Two minor classics that I've never heard before ...
Why haven't you heard them until now?
"Since I Left You" came out at a time when DJ Shadow and The Beastie Boys were making cut and paste style hip hop that was safe for indie kids to like. The Avalanches seemed like the natural heirs to the "token hip hop act in the indie rock fan's CD collection" throne, so of course I stayed away from their album completely.
Throwing Muses is a difficult one to explain, because I have a number of Kirsten Hirsh solo albums. In fact, I won't even try explaining why I've never heard this or any other Throwing Muses album. It makes no sense at all.
Not that we don't already know, but what do they sound like?
"Red Heaven" is uncannily similar to Hersh's solo album "Learn To Sing Like a Star" (or rather, the opposite is true). Throwing Muses' drummer David Narcizo played drums on that album, so it's perhaps not much of a surprise. I assumed her voice had naturally become more throaty and raspier as she got older, but here, her voice even sounds raspier (in 1992) that it would on the solo albums she recorded over the next fifteen years.
"Since I Left You" certainly isn't boring. Each of its eighteen tracks feel like the amalgamation of two or three mini-tracks, with countless samples and melodies cobbled and bootlegged together. Tracks are changing shape constantly, and the album's hour long run time just flies by. Definitely a dream album for the ADD sect.
Thirty one combined years of hindsight must be nice, but are they classics?
A lot of early 90's alternative rock sounds soft and generic today. Nirvana and all who hung on to their coattails made their careers on convincing kids who were sick of hearing how softies like Michael Jackson and Prince were the greatest artists ever that music could be better if it sounded aggressive or threatening. Nobody was about to start a revolution soundtracked by Throwing Muses, Belly, or the Lemonheads.
That's not to say that grunge et. al. have aged better than Throwing Muses. My mom wouldn't change the station if a Throwing Muses song came on, but that's a testament to how stealthily this kind of "soft" alternative rock eventually seeped into the mainstream via bands like Matchbox 20 in the late 90's. But that doesn't mean the music still stands out when I'm listening to it for the first time in 2012. Fortunately, Hersh's solo albums remain endlessly replayable ... give me "Me and My Charms" anyday over anything on "Red Heaven".
It bears repeating that "Since I Left You" is anything but boring. I like to complain about how 60-minute albums with 15-20 songs are usually the biggest slogs ... better to have a 40-minute album with fewer tracks or a 70-minute album with a bunch of longer tracks, but those albums where the 3-4 minute tracks keep coming and never stop always feel like the biggest endurance tests. "Since I Left You" is something to be admired more than loved. I couldn't be more impressed that they managed to assemble a zillion samples into actual songs, but this is more spectacle than substance.
I don't think I'll be taking it off my iPod for a while though. The music fits/cures a lot of moods and it couldn't be more suited for random play scenarios!
Friday, August 24, 2012
Wednesday, August 15, 2012
Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast Episode 11
"They had left for Las Vegas with a mix of subprime mortgage bonds" - 62 minutes
It's redundant to say that the Electric Deluxe Podcast has been on a roll lately, because their podcasts are almost never less than excellent. But Episode 74, mixed by Submerge, went above and beyond the call of duty -- 52 tracks, 2.5 hours of content, half classic house and techno, half industrial. Nominate EDLX for service to humanity, please. I was feeling the urge to make a mix around that time and surprise surprise, it turned out partly like Jeff Derringer's Episode 73 (rock 'n roll chill out) and partly like Submerge's Episode 74 (industrial death disco party). I even stole the idea to use Acid Horse's "No Name No Slogan" from him -- I'd nearly forgotten how great a song it is.
It's redundant to say that the Electric Deluxe Podcast has been on a roll lately, because their podcasts are almost never less than excellent. But Episode 74, mixed by Submerge, went above and beyond the call of duty -- 52 tracks, 2.5 hours of content, half classic house and techno, half industrial. Nominate EDLX for service to humanity, please. I was feeling the urge to make a mix around that time and surprise surprise, it turned out partly like Jeff Derringer's Episode 73 (rock 'n roll chill out) and partly like Submerge's Episode 74 (industrial death disco party). I even stole the idea to use Acid Horse's "No Name No Slogan" from him -- I'd nearly forgotten how great a song it is.
Sunday, August 12, 2012
London Olympics Closing Ceremony -- running diary!
9:00 PM London time. Emeli Sande gets to open for Stomp, a Winston Churchill impersonator (actually the same actor who played him in "The King's Speech") and a huge stadium sized print wrapped traffic jam. Then Prince Harry is introduced as "God Save the Queen" is played. Eight minutes in, and the Spice Girls can't possibly top all this, can they?
9:10. I'm already thinking this diary was a bad idea, there's no way I can keep up. Madness playing "Our House" on the back of a flatbed truck, Buckingham Palace soliders mingling with red-clad waitresses and shiny green leprachauns? Help!
9:12. The guards are actually a state band and they just broke into Blur's "Parklife"! All the yellow and green and red and purple and yellow clad freaks are singing and waving along. And that's just the opening for the Pet Shop Boys and a bunch of orange conehead wearing cyclists. Chris Lowe is idly tapping what looks like a keyboard made of orange cardboard. I will never forget this closing ceremony as long as I live.
9:15. The Eurosport TV commentators say that One Direction are the biggest band in the world. Use hyperbole much? Of course there's nothing more British than ensuring that every generation of UK preteen girls has its own fresh faced boy band to worship for three to five years (until the inevitable reunions ten to fifteen years down the road).
9:22. Acrobatic group Spellbound perform some dizzying gymnastics to the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" while a black Rolls Royce delivers a haggard looking Ray Davies to the stage to sing "Waterloo Sunset". He's not ready for his closeup but sounds great for a 68-year old rock legend. A tightrope walker nearly slips and falls, not like anyone could notice with the 847 other things that are going on here.
9:27. Emeli Sande returns for an encore of "Read All About It" as we approach the half hour mark and see a video montage of Olympic athletes from these Games crying tears of joy. This is one instance when I'm looking forward to Jacques Rogge's boring Olympic summation speech so I can take a short break from all this.
9:35. Olympics athletes, coaches and various chaperones are filing in from all directions. Some are wearing team outfits, some aren't, some are streaming single file from the aisles in the stands, some are jogging on the floor of the stadium. I can't make heads or tails out of it, and Elbow are soundtracking all this chaos for some reason. Break achieved.
9:52. As they continue filing in to fill in the giant Union Jack flag in the centre of the stadium, and I wonder what's supposed to happen once some of these drunk people need to start using the bathroom, the commentators announce that the "Symphony of British Music" to come later in the show will feature some five hundred songs! Did I hear that right? And I'm supposed to recap it?
10:00. The British athletes enter to an interpretive dance set to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", which gets set to a slo-mo video montage of athletes in motion, partly shot in black and white. You can't say they don't know how to dramatize sport in London. This is followed by the men's marathon medal ceremony, the final medal presentation of the Games, one of my favourite traditions of the Olympics.
10:07. And now it's time for the Symphony of British Music. One hour's worth. I will recap the breakneck insanity at at my own peril.
10:11. I'm surprised they'd open with Queen and John Lennon, I mean, wouldn't you expect that to close the performance? And the Spice Girls are supposed to top a white plaster John Lennon mask, deaf kids signing the words to "Imagine", and hundreds of white balloons?
10:22. George Michael gets nearly ten minutes for "Freedom" and his new single "White Light"? The commentators refer to him as a talented singer and a troubled soul, or something to that effect. Troubled? Because of his near death from pneumonia last year? Sick people usually aren't labeled as "troubled". So he must have been referring to his multiple arrests over the years. Is it really appropriate to mention that right now?
10:24. Kaiser Chiefs offer a teaser for the Who reunion later on with a cover of "Pinball Wizard". Then it's a rapid fire montage of David Bowie music and photographs. For a moment I wonder whether this means Bowie is about to make a dramatic return from retirement, but unfortunately isn't just a few supermodels strutting around to "Fashion" while the commentators pimp the September issue of Vogue. Yes, random supermodels << Bowie coming out of retirement.
10:32. Hmm this looks like a goth Annie Lennox perched on the bow of a zombie ship? A definite pass.
10:35. Ed Sheeran, who I've never heard of (just 21?) leads a supergroup (incl. Nick Mason, Mike Rutherford) in a straightforward performance of Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". Not bad, but aren't there thousands of other kids performing in bars across the UK who have this song in their repertoire?
10:39. Everyone loves the Beatles, so it's no shock that the organizers wanted to pack in as many of their songs as they could. But Russell Brand as Willy Wonka warbling "I Am the Walrus"? I'm eventually won over by the kaleidescopic outfits and swaying violinists. I'm also wishing I was seeing this in HD, because the light show and background video screens (IN the stands all around the stadium) are spectacular.
10:44. Fatboy Slim, whose CD decks may not be plugged into anything (Ladbrokes has it 3:1 against) dances to excerpts from "Right Here Right Now" and "The Rockafeller Skank". Pretending to DJ is fun!
10:47. From that we jump to the '10's generation with Jessie J ("Price Tag") and Tinie Tempah ("Pass Out) ... and Taio Cruz ("Dynamite"). They drive around in fancy cars because they like money, or something. Norman Cook feigns his interest by continuing to pretend to DJ. The trio then ascend to the stage to take on the Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing". I think they're picking random names and song titles out of a hat now!
10:52. I'm wondering whether Adele, who is genuinely the biggest music star in the Western world and hasn't even been rumoured to be making an appearance (AFAIK), will provide us with a genuinely huge surprise later tonight.
10:53. This Bee Gees "tribute" is falling flat on its face in large part because the three artists who are supposed to be singing it are obviously not the least bit interested in singing it. "We sang our own hits already for 90 seconds each, aren't we done here?"
10:54. FINALLY it's the Spice Girls reunion, and I can't help but wonder if they feel vindicated that all the criticism leveled at them back in the day now looks petty and vindictive now that *every* gonzo live performance (particularly on gala shows like this one) revolves around the spectacle rather than how well you can sing and dance in the classically trained sense. Actually, I'm sure they don't feel vindicated at all, as if they could care less what people think of them at this point! But why WHY do they get only a few short minutes to steamroll through "Wannabe" and "Spice Up Your Life" while Liam Fucking Gallagher gets as long as he wants to whine his way through "Wonderwall" with his backing band. They couldn't deliver a surprise Oasis reunion if they had to insist on inviting this guy?
11:06. The biggest ovation of the evening has just gone to Eric Idle as he broke into "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life". Are you surprised that everyone from the dancing nuns to the Dutch Olympic team are waving and whistling along? Of course there's only one way to cap it all off -- with an odd "Slumdog Millionaire"-like interlude and a coda involving opera singers, ice skating nuns and a man shot across the stadium from a cannon. Hello world, there was your moment of British for the evening, i.e. you probably had to be British (or at least watched most of the Monty Python movies) to know what that was all about. The rest of the world had George Michael and the Spice Girls, the Brits had that all to themselves.
11:13. Unfortunately that's not the end of the British music extravaganza hour, it's Muse performing their completely ignored London Olympics theme song that sounds nothing like an actual Olympic theme song. Say what you will about David Foster, but he knows his forte.
11:15. But wait, it's not the end after all ... the real end is a video of Freddie Mercury leading a stadium crowd in a singalong, followed by a live performance of "We Will Rock You" by the remainder of Queen with Jessie J. See, I knew they'd close with Queen after all. Brian May might have let his still thick mane of hair go grey, but he can still shred. And can you believe these guys have continued without Freddie Mercury for longer than they were actually with Freddie Mercury?
11:31. As much as I've enjoyed this rapid fire review of the past forty years of British music, I'm more than ready to move on and take the crash course in Brazilian music, if this brief introduction to the Games of '16 are any indication of what's to come.
11:50. Bureaucratic stiffs don't get much stiffer than Jacques Rogge, do they?
11:51. A sad, dramatic extinguishing of the Olympic flame wouldn't be complete without Take That (sans Robbie Williams), would it? Yeah, it's late and I'm ready for Rio now. Nevertheless, why wasn't "Rule The World" the Olympic theme song rather than that Muse thing?
11:57. Dancers with flame patterned tights are performing while the Olympic flame still burns. Are they going to sacrifice themselves to the flame or something?
11:59. After all that fanfare, a moment of restraint ... the individual torches that make up the collective flame simply vanish.
12:00 AM. Restraint? Seconds after the flames go out in a rare moment of tranquility, the opening chords of "Baba O'Riley" instantly kill the mood.
12:10 AM. If the tepid response to the Who was any indication, it looked like the athletes and audience were both totally exhausted and ready to go home. They should have ended this thing with the Brazilian sneak preview, with the Carnival performers ambushing the flame and sprinting out of the arena while the confused commentators speculated on what they just saw before the transmission abruptly cuts off and our screens fade to black.
9:10. I'm already thinking this diary was a bad idea, there's no way I can keep up. Madness playing "Our House" on the back of a flatbed truck, Buckingham Palace soliders mingling with red-clad waitresses and shiny green leprachauns? Help!
9:12. The guards are actually a state band and they just broke into Blur's "Parklife"! All the yellow and green and red and purple and yellow clad freaks are singing and waving along. And that's just the opening for the Pet Shop Boys and a bunch of orange conehead wearing cyclists. Chris Lowe is idly tapping what looks like a keyboard made of orange cardboard. I will never forget this closing ceremony as long as I live.
9:15. The Eurosport TV commentators say that One Direction are the biggest band in the world. Use hyperbole much? Of course there's nothing more British than ensuring that every generation of UK preteen girls has its own fresh faced boy band to worship for three to five years (until the inevitable reunions ten to fifteen years down the road).
9:22. Acrobatic group Spellbound perform some dizzying gymnastics to the Beatles' "A Day in the Life" while a black Rolls Royce delivers a haggard looking Ray Davies to the stage to sing "Waterloo Sunset". He's not ready for his closeup but sounds great for a 68-year old rock legend. A tightrope walker nearly slips and falls, not like anyone could notice with the 847 other things that are going on here.
9:27. Emeli Sande returns for an encore of "Read All About It" as we approach the half hour mark and see a video montage of Olympic athletes from these Games crying tears of joy. This is one instance when I'm looking forward to Jacques Rogge's boring Olympic summation speech so I can take a short break from all this.
9:35. Olympics athletes, coaches and various chaperones are filing in from all directions. Some are wearing team outfits, some aren't, some are streaming single file from the aisles in the stands, some are jogging on the floor of the stadium. I can't make heads or tails out of it, and Elbow are soundtracking all this chaos for some reason. Break achieved.
9:52. As they continue filing in to fill in the giant Union Jack flag in the centre of the stadium, and I wonder what's supposed to happen once some of these drunk people need to start using the bathroom, the commentators announce that the "Symphony of British Music" to come later in the show will feature some five hundred songs! Did I hear that right? And I'm supposed to recap it?
10:00. The British athletes enter to an interpretive dance set to Kate Bush's "Running Up That Hill", which gets set to a slo-mo video montage of athletes in motion, partly shot in black and white. You can't say they don't know how to dramatize sport in London. This is followed by the men's marathon medal ceremony, the final medal presentation of the Games, one of my favourite traditions of the Olympics.
10:07. And now it's time for the Symphony of British Music. One hour's worth. I will recap the breakneck insanity at at my own peril.
10:11. I'm surprised they'd open with Queen and John Lennon, I mean, wouldn't you expect that to close the performance? And the Spice Girls are supposed to top a white plaster John Lennon mask, deaf kids signing the words to "Imagine", and hundreds of white balloons?
10:22. George Michael gets nearly ten minutes for "Freedom" and his new single "White Light"? The commentators refer to him as a talented singer and a troubled soul, or something to that effect. Troubled? Because of his near death from pneumonia last year? Sick people usually aren't labeled as "troubled". So he must have been referring to his multiple arrests over the years. Is it really appropriate to mention that right now?
10:24. Kaiser Chiefs offer a teaser for the Who reunion later on with a cover of "Pinball Wizard". Then it's a rapid fire montage of David Bowie music and photographs. For a moment I wonder whether this means Bowie is about to make a dramatic return from retirement, but unfortunately isn't just a few supermodels strutting around to "Fashion" while the commentators pimp the September issue of Vogue. Yes, random supermodels << Bowie coming out of retirement.
10:32. Hmm this looks like a goth Annie Lennox perched on the bow of a zombie ship? A definite pass.
10:35. Ed Sheeran, who I've never heard of (just 21?) leads a supergroup (incl. Nick Mason, Mike Rutherford) in a straightforward performance of Floyd's "Wish You Were Here". Not bad, but aren't there thousands of other kids performing in bars across the UK who have this song in their repertoire?
10:39. Everyone loves the Beatles, so it's no shock that the organizers wanted to pack in as many of their songs as they could. But Russell Brand as Willy Wonka warbling "I Am the Walrus"? I'm eventually won over by the kaleidescopic outfits and swaying violinists. I'm also wishing I was seeing this in HD, because the light show and background video screens (IN the stands all around the stadium) are spectacular.
10:44. Fatboy Slim, whose CD decks may not be plugged into anything (Ladbrokes has it 3:1 against) dances to excerpts from "Right Here Right Now" and "The Rockafeller Skank". Pretending to DJ is fun!
10:47. From that we jump to the '10's generation with Jessie J ("Price Tag") and Tinie Tempah ("Pass Out) ... and Taio Cruz ("Dynamite"). They drive around in fancy cars because they like money, or something. Norman Cook feigns his interest by continuing to pretend to DJ. The trio then ascend to the stage to take on the Bee Gees' "You Should Be Dancing". I think they're picking random names and song titles out of a hat now!
10:52. I'm wondering whether Adele, who is genuinely the biggest music star in the Western world and hasn't even been rumoured to be making an appearance (AFAIK), will provide us with a genuinely huge surprise later tonight.
10:53. This Bee Gees "tribute" is falling flat on its face in large part because the three artists who are supposed to be singing it are obviously not the least bit interested in singing it. "We sang our own hits already for 90 seconds each, aren't we done here?"
10:54. FINALLY it's the Spice Girls reunion, and I can't help but wonder if they feel vindicated that all the criticism leveled at them back in the day now looks petty and vindictive now that *every* gonzo live performance (particularly on gala shows like this one) revolves around the spectacle rather than how well you can sing and dance in the classically trained sense. Actually, I'm sure they don't feel vindicated at all, as if they could care less what people think of them at this point! But why WHY do they get only a few short minutes to steamroll through "Wannabe" and "Spice Up Your Life" while Liam Fucking Gallagher gets as long as he wants to whine his way through "Wonderwall" with his backing band. They couldn't deliver a surprise Oasis reunion if they had to insist on inviting this guy?
11:06. The biggest ovation of the evening has just gone to Eric Idle as he broke into "Always Look On the Bright Side of Life". Are you surprised that everyone from the dancing nuns to the Dutch Olympic team are waving and whistling along? Of course there's only one way to cap it all off -- with an odd "Slumdog Millionaire"-like interlude and a coda involving opera singers, ice skating nuns and a man shot across the stadium from a cannon. Hello world, there was your moment of British for the evening, i.e. you probably had to be British (or at least watched most of the Monty Python movies) to know what that was all about. The rest of the world had George Michael and the Spice Girls, the Brits had that all to themselves.
11:13. Unfortunately that's not the end of the British music extravaganza hour, it's Muse performing their completely ignored London Olympics theme song that sounds nothing like an actual Olympic theme song. Say what you will about David Foster, but he knows his forte.
11:15. But wait, it's not the end after all ... the real end is a video of Freddie Mercury leading a stadium crowd in a singalong, followed by a live performance of "We Will Rock You" by the remainder of Queen with Jessie J. See, I knew they'd close with Queen after all. Brian May might have let his still thick mane of hair go grey, but he can still shred. And can you believe these guys have continued without Freddie Mercury for longer than they were actually with Freddie Mercury?
11:31. As much as I've enjoyed this rapid fire review of the past forty years of British music, I'm more than ready to move on and take the crash course in Brazilian music, if this brief introduction to the Games of '16 are any indication of what's to come.
11:50. Bureaucratic stiffs don't get much stiffer than Jacques Rogge, do they?
11:51. A sad, dramatic extinguishing of the Olympic flame wouldn't be complete without Take That (sans Robbie Williams), would it? Yeah, it's late and I'm ready for Rio now. Nevertheless, why wasn't "Rule The World" the Olympic theme song rather than that Muse thing?
11:57. Dancers with flame patterned tights are performing while the Olympic flame still burns. Are they going to sacrifice themselves to the flame or something?
11:59. After all that fanfare, a moment of restraint ... the individual torches that make up the collective flame simply vanish.
12:00 AM. Restraint? Seconds after the flames go out in a rare moment of tranquility, the opening chords of "Baba O'Riley" instantly kill the mood.
12:10 AM. If the tepid response to the Who was any indication, it looked like the athletes and audience were both totally exhausted and ready to go home. They should have ended this thing with the Brazilian sneak preview, with the Carnival performers ambushing the flame and sprinting out of the arena while the confused commentators speculated on what they just saw before the transmission abruptly cuts off and our screens fade to black.
Wednesday, August 08, 2012
Best of The Cure
ILM's latest artist poll is for The Cure, and I tried putting together my ballot the way I normally do. Rather than putting together a giant shortlist of songs and whittling it down, I usually make very stingy choices, picking only my clear favourites. This often leaves me with a list that's shorter than the length of the ballot I need to submit, but ranking those songs is a lot more straightforward and to the point (reducing the signal to noise, so to speak, but starting out with fewer candidate songs). Having already taken care of the hardest part, I can then fill in the lower portions of my ballot.
Except that this time, I ran into a brick wall. I made the usual stingy shortlist, and was lost in trying to rank them. I started listening to a bunch of Cure songs, but that made me add more songs to my shortlist, making the problem worse.
I was surprised that it was so difficult, but I shouldn't have been. I realized it's all symptomatic of a very simple fact -- I've been listening to their music for over twenty years and have never been able to define my relationship to their music. Usually you know where you stand with a band, especially after growing along with them for a couple of decades (needless to say). Bands are subconsciously slotted into countless categories, such as your absolute, all time favourite bands, bands who you liked for a few years and grew out of them, bands who have a handful of great songs you like but whose music you never buy, etc. Sometimes bands can hop between categories, but usually they don't, especially once you've spent a few years following their career and listening to their music*.
[*here's a counterexample to demonstrate what I do not mean by this. Once upon a time, I knew who the Velvet Underground were, understood that they were considered a legendary band, an immeasurable influence on the entire alternative music scene ... but aside from hearing "Sweet Jane" occasionally on the radio, I never listened to their music at all. I only "discovered" them properly in the late 90's and pretty much became obsessed with them immediately. So the VU were an "all time favourite" from the beginning, i.e. from the point I properly discovered them. They didn't switch from "legendary band with no relevance to me personally" to "all time favourite". On the other hand, The Cure have been changing categories for me ever since the late 80's, and at times have even been nearly uncategorizable.]
With The Cure there is a huge disconnect between the songs I liked by them when I was 16, 26, and 36. The teenaged me would have put "Just Like Heaven" at the top of his ballot without thinking twice. You couldn't be into alternative music in those days without being reasonably versed in the songs of the Cure. Not listening to them was as unthinkable as listening to classic rock radio and not caring a whit about Zeppelin or the Stones. You liked them whether you wanted to or not, not least because you probably knew a few girls at your school who were massive Cure fans and you could only hope that you were cool enough to date one of them. But the teenaged me didn't dive too deeply into The Cure's back catalogue. I listened to the Disintegration singles on the radio, taped them all and listened to them a million times, but somehow never bought (or even heard) the album. I owned "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me" and "Standing on a Beach" and for the longest time, those cassettes (along with whatever singles were being played on the radio) were the extent of my Cure vocabulary. I never became obsessed with Robert Smith's lyrics (or thought he was a great lyricist), never wanted to dress like him, and didn't care for most goth music. I liked "Mixed Up" because I loved dance music, and the idea of the Cure getting the remix album treatment (even at a time when every band was getting the remix album treatment) seemed hilarious and unexpected.
Twenty something me hardly listened to The Cure, perhaps not a surprise since I'd never been that into them to begin with. They'd blown up huge with the "Wish" album and especially with "Friday I'm In Love", which went into such heavy rotation that I (and most people) became sick of hearing it. When you also consider that the band were mostly on hiatus from 1993-1996, it became rather easy to ignore the Cure for a long while. Twenty something me finally saw the Cure play live (on the Dream Tour in 2000) but it was one of those things I figured I had to do at some point in my life. It didn't trigger a rediscovery of the band's music. I hadn't even listened to a note of "Bloodflowers" before seeing the concert.
Thirty something me could hear or download practically any Cure song from the internet on demand. Slowly I started to discover parts of their back catalogue that I'd never heard before. This didn't just spontaneously happen over the past few years. I may not have listened to them much during the 90's but when I did, I was usually discovering many of their older songs and diving deeper into their catalogue, beyond the more well known songs. I was mostly listening to live albums like "Concert", "Paris", and a recording of their Finsbury Park concert in 1993 (their last concert before taking an extended break for a couple of years) that quickly became one of my favourite live recordings by any band. In short, the songs (and eras) of The Cure that I value now are very different from what they were twenty years ago, which is why this ballot has been so difficult to put together.
It's easy to see why some people have grown out of The Cure. You listen to 1982's "Pornography", and you're hearing a fairly disturbed dude who's hiding some dark and twisted secrets. It's not hard to understand why high schoolers would relate to him, or even idolize him. These days, The Cure are expert salesmen of gloom and nostalgia in equal measure. Robert Smith hasn't changed his look in over twenty years and he can't now, because it's an integral part of his sales pitch. Just like James Brown looked the same and danced the same and did the whole feigning exhaustion only to throw off his robe and return to the mic bit until the day he died, Robert Smith knows what's expected from a Cure show, hint of self parody or not. He markets his brand of music every bit as well as the Stones market theirs. The Stones haven't been decadent rebels for a million years, but they know how to put on the act, feigning the part and making the nostalgia come alive. They're so good at it, they can play the arena shows and festivals until the next ice age. This is all true of The Cure as well.
Maybe with The Cure it was pantomime all along, who's to know? But I enjoy being a Cure fan now more than I did when they were at their "peak" from 1987-1992. I know their music better now, and appreciate their body of work more than I did back then. They bust their asses every night, playing three hour shows and changing the set list every night. They still release a new album every few years, and while you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for a classic (this has been clear ever since 2000's "Bloodflowers" failed to live up to expectations) they don't run in place and still have a knack for turning out a few songs on each album that stand up well to almost anything from their career. These days, I'd rather hear them play "The Only One" (yet another typically great Cure-style pop single) than "Lullaby" or "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea" for the thousandth time.
Except that this time, I ran into a brick wall. I made the usual stingy shortlist, and was lost in trying to rank them. I started listening to a bunch of Cure songs, but that made me add more songs to my shortlist, making the problem worse.
I was surprised that it was so difficult, but I shouldn't have been. I realized it's all symptomatic of a very simple fact -- I've been listening to their music for over twenty years and have never been able to define my relationship to their music. Usually you know where you stand with a band, especially after growing along with them for a couple of decades (needless to say). Bands are subconsciously slotted into countless categories, such as your absolute, all time favourite bands, bands who you liked for a few years and grew out of them, bands who have a handful of great songs you like but whose music you never buy, etc. Sometimes bands can hop between categories, but usually they don't, especially once you've spent a few years following their career and listening to their music*.
[*here's a counterexample to demonstrate what I do not mean by this. Once upon a time, I knew who the Velvet Underground were, understood that they were considered a legendary band, an immeasurable influence on the entire alternative music scene ... but aside from hearing "Sweet Jane" occasionally on the radio, I never listened to their music at all. I only "discovered" them properly in the late 90's and pretty much became obsessed with them immediately. So the VU were an "all time favourite" from the beginning, i.e. from the point I properly discovered them. They didn't switch from "legendary band with no relevance to me personally" to "all time favourite". On the other hand, The Cure have been changing categories for me ever since the late 80's, and at times have even been nearly uncategorizable.]
With The Cure there is a huge disconnect between the songs I liked by them when I was 16, 26, and 36. The teenaged me would have put "Just Like Heaven" at the top of his ballot without thinking twice. You couldn't be into alternative music in those days without being reasonably versed in the songs of the Cure. Not listening to them was as unthinkable as listening to classic rock radio and not caring a whit about Zeppelin or the Stones. You liked them whether you wanted to or not, not least because you probably knew a few girls at your school who were massive Cure fans and you could only hope that you were cool enough to date one of them. But the teenaged me didn't dive too deeply into The Cure's back catalogue. I listened to the Disintegration singles on the radio, taped them all and listened to them a million times, but somehow never bought (or even heard) the album. I owned "Kiss Me Kiss Me Kiss Me" and "Standing on a Beach" and for the longest time, those cassettes (along with whatever singles were being played on the radio) were the extent of my Cure vocabulary. I never became obsessed with Robert Smith's lyrics (or thought he was a great lyricist), never wanted to dress like him, and didn't care for most goth music. I liked "Mixed Up" because I loved dance music, and the idea of the Cure getting the remix album treatment (even at a time when every band was getting the remix album treatment) seemed hilarious and unexpected.
Twenty something me hardly listened to The Cure, perhaps not a surprise since I'd never been that into them to begin with. They'd blown up huge with the "Wish" album and especially with "Friday I'm In Love", which went into such heavy rotation that I (and most people) became sick of hearing it. When you also consider that the band were mostly on hiatus from 1993-1996, it became rather easy to ignore the Cure for a long while. Twenty something me finally saw the Cure play live (on the Dream Tour in 2000) but it was one of those things I figured I had to do at some point in my life. It didn't trigger a rediscovery of the band's music. I hadn't even listened to a note of "Bloodflowers" before seeing the concert.
Thirty something me could hear or download practically any Cure song from the internet on demand. Slowly I started to discover parts of their back catalogue that I'd never heard before. This didn't just spontaneously happen over the past few years. I may not have listened to them much during the 90's but when I did, I was usually discovering many of their older songs and diving deeper into their catalogue, beyond the more well known songs. I was mostly listening to live albums like "Concert", "Paris", and a recording of their Finsbury Park concert in 1993 (their last concert before taking an extended break for a couple of years) that quickly became one of my favourite live recordings by any band. In short, the songs (and eras) of The Cure that I value now are very different from what they were twenty years ago, which is why this ballot has been so difficult to put together.
It's easy to see why some people have grown out of The Cure. You listen to 1982's "Pornography", and you're hearing a fairly disturbed dude who's hiding some dark and twisted secrets. It's not hard to understand why high schoolers would relate to him, or even idolize him. These days, The Cure are expert salesmen of gloom and nostalgia in equal measure. Robert Smith hasn't changed his look in over twenty years and he can't now, because it's an integral part of his sales pitch. Just like James Brown looked the same and danced the same and did the whole feigning exhaustion only to throw off his robe and return to the mic bit until the day he died, Robert Smith knows what's expected from a Cure show, hint of self parody or not. He markets his brand of music every bit as well as the Stones market theirs. The Stones haven't been decadent rebels for a million years, but they know how to put on the act, feigning the part and making the nostalgia come alive. They're so good at it, they can play the arena shows and festivals until the next ice age. This is all true of The Cure as well.
Maybe with The Cure it was pantomime all along, who's to know? But I enjoy being a Cure fan now more than I did when they were at their "peak" from 1987-1992. I know their music better now, and appreciate their body of work more than I did back then. They bust their asses every night, playing three hour shows and changing the set list every night. They still release a new album every few years, and while you shouldn't hold your breath waiting for a classic (this has been clear ever since 2000's "Bloodflowers" failed to live up to expectations) they don't run in place and still have a knack for turning out a few songs on each album that stand up well to almost anything from their career. These days, I'd rather hear them play "The Only One" (yet another typically great Cure-style pop single) than "Lullaby" or "From the Edge of the Deep Green Sea" for the thousandth time.
Wednesday, July 25, 2012
Carly Rae Jepsen, "Call Me Maybe"
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.
"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 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.
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