  In fact it's the opposite -- overfamiliarity has rendered it bland and ordinary.  Techno is turning into the Detroit equivalent of Haight-Ashbury.  Everyone who wasn't there at the time is tired of hearing about the promise and potential behind the music.  Those who can't give up their tie-dye from decades ago are sad old hippies who won't recognize that the world has evolved since their heyday.   In addition, in the 21st century, modern pop producers have been scavenging techno for ideas and seamlessly integrating them into today's music.  When the beats and sounds have already become mainstream, then being a techno purist and dreaming of a post-GM cybernetic Detroit starts feeling a bit quaint and outdated. 

The techno vanguard seem to recognize this stasis, and understand that they are legends stuck in the past, and nobody knows the way forward.  It's cool that Carl Craig can do whatever he wants (he's earned it) and can return to his jazz roots or collaborate with orchestras, but on the other hand, none of it feels as fresh or daring as it did twenty or even ten years ago.  Speaking of Carl Craig, a recent interview in Musicradar touches on many of the same themes as Szatan's review.  His experience is invaluable and it's great that he's still creative and very active, but that's the impression you'd get when reading any one of a million interviews with a Pete Townshend or David Gilmour in the 90's in Q or Rolling Stone.  

Back to Mills, I have long been in awe of "Live At the Liquid Room", my bewildered, breathless reaction to the album set me on a mission to see him play live, which through various circumstances, didn't happen for another fifteen years.   At the time, Mills' technical wizardry almost defied belief.  In the days before digital DJ'ing, how could someone play so aggressively, insistently, and at such breakneck speed?  Perhaps the drama is lessened when one can imagine AI bots reproducing such a mix with regularity.   But which resources do you use to train an algorithm when there's only one man alive who could pull it off? 

"The Greatest Night in Pop", dir. Bao Nguyen

I love 80's nostalgia as much as the next person, and have fond memories of watching the "We Are The World" video countless times during 1985, but "The Greatest Night in Pop" seems ... needlessly ghoulish and insensitive?  Doesn't this all but glorify famine and recast a very real humanitarian disaster as a moment of triumph for smug and rich music stars?  Devoid of all relevant context, as a casual viewer I would think "good thing for those millions of starving Africans, because it paved the way for a generation of music stars to reach the pinnacle of their profession".  Really, mass starvation was a necessary condition in order for pop music to produce its finest ever night?

For Lionel Richie, it really was a singular night -- he hosted the AMA's, won all the big awards, and was a key architect behind WATW.  Obviously he participated with the best intentions, and still seems awed by the magnitude of what he did (and pays touching tribute to those who have since passed away, in particular Michael Jackson).  It's the overarching, editing and directorial "best night ever!!" decision making that is at fault, not the first hand takes of the musicians.  Bruce Springsteen downplays his role and says very little, like it was just another day at the office, a good deed for a worthy cause.  As it happens, later that year he appeared on a record with an even better collection of talent ("Sun City").

The best moment of the documentary had nothing to do with WATW (the song), it was the wholly spontaneous version of "Day O" to honour Harry Belafonte.  

"Rhapsody In Blue" at 100

This post isn't so much about "Rhapsody", which everybody knows is unimpeachably great, but about the NYT's risible semi-takedown of the piece.

The comments section is full of debates about the intentions of the piece.  A small minority of commenters claim that it's a glowing tribute to Gershwin that most of us aren't enlightened enough to understand.  Whatever.  For me, the piece falls between harsh accusations of cultural appropriation (Gershwin stole from other cultures, prevented those more deserving of getting their proper credit for developing this style of music, and the largely white classical music industry has been reaping the concert revenue for the past century) and damning with faint praise (with a few reservations, "Rhapsody" is wonderful and Gershwin was a cultural unifier, but he should have known better and we've all failed artists of colour since).  

I shudder to think what the NYT has in store for the 100th anniversary of "Porgy and Bess".  And it should go without saying that Gershwin was not white, despite that descriptor being used multiple times in the piece.  Because naturally, Jews are not white.  Not in colour or in stature.  To anyone living in the 1920's and 1930's, the idea of applying "white privilege" to any Jewish artist in the performing arts would get you laughed out of any uppercrust supperclub or country club in the US or Canada.  It saddens me to read such shlock about Gershwin, who was both a pioneer and a populist, who lended credibility to genres that many "serious" composers wouldn't dare to touch, getting smeared as a two-bit cultural huckster by revisionist cultural crypto-critics with their own personal socio-political axe to grind.  

 

Catalogue music is king

The Telegraph published an article lamenting on how difficult it is for new artists to generate hit albums.  Note that this refers to hit albums, not singles, as far as I can tell, hit singles for newer artists are booming just fine.  

I find it difficult to sympathize with how new artists supposedly have it so bad.   I think it was inevitable that with streaming becoming the dominant medium for listening, and algorithms shaping personal tastes (as opposed to actually going into a music store, listening, and deciding what you like for yourself) that catalogue music would explode.  It's never been easier or more convenient to seek out older music.  The music industry loves this model -- labels don't have to spend money on A&R and marketing, every lisence agreement and stream is pure profit for them.  Directing listener's tastes toward more profitable music is obviously in their interest, so why wouldn't they embrace streaming and allow algorithms to market their music to listeners for them?  And of course, with this system the consumer never owns anything -- they pay subscription money in perpetuity to continue hearing the songs they want.  

Rick Beato spoke about a topic that I believe is related -- the homogeneity of radio station programming and producer styles.  Uniformity leads to collectively playing it safe.  National radio programming means you can't risk catering to niche elements of your listener base, you need to tailor your programming choices to the broadest possible audience, and that extends to the sounds of the records as well.

The increasing homogenization of music makes catalogue music stand out even more.  "Running Up That Hill" wasn't a massive hit after thirty seven years just because it was featured in a popular Netflix show.  It became a hit because it doesn't sound remotely like anything else produced in the 2020's.  It didn't sound like anything produced in the 1980's either, but the point isn't that listeners today are more cultured or educated and appreciate Kate Bush more than the supposedly less-forward thinking listeners of the 80's.  The point is that homogenization and corporately approved algorithms has numbed the taste of the modern listener to such an extent that a Kate Bush can put 90% of today's music to shame simply by existing and getting even the smallest random marketing boost.  How many other would-be hits from past decades are waiting in the wings, ready to burst onto the charts if they're given the tiniest promotional opening?

Bo! Soon Is Now

I'm sure he's told the story before, but Johnny Marr's description of the creative process that lead to the iconic intro riff to "How Soon Is Now? is nothing short of mesmerizing. 

When you listen to his story, and compare the guitar parts without tremelo (pleasant, but not really happening, as acknowledged by Marr) and with the tremelo, then it couldn't be any more obvious.  Why had I never made this association in my mind even once during the past thirty plus years?  Of course it's a Bo Diddley sound and groove.  What else could it even be? 

Of course musicians try to emulate their heroes.  It's just that their heroes aren't always the people we expect.  The contemporary music press frames a band and their influences according to then current trends.  A band markets itself relative to what its fans want.  British indie rock fans weren't name dropping Bo Diddley in 1985.  He was too bluesy, too American, too older generation.  

The best thing about social media is its proclivity to get these kinds of stories out, irrespective of the commercial apparatus that surrounds the music.  

"How Soon Is Now" is older now than Bo Diddley's earliest hits were when "How Soon Is Now" was recorded.  The best way for a legend like Marr to advertise his current projects is to open the curtain into a long departed world.