If you've been anywhere near a radio this summer, you're probably completely sick of hearing this song. Either that or you can't stop humming it. Or quite possibly both. Come to think of it, a song probably isn't a bona fide megahit if you're not both sick of hearing it and also can't get it out of your head.
"Call Me Maybe" is the most successful song ever by an "Idol" franchise finalist, and it's really not even close. Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood have sold tens of millions of albums between them, but neither had a true megahit single. "Before He Cheats" and "Since U Been Gone" were all over the radio and will probably keep earning royalties from airplay for a long time, but they still only reached #8 and #2, respectively, on the US Hot 100. "Call Me Maybe" has been at #1 for seven weeks and counting.
It might even be the biggest hit ever by a Canadian artist. Here is the full list of Canadian artists with a hit song that spent seven weeks at number one on the Hot 100 in the past fifty years: Bryan Adams, Snow. That's it. (I'm sure you can guess which songs they were, if not, you can look them up here, along with all the rest of the Canadian number ones). And just to be clear, both spent exactly seven weeks at number one -- Carly Rae Jepsen can break the tie and lay a stronger claim to the biggest ever Canadian pop in just one week's time.
Percy Faith's "Theme From a Summer Place" spent nine weeks at number one in 1960, so Jepsen has a ways to go before breaking the record for most weeks at number one all-time by a Canadian. In this era of global pop stars, "Call Me Maybe" has been number one in over a dozen countries on four continents, which is something that doesn't translate to 1960. "Theme From a Summer Place" is as iconic and beloved as songs get though. So the numbers would indicate that Jepsen has outdone Percy Faith on paper, but the numbers don't tell us much about what makes a song memorable.
And the most amazing thing about Jepsen's success? She was discovered on a show where borderline talent could "shine" and outlandish praise for total mediocrity was standard operating procedure ... Canadian Idol! Who could have predicted that that turd of a show would produce an actual pop star?
I didn't like "Call Me Maybe" at first because the chorus seemed cloying, and it didn't know what kind of song it was trying to be. This might be because I first heard it when I watched the video. It starts out like a teen power pop song, then it flips the page suddenly and turns into a dance pop tune, then you see Jepsen and her band trying to rock out in a garage. On camera they're a bunch of suburban brats playing rock music but the song is pure bubblegum dance pop which doesn't fit the images at all!
This is unusual in pop, I think. Songs become hits because they're unashamedly something very clear -- unashamedly pop, unashamedly gooey ballads, etc. But a amateurishly produced track with a flimsy beat from a cheap drum machine mixed with rock sung by a 26-year old trying to act like a teenager? That's not supposed to work, and yet somehow it does. It makes perfect sense that this was originally written as a folk song, you can definitely hear that in the intro. Then they tried to shoehorn what was probably a pretty but forgettable folk tune into a pop mold, and the two genres never properly meshed, you can hear the hybridization of the track as clear as day. But somehow it all works, probably very much by accident.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Wednesday, July 18, 2012
The Stones turn 50, catalog music sales are booming
Thoughts on a couple of recent articles:
1. Maura Johnston summarized some of the reasons why sales of catalog music are outpacing those of new music in the Village Voice. If there's one indestructible fact of the digital music age, it's that people will still pay money for music by beloved, established artists. The extraordinary success of The Beatles "1", which was the best selling album of 2001 (and the 21st century) proved that beyond any doubt. It didn't matter that Napster was blowing up or that people were re-buying music they already owned on other formats (or on other CD's) or that it would have been simple to burn the same songs onto a mix CD for practically no cost rather than pay $15.99.
It's never been easier to hear parts of, or even whole catalog albums using any number of internet-based sources. Previous generations of fans had to have friends whose parents had cool record collections or happen to be listening to the radio when a certain classic song was played. Now you don't have to spend any time wondering whether such-and-such a famous/notorious 60's band was really any good, you can stream or d/l their music and decide for yourself within seconds. But catalog sales are driven by nostalgia, and people get nostalgic for things that seem cool and different compared to whatever is available in the present. Nostalgia revives the star quality of people and music that had been ignored for years because people became bored or burned out by it (or because something newer came along and stole its thunder). It's amazing that Lionel Richie can go from being an afterthought who hadn't been relevant in the mainstream for twenty years, to being a huge sensation within a few months. But will people be nostalgic for today's artists in the same way in another twenty years? My guess is no. My gut feeling is that you're less likely to be nostalgic for something in the future (= to pay money for it) if you're not paying money for it in the present. That was less of a problem in the Beatles' time. The multi-media effect (reason #3 in the article) also plays a role in this. Being a music star used to be enough, now you have to be a music + TV + Youtube + ... star to be truly famous and stand a chance of being remembered.
2. Once in a blue moon, CNN publishes a great commentary or social interest piece, this week featured an excerpt from Hanspeter Kuenzler's mega-ebook/press anthology (2000 pages!) about the Rolling Stones. Diehard fans already know the story of the band's beginnings, but as a general introduction to how the band got started (complete with the all-important cultural and political context of post-war England), it made for a good read (and made me want to buy the book).
The Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin were the unquestioned giants of rock up to and including my generation of high schoolers, we all took it as a given that no matter how much we loved Duran Duran or Depeche Mode or whoever, that no band stood a chance of escaping the shadow of those three 60's/70's giants. They'd rule over rock seemingly forever, and if you wanted to have any music literacy at all (never mind having cred, if you just wanted to have a common denominator discussion about music with a group of people) then you needed to be well versed in the music of those three bands. Of course this meant all three were overrated by virtue of being inescapable. It was the stuff you had to like because you were told you needed to like it or else. Some people kept eating that narrative, some of us got bored a bit earlier and started listening to the Cure or Nine Inch Nails instead.
But the Stones always seemed to be the most overrated and least legendary of the three, possibly because they never went away. How can we miss them if they never leave, etc. Many of us remember how the "Steel Wheels" tour was hyped as a major comeback for them, and was arguably the blueprint for the zillion-dollar megatours that every big artists is obligated to undertake these days. Now a generation has passed, the Beatles, Floyd, Zeppelin, Who, and plenty of others have been lionized and anthologized many times over, and is it possible that the Stones have been relatively overlooked over the past twenty years and might even be a bit underrated?
1. Maura Johnston summarized some of the reasons why sales of catalog music are outpacing those of new music in the Village Voice. If there's one indestructible fact of the digital music age, it's that people will still pay money for music by beloved, established artists. The extraordinary success of The Beatles "1", which was the best selling album of 2001 (and the 21st century) proved that beyond any doubt. It didn't matter that Napster was blowing up or that people were re-buying music they already owned on other formats (or on other CD's) or that it would have been simple to burn the same songs onto a mix CD for practically no cost rather than pay $15.99.
It's never been easier to hear parts of, or even whole catalog albums using any number of internet-based sources. Previous generations of fans had to have friends whose parents had cool record collections or happen to be listening to the radio when a certain classic song was played. Now you don't have to spend any time wondering whether such-and-such a famous/notorious 60's band was really any good, you can stream or d/l their music and decide for yourself within seconds. But catalog sales are driven by nostalgia, and people get nostalgic for things that seem cool and different compared to whatever is available in the present. Nostalgia revives the star quality of people and music that had been ignored for years because people became bored or burned out by it (or because something newer came along and stole its thunder). It's amazing that Lionel Richie can go from being an afterthought who hadn't been relevant in the mainstream for twenty years, to being a huge sensation within a few months. But will people be nostalgic for today's artists in the same way in another twenty years? My guess is no. My gut feeling is that you're less likely to be nostalgic for something in the future (= to pay money for it) if you're not paying money for it in the present. That was less of a problem in the Beatles' time. The multi-media effect (reason #3 in the article) also plays a role in this. Being a music star used to be enough, now you have to be a music + TV + Youtube + ... star to be truly famous and stand a chance of being remembered.
2. Once in a blue moon, CNN publishes a great commentary or social interest piece, this week featured an excerpt from Hanspeter Kuenzler's mega-ebook/press anthology (2000 pages!) about the Rolling Stones. Diehard fans already know the story of the band's beginnings, but as a general introduction to how the band got started (complete with the all-important cultural and political context of post-war England), it made for a good read (and made me want to buy the book).
The Beatles, Stones, and Zeppelin were the unquestioned giants of rock up to and including my generation of high schoolers, we all took it as a given that no matter how much we loved Duran Duran or Depeche Mode or whoever, that no band stood a chance of escaping the shadow of those three 60's/70's giants. They'd rule over rock seemingly forever, and if you wanted to have any music literacy at all (never mind having cred, if you just wanted to have a common denominator discussion about music with a group of people) then you needed to be well versed in the music of those three bands. Of course this meant all three were overrated by virtue of being inescapable. It was the stuff you had to like because you were told you needed to like it or else. Some people kept eating that narrative, some of us got bored a bit earlier and started listening to the Cure or Nine Inch Nails instead.
But the Stones always seemed to be the most overrated and least legendary of the three, possibly because they never went away. How can we miss them if they never leave, etc. Many of us remember how the "Steel Wheels" tour was hyped as a major comeback for them, and was arguably the blueprint for the zillion-dollar megatours that every big artists is obligated to undertake these days. Now a generation has passed, the Beatles, Floyd, Zeppelin, Who, and plenty of others have been lionized and anthologized many times over, and is it possible that the Stones have been relatively overlooked over the past twenty years and might even be a bit underrated?
Monday, July 16, 2012
Music in Bulgaria and Switzerland ...
... is a topic I wish I could write about here at length, but unfortunately I didn't go to any wild Bulgarian techno parties this year. But I did get to see a Bulgarian fire dancing performance. It's not uncommon to and while it might have been tailored for an audience of mostly tourists (and performed by professionals who aren't necessarily connected to the original fire dancing traditions), the music that accompanied the dancing (think shuffling one's way through hot coals, not twirling torches in one's hands) was hypnotic and trance-inducing in a quite literal sense. According to the story, the dancers enter something of a trance via the music, causing them to feel little to no pain when they dance on the coals. I finally came to understood why some Bulgarian music resembles Greek and Turkish music, which of course is completely obvious in retrospect. This video will give you a fairly good idea of what fire dancing is all about.
I haven't the faintest idea what is popular on Swiss radio, but then again, neither do the foreigners I talked to who are living there. At the Lausanne city festival, I did see a man doing somersaults while suspended high in the air on ropes while two pantomiming guitarists flanked him on colourful bubble shaped stages, but that's about it.
Not the most fascinating return to posting, I admit.
I haven't the faintest idea what is popular on Swiss radio, but then again, neither do the foreigners I talked to who are living there. At the Lausanne city festival, I did see a man doing somersaults while suspended high in the air on ropes while two pantomiming guitarists flanked him on colourful bubble shaped stages, but that's about it.
Not the most fascinating return to posting, I admit.
Friday, June 22, 2012
Poor Emily White
The fallout from a fairly benign blog post by an NPR intern has ballooned into the biggest music crit discussion topic of the week.
The fun started when David Lowery of Camper van Beethoven and Cracker posted a lengthy and detailed response to White's post, making pretty much the same anti-piracy points we've heard a million times before, but he's a university lecturer now and was therefore able to express the usual opinions much more eloquently than the average blogger or music company suit.
White didn't write anything controversial, in my opinion. She admitted to stealing music. She's twenty years old and doesn't remember the "good old days" when people paid $17.99 for a CD that cost the record company $0.99 to manufacture. In other words, what she lacks in experience is compensated by her increased common sense, the result of not being around twenty years ago to be duped into thinking that CD's just HAD to cost twice as much as records and tapes because they were shiny and portable and digital, or whatever. What she really wanted out of the music consumer industry was convenience, a music cataloging service that could be streamed on demand from her phone, TV, and computer. That's something that she'd be perfectly willing to pay for, and it's hardly a new idea. In the absence of any such service, she resorted to downloading and ripping CD's instead.
Lowery makes a lot of interesting points, and he states his case well. But at the end of the day, he's defending an antiquated business model for the music industry that simply isn't working any more. It's the 1930's, and White is saying she wants the convenience of hearing music in her home, either on the radio or by buying a physical recording that she can play whenever she wants. Lowery is saying fuck that noise, radio is killing music, support the artists by going out to a club or concert hall to listen to them play, and while you're there, visit their merch table and buy the sheet music.
I've been saying it for ten years now: electronic music artists are way ahead of the curve when it comes to dealing with the realities of the music industry. Save for those six months in the 90's when Prodigy and Chemical Brothers were hot selling acts, nobody in electronic music has ever entertained the notion of making a sustainable income from selling their recordings. Records, CD's, and now mp3's are promotional tools that lead to where the real money is -- live gigs and DJ appearances. That's not to say that selling their music can't be profitable, obviously it can be. But one cannot be a professional musician in club-centred genres by only selling music recordings. All the sympathy tactics employed by artists who complain about their lack of income from their albums -- $1 per CD purchase, only $0.0001 for every song streamed on Spotify or whatever the number is -- are rendered moot. Maybe a new business model will emerge where artists will earn more for streamed albums and songs. But if it doesn't happen, they should consider streaming sites as promotional outlets for their upcoming tours.
Many electronic artists hold full time jobs (sometimes linked to the music industry, sometimes not) and make music on the side. The quality isn't suffering, as far as I can tell, just because every artist can't devote all his time to writing and recording 24/7/365. Many musicians need to accept the fact that they may not be able to fully support themselves by playing music. Actors know this. People in the art world know this. Sometimes the big break never comes, and until it does, you accept whatever bookings you can get and work a second job to help pay the bills. The odds of becoming a big movie star are low, but that isn't stopping anyone from trying to make a career in acting. It's a high risk, high reward business.
One can't make a living from music in every city in the world. Techno artists have been flocking to Berlin since forever. In Berlin you can play a few parties every week and book international shows with relative ease since travel time to other major European cities is fairly short. Its status as a music hub means you can also make plenty of contacts in the industry -- contacts that would be difficult to find if you were living anywhere else. None of this is possible even for artists trying to make a living in large North American cities, except for the very top tier of DJ's. Struggling indie band #589A will probably never make enough money to pay the rent living in a medium sized East Coast city, touring once a year and selling downloads through their label's website.
And finally, what about the actual recordings? Emily White is a Yo La Tengo fan, she paid to see them in concert but has never bought any of their CD's. YLT responded with a humourous tweet, essentially telling her to go fuck herself, as if paying good money for concerts counts for nothing. I'm a fan too, I've seen them in concert a few times, and I've paid money for their CD's. I've also downloaded some of their music and didn't pay for it. On one hand, you could say that stealing is stealing, regardless of prior support. Nobody argues that they've supported their local supermarket on plenty of occasions in the past, so they're entitled to steal a loaf of bread there from time to time. On the other hand, when file sharing took off in the 2000's (but especially around 2003-5, in the post-Napster, height of Soulseek and Kazaa days) I saw countless bands that I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't been able to easily download their music first. I was far more amenable to hearing a brand new band when I could test drive their music for free without leaving my house. There was no pressure to buy, no need to harass the record store employees with a stack of CD's I wanted to hear before deciding what to buy. If I liked the music I'd almost always see the band in concert when they came to town, and was far more likely to buy (=spend money on) their CD's in the future. File sharing was better than any music advertising I'd ever encountered.
The key point is that just because a certain product produced a healthy revenue stream in the past doesn't mean that it will (and should) remain a revenue stream indefinitely. It's barely been twenty years since the release of the first commercially available mix CD (Billy Nasty's Journeys By DJ). It's not as if nobody had ever recorded DJ sets before. I remember heading down to the record shops to browse through and buy "rave tapes" in the early 90's (definitely an age 35+ thing). You'd also see tapes from local DJ's who wanted to get their names out, or tapes from clubs and DJ's in Detroit, New York, or Chicago claiming to be recorded the previous week and containing the absolute latest sounds in house and techno that hadn't reached Canadian shores yet. Eventually somebody realized that DJ's were big stars and there was money to be made from officially sanctioned and professionally recorded mixes. And yet, from Billy Nasty's biography page on RA: "Throughout 1992-93, so many bootleg mix tapes of Billy's were flooding the UK that they proved the ultimate marketing tool and resulted in requests for his presence at burgeoning nights nationwide". The mix CD was a huge success (he made several more and launched an entire cottage industry) and widespread bootlegging of his sets was going on simultaneously. Did Billy Nasty, the labels he recorded for and the clubs he played in go running to their lawyers? Probably not, seeing how they were too busy making money.
But the business is different now. Some well entrenched mix CD series (e.g. Fabric) are still very successful, but many artists have chosen to forego physical releases and post their mixes for free on the internet instead. Everybody has access to a computer and internet, recording mixes and and posting them online has never been easier. Are artists really "losing" money by not selling their mixes? Possibly. Some artists who might have been able to make a few bucks from a mix CD surely decided that it was not really worth their trouble. And countless other artists give away their mixes as podcasts to get their names out, to get free advertising for a new release, or to promote an upcoming party. As they always have.
The fun started when David Lowery of Camper van Beethoven and Cracker posted a lengthy and detailed response to White's post, making pretty much the same anti-piracy points we've heard a million times before, but he's a university lecturer now and was therefore able to express the usual opinions much more eloquently than the average blogger or music company suit.
White didn't write anything controversial, in my opinion. She admitted to stealing music. She's twenty years old and doesn't remember the "good old days" when people paid $17.99 for a CD that cost the record company $0.99 to manufacture. In other words, what she lacks in experience is compensated by her increased common sense, the result of not being around twenty years ago to be duped into thinking that CD's just HAD to cost twice as much as records and tapes because they were shiny and portable and digital, or whatever. What she really wanted out of the music consumer industry was convenience, a music cataloging service that could be streamed on demand from her phone, TV, and computer. That's something that she'd be perfectly willing to pay for, and it's hardly a new idea. In the absence of any such service, she resorted to downloading and ripping CD's instead.
Lowery makes a lot of interesting points, and he states his case well. But at the end of the day, he's defending an antiquated business model for the music industry that simply isn't working any more. It's the 1930's, and White is saying she wants the convenience of hearing music in her home, either on the radio or by buying a physical recording that she can play whenever she wants. Lowery is saying fuck that noise, radio is killing music, support the artists by going out to a club or concert hall to listen to them play, and while you're there, visit their merch table and buy the sheet music.
I've been saying it for ten years now: electronic music artists are way ahead of the curve when it comes to dealing with the realities of the music industry. Save for those six months in the 90's when Prodigy and Chemical Brothers were hot selling acts, nobody in electronic music has ever entertained the notion of making a sustainable income from selling their recordings. Records, CD's, and now mp3's are promotional tools that lead to where the real money is -- live gigs and DJ appearances. That's not to say that selling their music can't be profitable, obviously it can be. But one cannot be a professional musician in club-centred genres by only selling music recordings. All the sympathy tactics employed by artists who complain about their lack of income from their albums -- $1 per CD purchase, only $0.0001 for every song streamed on Spotify or whatever the number is -- are rendered moot. Maybe a new business model will emerge where artists will earn more for streamed albums and songs. But if it doesn't happen, they should consider streaming sites as promotional outlets for their upcoming tours.
Many electronic artists hold full time jobs (sometimes linked to the music industry, sometimes not) and make music on the side. The quality isn't suffering, as far as I can tell, just because every artist can't devote all his time to writing and recording 24/7/365. Many musicians need to accept the fact that they may not be able to fully support themselves by playing music. Actors know this. People in the art world know this. Sometimes the big break never comes, and until it does, you accept whatever bookings you can get and work a second job to help pay the bills. The odds of becoming a big movie star are low, but that isn't stopping anyone from trying to make a career in acting. It's a high risk, high reward business.
One can't make a living from music in every city in the world. Techno artists have been flocking to Berlin since forever. In Berlin you can play a few parties every week and book international shows with relative ease since travel time to other major European cities is fairly short. Its status as a music hub means you can also make plenty of contacts in the industry -- contacts that would be difficult to find if you were living anywhere else. None of this is possible even for artists trying to make a living in large North American cities, except for the very top tier of DJ's. Struggling indie band #589A will probably never make enough money to pay the rent living in a medium sized East Coast city, touring once a year and selling downloads through their label's website.
And finally, what about the actual recordings? Emily White is a Yo La Tengo fan, she paid to see them in concert but has never bought any of their CD's. YLT responded with a humourous tweet, essentially telling her to go fuck herself, as if paying good money for concerts counts for nothing. I'm a fan too, I've seen them in concert a few times, and I've paid money for their CD's. I've also downloaded some of their music and didn't pay for it. On one hand, you could say that stealing is stealing, regardless of prior support. Nobody argues that they've supported their local supermarket on plenty of occasions in the past, so they're entitled to steal a loaf of bread there from time to time. On the other hand, when file sharing took off in the 2000's (but especially around 2003-5, in the post-Napster, height of Soulseek and Kazaa days) I saw countless bands that I wouldn't have seen if I hadn't been able to easily download their music first. I was far more amenable to hearing a brand new band when I could test drive their music for free without leaving my house. There was no pressure to buy, no need to harass the record store employees with a stack of CD's I wanted to hear before deciding what to buy. If I liked the music I'd almost always see the band in concert when they came to town, and was far more likely to buy (=spend money on) their CD's in the future. File sharing was better than any music advertising I'd ever encountered.
The key point is that just because a certain product produced a healthy revenue stream in the past doesn't mean that it will (and should) remain a revenue stream indefinitely. It's barely been twenty years since the release of the first commercially available mix CD (Billy Nasty's Journeys By DJ). It's not as if nobody had ever recorded DJ sets before. I remember heading down to the record shops to browse through and buy "rave tapes" in the early 90's (definitely an age 35+ thing). You'd also see tapes from local DJ's who wanted to get their names out, or tapes from clubs and DJ's in Detroit, New York, or Chicago claiming to be recorded the previous week and containing the absolute latest sounds in house and techno that hadn't reached Canadian shores yet. Eventually somebody realized that DJ's were big stars and there was money to be made from officially sanctioned and professionally recorded mixes. And yet, from Billy Nasty's biography page on RA: "Throughout 1992-93, so many bootleg mix tapes of Billy's were flooding the UK that they proved the ultimate marketing tool and resulted in requests for his presence at burgeoning nights nationwide". The mix CD was a huge success (he made several more and launched an entire cottage industry) and widespread bootlegging of his sets was going on simultaneously. Did Billy Nasty, the labels he recorded for and the clubs he played in go running to their lawyers? Probably not, seeing how they were too busy making money.
But the business is different now. Some well entrenched mix CD series (e.g. Fabric) are still very successful, but many artists have chosen to forego physical releases and post their mixes for free on the internet instead. Everybody has access to a computer and internet, recording mixes and and posting them online has never been easier. Are artists really "losing" money by not selling their mixes? Possibly. Some artists who might have been able to make a few bucks from a mix CD surely decided that it was not really worth their trouble. And countless other artists give away their mixes as podcasts to get their names out, to get free advertising for a new release, or to promote an upcoming party. As they always have.
Wednesday, June 20, 2012
Douglas Wolk schools me on Neneh Cherry
I need to start reading Douglas Wolk's Missed Connections columns every week. Stream of consciousness reviewing is so much more fun (and much less likely to give you a headache trying to parse it) when you can tap into the author's thoughts via all the relevant audio/video links. Imagine that, you can listen to the songs rather than try to wrap your head around the author's purple prose attempts to explain what they sound like. And the author doesn't have to be high to write the review. He or she can relax and just try to make sense!
Wolk's latest column is nominally a review of the new Neneh Cherry and The Thing album, but it soon finds itself looking back at Cherry's 80's career before settling into a discussion of Falklands War protest songs. The album, entitled "That Cherry Thing", seems to have taken just about everyone by surprise. Nobody knew it was coming, and therefore nobody was expecting to have their minds blown by a Neneh Cherry free jazz covers album, which makes it all the more surprising and wonderful when the album turns out to be great. Wolk highlights the Cherry/Thing version of Madvillian's "Accordion", but their cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" is even better.
Cherry's "Buffalo Stance" is one of my all time favourite songs, but I had no idea it was based on Morgan McVey's "Looking Good Diving". Cherry even appears in the (extremely cheesy, but as Wolk points out, very much of it's time) video, miming playing lead guitar in a song that doesn't feature any lead guitar (that's the 80's for you). But the B-side to that single, "Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch" is practically a demo version of "Buffalo Stance", with Cherry on lead vocals. Amazing!
Wolk's latest column is nominally a review of the new Neneh Cherry and The Thing album, but it soon finds itself looking back at Cherry's 80's career before settling into a discussion of Falklands War protest songs. The album, entitled "That Cherry Thing", seems to have taken just about everyone by surprise. Nobody knew it was coming, and therefore nobody was expecting to have their minds blown by a Neneh Cherry free jazz covers album, which makes it all the more surprising and wonderful when the album turns out to be great. Wolk highlights the Cherry/Thing version of Madvillian's "Accordion", but their cover of Suicide's "Dream Baby Dream" is even better.
Cherry's "Buffalo Stance" is one of my all time favourite songs, but I had no idea it was based on Morgan McVey's "Looking Good Diving". Cherry even appears in the (extremely cheesy, but as Wolk points out, very much of it's time) video, miming playing lead guitar in a song that doesn't feature any lead guitar (that's the 80's for you). But the B-side to that single, "Looking Good Diving with the Wild Bunch" is practically a demo version of "Buffalo Stance", with Cherry on lead vocals. Amazing!
Saturday, June 16, 2012
Beach House, "Bloom"
There was something missing in every review I'd read about this band.
Nobody ever described them as a shoegaze Saint Etienne.
All the talk about dreampop this, and ethereal/angelic that ... none of it spurred me to listen to their music. I don't even remember what spurred me to give "Bloom" a try, but it may have been an offhand Cocteau Twins reference. More likely the hype and praise for this album reached such unwieldy heights that I finally had to check out what I was missing.
But I can guarantee that if anyone had called them a shoegaze Saint Etienne then I would have dropped everything I was doing and tracked down all their albums immediately. Slowdive c. 1994 backing Saint Etienne c. 1994, i.e. the dreamier parts of "Souvlaki" merged with the folksy, wisful, otherwordliness of "Tiger Bay"? Yes please.
Nobody ever described them as a shoegaze Saint Etienne.
All the talk about dreampop this, and ethereal/angelic that ... none of it spurred me to listen to their music. I don't even remember what spurred me to give "Bloom" a try, but it may have been an offhand Cocteau Twins reference. More likely the hype and praise for this album reached such unwieldy heights that I finally had to check out what I was missing.
But I can guarantee that if anyone had called them a shoegaze Saint Etienne then I would have dropped everything I was doing and tracked down all their albums immediately. Slowdive c. 1994 backing Saint Etienne c. 1994, i.e. the dreamier parts of "Souvlaki" merged with the folksy, wisful, otherwordliness of "Tiger Bay"? Yes please.
Even a google search for "beach house saint etienne" turns up nothing. Seriously, nobody hears the similarities besides me? The way the vocals in songs like "Wild" and "Lazuli" seem to be separate from the rest of the song, hovering over it and spreading the reverb-y love over everything, like Saint Etienne would routinely do on "Hobart Paving", "Join Our Club", and other songs too numerous to mention? Even the lyrics could be from Saint Etienne songs. Tell me that "our windy endless spring / your eyes are so misleading" (from "Wild") couldn't be followed by "he's so dark and moody / she is his sunshine girl" if the personal pronouns were changed to be consistent with each other? Heck, isn't every Beach House lyric basically a variation on the mood and theme of "Pale Movie" or "Like a Motorway"?
I also might have jumped to hear Beach House sooner if someone had pointed out that the soaring guitar lines on tracks like "On the Sea" sounded so much like the ones used by Explosions in the Sky all the time. "Bloom" also makes last year's I Break Horses album somewhat redundant. The two albums pull at most of the same strings, but Beach House have stronger melodies, far more distinctive vocals, and almost never need to rely on noise or other shoegaze (twee or otherwise) gimmicks to keep you engaged.
As good as the first few songs are, "The Hours" outdoes them all by kicking things up a notch by being genuinely danceable and featuring the most addictive chorus on the album. Of course Saint Etienne's music was and is danceable most of the time, but that doesn't mean we can't say "The Hours" is their "Nothing Can Stop Us", seeing how both inhabit the same understated midtempo world. And "Irene" is the absolute highlight, because every album should finish with a refrain that could go on for another fifteen minutes.
I also might have jumped to hear Beach House sooner if someone had pointed out that the soaring guitar lines on tracks like "On the Sea" sounded so much like the ones used by Explosions in the Sky all the time. "Bloom" also makes last year's I Break Horses album somewhat redundant. The two albums pull at most of the same strings, but Beach House have stronger melodies, far more distinctive vocals, and almost never need to rely on noise or other shoegaze (twee or otherwise) gimmicks to keep you engaged.
As good as the first few songs are, "The Hours" outdoes them all by kicking things up a notch by being genuinely danceable and featuring the most addictive chorus on the album. Of course Saint Etienne's music was and is danceable most of the time, but that doesn't mean we can't say "The Hours" is their "Nothing Can Stop Us", seeing how both inhabit the same understated midtempo world. And "Irene" is the absolute highlight, because every album should finish with a refrain that could go on for another fifteen minutes.
Thursday, June 07, 2012
Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 10
"Exposing a mix's underbelly one stupid war at a time" - 87 minutes
I was trying to make a fairly laid back (but not ambient) mix with a bit of rock and roll thrown in. No need for beatmatching, and nothing noisy or too weird. It didn't turn out that way. For most of the source material I went digging through old CD's again. Nothing was planned out in advance.
About a week after I recorded this mix, Brendon Moeller posted a very similar type of mix for the peerless Electric Deluxe Podcast (Episode 70). If I was going to get beaten to the punch, at least it was by the best podcast series on the internet.
I was trying to make a fairly laid back (but not ambient) mix with a bit of rock and roll thrown in. No need for beatmatching, and nothing noisy or too weird. It didn't turn out that way. For most of the source material I went digging through old CD's again. Nothing was planned out in advance.
About a week after I recorded this mix, Brendon Moeller posted a very similar type of mix for the peerless Electric Deluxe Podcast (Episode 70). If I was going to get beaten to the punch, at least it was by the best podcast series on the internet.
Monday, June 04, 2012
Spiritualized win again?!?
My favourite album of the year so far, easily, is Spiritualized's "Sweet Heart Sweet Light".
I used to struggle with this a number of years ago. You're running down your choices for the year's best music, and the winners are the same bands you chose in a bunch of other years. Keeping up with new music is a type of competition, where a sea of bands all compete for your praise and attention. Competitions are boring if you know who's going to win ahead of time. I would also get the sinking feeling that I was missing out on a bunch of good or possibly even better music, i.e. I didn't give a chance to a bunch of albums because I was being narrow minded and obsessing over the same bands I always obsess over. I struggled with this more in the 90's than I do now, when it was more difficult to hear and hear about bands than it is today. Back then, I think you had more of an excuse for always falling back on your inner circle of favourite bands.
On the other hand, what's wrong with repping for your favourite bands? I don't see Radiohead and Kanye West fans (to name two acts who have earned nearly automatic critical praise for their every move) apologizing for consistently (some might say reflexively) pushing their albums to the top of many readers and critics polls. Or think of it this way: twenty years ago, Spiritualized were nobody's idea of a leading, semi-mainstream rock act, the kind that would have their concerts and albums streamed online by NPR or have glowing reviews of their concerts written up in the New York Times with comparisons to the Rolling Stones and the finest gospel music. The band and their fans were a group of droning space rock weirdos in an age where grunge was king. The level of critical acclaim they enjoy today was nowhere to be seen, although the NME's early and consisten praise was something of an exception. In North America they were off the radar completely. So what happened? Part of it was due to us -- the people who believed in Spiritualized and kept telling people how great they were until a broader audience started believing us. In that case, you could say that it's our duty to keep up the narrative that they are among the very best, for example, just like Bob Dylan and Neil Young fans and critics did in past generations (also in this generation, Dylan finished first in the Pazz and Jop albums poll as recently as 2006). They didn't push those acts down our throats because they didn't truly believe they were among the best in the world. There isn't a single Neil Young fan who ever stanned for Helmet because they wanted to prove they could give newer acts a fair shake.
It's still a struggle, but like I said, a change in a thought process can be slow to evolve, whether it be a band's general reputation or your own personal opinions.
I used to struggle with this a number of years ago. You're running down your choices for the year's best music, and the winners are the same bands you chose in a bunch of other years. Keeping up with new music is a type of competition, where a sea of bands all compete for your praise and attention. Competitions are boring if you know who's going to win ahead of time. I would also get the sinking feeling that I was missing out on a bunch of good or possibly even better music, i.e. I didn't give a chance to a bunch of albums because I was being narrow minded and obsessing over the same bands I always obsess over. I struggled with this more in the 90's than I do now, when it was more difficult to hear and hear about bands than it is today. Back then, I think you had more of an excuse for always falling back on your inner circle of favourite bands.
On the other hand, what's wrong with repping for your favourite bands? I don't see Radiohead and Kanye West fans (to name two acts who have earned nearly automatic critical praise for their every move) apologizing for consistently (some might say reflexively) pushing their albums to the top of many readers and critics polls. Or think of it this way: twenty years ago, Spiritualized were nobody's idea of a leading, semi-mainstream rock act, the kind that would have their concerts and albums streamed online by NPR or have glowing reviews of their concerts written up in the New York Times with comparisons to the Rolling Stones and the finest gospel music. The band and their fans were a group of droning space rock weirdos in an age where grunge was king. The level of critical acclaim they enjoy today was nowhere to be seen, although the NME's early and consisten praise was something of an exception. In North America they were off the radar completely. So what happened? Part of it was due to us -- the people who believed in Spiritualized and kept telling people how great they were until a broader audience started believing us. In that case, you could say that it's our duty to keep up the narrative that they are among the very best, for example, just like Bob Dylan and Neil Young fans and critics did in past generations (also in this generation, Dylan finished first in the Pazz and Jop albums poll as recently as 2006). They didn't push those acts down our throats because they didn't truly believe they were among the best in the world. There isn't a single Neil Young fan who ever stanned for Helmet because they wanted to prove they could give newer acts a fair shake.
It's still a struggle, but like I said, a change in a thought process can be slow to evolve, whether it be a band's general reputation or your own personal opinions.
Monday, May 28, 2012
Two Coachella gigs
Plastikman 19-04-2010.
In the '94 or '95 Xmas issue of Melody Maker, there a joint interview featuring Richie Hawtin, James Lavelle, and a third very famous DJ (it might have been Oakenfold?). My memory is a bit hazy, and I couldn't track down that interview on the web, but I think those details are correct. What I do remember quite clearly from that article was a quote from Hawtin about DJ'ing that was along the lines of "in Detroit, if I play a track that's more than one year old, the kids get very upset."
Fifteen years later, Hawtin brought back his long dormant Plastikman moniker for a series of live shows that had the hype and feel of a reunion tour, with a greatest hits set and stops at a number of major festivals. The man who'd prided himself on playing sets full of songs you'd probably never recognize (or samples and loops reassembled into new unrecognizable forms) was closing his shows with his most well known track, "Spastik".
I'm not sure if a complete video of this performance exists. Clips of the intro to the opening track, "Ask Yourself", are easy to find online (for this and for many of his other shows). The visuals don't disappoint, a blinding ensemble of whites and reds that crackle, pulse, and flutter along to the music. And the music is pure Plastikman, where minimal techno gets crushed under the weight of doom and paranoia. This lived up to the hype and then some.
M83 14-04-2012
M83 concerts used to be sloppy, uncoordinated messes in 2003-4. Their evolution from those beginnings to one of the most exciting live acts around is as unexpected as their gradual transformation from a MBV-via-synth semi-novelty group to indie royalty whose fans sing the words to all their songs at their shows.
I've heard recordings from a couple of other gigs on the "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" tour, and festival recordings from past tours, and this one is easily the best. What it lacks in sound quality it makes up for in atmosphere. You can really feel the excitement in the air in the crowd, and effortlessly place yourself among the sweat and insanity. "Couleurs" has gone through a few changes over the years, it was once their "Perfect Kiss" but has now become more like their "Fine Time" -- one of the best combinations of rock and club techno you're ever likely to hear.
In the '94 or '95 Xmas issue of Melody Maker, there a joint interview featuring Richie Hawtin, James Lavelle, and a third very famous DJ (it might have been Oakenfold?). My memory is a bit hazy, and I couldn't track down that interview on the web, but I think those details are correct. What I do remember quite clearly from that article was a quote from Hawtin about DJ'ing that was along the lines of "in Detroit, if I play a track that's more than one year old, the kids get very upset."
Fifteen years later, Hawtin brought back his long dormant Plastikman moniker for a series of live shows that had the hype and feel of a reunion tour, with a greatest hits set and stops at a number of major festivals. The man who'd prided himself on playing sets full of songs you'd probably never recognize (or samples and loops reassembled into new unrecognizable forms) was closing his shows with his most well known track, "Spastik".
I'm not sure if a complete video of this performance exists. Clips of the intro to the opening track, "Ask Yourself", are easy to find online (for this and for many of his other shows). The visuals don't disappoint, a blinding ensemble of whites and reds that crackle, pulse, and flutter along to the music. And the music is pure Plastikman, where minimal techno gets crushed under the weight of doom and paranoia. This lived up to the hype and then some.
M83 14-04-2012
M83 concerts used to be sloppy, uncoordinated messes in 2003-4. Their evolution from those beginnings to one of the most exciting live acts around is as unexpected as their gradual transformation from a MBV-via-synth semi-novelty group to indie royalty whose fans sing the words to all their songs at their shows.
I've heard recordings from a couple of other gigs on the "Hurry Up, We're Dreaming" tour, and festival recordings from past tours, and this one is easily the best. What it lacks in sound quality it makes up for in atmosphere. You can really feel the excitement in the air in the crowd, and effortlessly place yourself among the sweat and insanity. "Couleurs" has gone through a few changes over the years, it was once their "Perfect Kiss" but has now become more like their "Fine Time" -- one of the best combinations of rock and club techno you're ever likely to hear.
Thursday, May 17, 2012
Donna Summer RIP
I have no idea where to begin with this one. Donna Summer ... dead? Impossible.
Music for me has simply never existed without Donna Summer. My earliest memories of listening to music don't involve Depeche Mode or techno. It was all about disco and Donna Summer. My parents had a huge collection of disco 12" singles and they were played constantly. We had Beatles and other rock records too but they weren't in heavy rotation. "Bad Girls" was. These are pretty much the extent of my memories of the 1970's.
When videos came along, Donna Summer was there too. "She Works Hard For the Money" (the song and the video both) was a big hit at the time.
In the days before file sharing, I exhausted myself trying to track down some of Donna Summer's music, but especially the remixes of "I Feel Love". It usually doesn't need to be said, but if not today then when ... "I Feel Love" is probably the best song of the 1970's. Saying that a song was "influential" is one of the most overused terms in music, but "I Feel Love" really did change the world of music as we know it. I can't conceive of most club music (house, techno, trance, eurodance, etc., and most of their derivatives) existing without it. Many contemporary DJ's still play it, and it always seamlessly fits in with whatever style of music they're playing. Now that's a timeless track.
RIP to one of the best music makers ever.
[edit: There are no shortage of Donna Summer obits being written, my favourite is Jody Rosen's in Slate.]
[edit: There are no shortage of Donna Summer obits being written, my favourite is Jody Rosen's in Slate.]
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