Front 242, "Front By Front"

The fourth in a series of albums I haven't heard in over twenty years ...

Very little has been written about industrial music.  Google for "industrial music criticism" or something similar and you'll find multiple links to S. Alexander Reed's "Assimilate: A Critical History of Industrial Music" (which I haven't read) and various odds and sods.  The biographies and oral histories never coalesced.  Good luck even finding a few industrial albums on the plethora of 80's or 90's "best of" lists that have appeared in recent years.

I hate to fall back on cliche's like "style over substance", but I think that many of the key bands were genuinely uninterested in making "classic albums" or achieving similar rock-crit benchmarks.  They were radicals in their politics, performances, and sought to provoke visceral reactions to their music.  Not for nothing that Front 242 popularized the term "electronic body music" to describe themselves.  I always found that term to be deceptively simple and rather underappreciated.  "Body music" doesn't refer to music that gets in your feels and touches your soul -- a description that apply to many other genres.  It's a physical feeling, an abuse of one's body while the crushing beats, clangs, and snarls collectively tear away at your chest cavity when listening or dancing at high volume.  Plenty of bands start out as political agitators and rebels and most eventually refocus themselves towards the task of appealing to a wider audience and making great albums that will stand the test of time (e.g. U2) .  Industrial acts were particularly fixated on radical aesthetics that would challenge contemporary audiences and couldn't care less about showing up on a listicle three decades later.  Nine Inch Nails and Ministry proved there was a path into the mainstream via this music (taking completely different routes -- NIN appealed to teen angst while Ministry courted the metalheads) but so many of the initial late 70's and 80's wave of industrial bands are missing from the commonly accepted musical canon. 

Despite not having heard "Front By Front" in over twenty years, I found myself humming the basic melodies and recalling basic lyrics just from reading the song titles.  I can't say that about the first three albums I revisited in this series.  The first four songs are impeccable. "Until Death (Us Do Part)" is a perfect overture to the album. This is about as pop as Front 242 would get, the synth hooks are Depeche Mode-like in their catchiness.  "Circling Overland" ramps up the brutality with a primitive, bludgeoning backbeat.  The album's darker turn is rounded out by ominous faux-strings and paranoid lyrics about an omnipresent air force surveying all of Western Europe.  "Im Rhythmus Bleiben", as the title suggests, is a series of pulverizing rhythms punctuated by repetitions of the title with increasing urgency.  "Felines" shows a more sensual side to the band, with a slower tempo and a spidery, curdling bassline.  None of this music seems to have aged much, possibly because there haven't been enough copycats mining it for inspiration.  The lack of overexposure has kept this stuff relatively fresh. 

The second half of the album is more mundane and repetitive, but like I said, these bands weren't necessarily about trying to craft classic albums.  The exception, of course, is "Headhunter", arguably the finest single this genre has ever produced.  Much like the title character stalking his prey, stealth rhythms and vocal samples pop up everywhere, whirs, clicks, and muffled shouts are constantly lurking but can do nothing to derail the galloping backbeat.  It's a complex song with a shoutable, club-ready chorus.

My cassette version contained not only "Welcome to Paradise" (a cut and paste club smash in and of itself) and the entire "Never Stop" EP, but seventy consecutive minutes of Front 242 was too exhausting then, and still is now.  You absorb most of their best tricks about about thirty minutes and then it gets repetitive with diminishing returns.  But at its best, "Front By Front" still sounds fresh and confrontational, with lyrical themes that still resonate today.   

Alphaville, "The Singles Collection"

This is the third album in a series of albums that I haven't heard in over twenty years ...

While it's technically true that I haven't listened to this exact album in decades (having bought it on cassette for peanuts), I haven heard the singles numerous times over the years, because Alphaville continue to receive steady airplay even today.  Or rather, Alphaville's two best known singles have never really gone away, save for a short time during the 90's.  Like many bands of their era, Alphaville were completely out of place during the early 90's but revived their career once non-ironic 80's nostalgia kicked in.   Jay-Z's sample/cover of "Forever Young" brought them full circle, rescuing them from being an 80's trivia question in the US and introducing them to a completely new generation of fans.  Jay and Mr. Hudson's "Young Forever" was a top ten Billboard hit, far and away bigger than anything they achieved in the 80's.  

"The Singles Collection" was timed around the re-release of the "Forever Young" single, and seemed designed to give them one last crack at breaking through in the US market.  Maybe there was a stigma about European bands looking and sounding too European.  The open vowels and strained pronunciation in "Forever Young" are a clear giveaway as the band's non-British origins. You might say that it didn't seem to hurt a-ha, but "Take On Me" a) had the iconic, way ahead of its time video, and b) was the crazy exception that proved the rule.  Between "Dancing Queen" in 1977 and the rise of Milli Vanilli and Roxette in 1989, a span of twelve years, there were only five number one Billboard hits by continental European acts:

Stars on 45, "Stars on 45 Medley"
Vangelis, "Chariots of Fire"
a-ha, "Take On Me"
Jan Hammer, "Miami Vice Theme"
Falco, "Rock Me Amadeus"

By my count, that's three novelty songs, two movie tie-ins ("Rock Me Amadeus" counts as both), and only one proper, non-gimmicky number one hit -- "Take On Me".  Not to mention that Jan Hammer was living in the US and was a US citizen when he topped the charts -- with the theme song to an American TV show -- and probably shouldn't be on this list.  It was simply not a good time for German bands trying to find success in the US.  It seems they could improve their chances by exploiting their front line Cold War cred and singing about nuclear war paranoia (Nena's smash hit "99 Red Balloons" hit #2).  "Forever Young" pushed all the right buttons (fear of the bomb, teenage melodrama, yanking every heartstring in the chorus) but couldn't even scrape the top fifty.  Alphaville's victory was in the long game, their love song spans five different decades and still matters today.   

It also didn't help that they released a compilation called "The Singles Collection" with only four songs.  It suggested that they were a flash in the pan who didn't even have enough songs to pad out the rest of their supposed greatest hits compilation.  The song selection was unusual, considering that they had four other singles from their first two albums that could have been included, all of which had performed well on European charts  Nevertheless, I loved the format, and still do today.  Think of it as a double EP of remixes, and its a brilliant concept.  You get the single version and a DJ-friendly  extended version of each song, perfect for parties or just for those times when four minutes of a great song isn't long enough. 

"Forever Young". Is there another song whose original version and its radically different remix were almost interchangeably successful?  I can think of R. Kelly's "Ignition (Remix)" and the Todd Terry mix of Everything But the Girl's "Missing", I'm sure there are others.

"Big In Japan".  Still a monster song, and I love how the remix breaks down its rich, spidery, multiple bass lines. 

"Red Rose".  This song is the jewel hiding in plain sight on this collection.  Oddly enough, it wasn't a hit anywhere at the time, but it should have been.  Its driving, vaguely Motown-ish beat suggested a shift away from typical synth pop and toward a groovy, almost Robert Palmer-esque rock and roll vibe.  It was an attempt to appeal to American tastes, but nobody was biting. What a shame ...

"Dance With Me".  The clear #4 on this compilation, with a hokey chorus that I've never been able to enjoy, but still a glorious slice of bouncy roller-rink and 80's teen movie ready synth pop.  Far from their finest moment, but still better than most other bands in the genre were managing at the time.   

The Stone Roses, "Garage Flower"

My second post in an ongoing series where I revisit an album that I haven't heard in over twenty years ...

I first bought this on a bootleg cassette around '93-'94, it was likely a copy of a copy (the level of tape hiss was bordering on unlistenable), was titled "Stone Roses: early demos" or something to that effect, and had a completely different running order than the official release in 1996.  Despite all this, I felt like I'd landed on a gold mine.  At a time when Roses fans were starving for new material during the (at the time) interminable wait for their second album, here were a dozen or so honest to goodness "unheard" Roses tracks, recorded years before they were famous. 

It wasn't a great album, but did it matter?  The seeds of greatness were clearly there.  the swagger, self-confidence, and Reni's fierce drumming all shine through.  It was clearly an important chapter in the Roses' story. 

At the time, I didn't realise that Martin Hannett had produced the album.  That was due to me not being completely attuned to his style -- it's quite obviously him once you know what to listen for.  But these were also the pre-internet days where getting information about something like this was nearly impossible.  I knew nothing about this album other than what was written on the cover of the cassette.  There were no details about the recording (date, studio, personnel ...) and even the song titles were all wrong. 

Hearing "Garage Flower" today, it's clear that Hannett was the wrong person to produce the Stone Roses.  The instruments, and John Squire's guitar in particular, form a muddy, echo-filled blur.  Squire's guitar lines, which were such an essential part of the debut album's bluster, are completely buried under multiple layers of studio trickery.  Ian Brown's nasally voice was always cited as the weak point in the band, but Hannett's solution (drench him in reverb) is far inferior to John Leckie's on the eventual debut (add simple harmonies and have him sing in a more airy tone).  That being said, Hannett wasn't a bad choice for producing *this version* of the Roses, because the songs weren't there yet, and at the time, he probably made them sound better than they actually were.  They certainly sound different than other bands of the time, almost proto-shoegaze and with none of the classic rock and jangly guitar pop elements that they'd later be known for. 

"Garage Flower" was shelved in 1985, but we can still compare it to Happy Mondays' debut album released in the same year (because of course we do ...).  In both cases, once you've heard the first three or four songs, you've heard all of their tricks.  The Mondays had zero tunes to speak of, but could work their way round a simple but infectious groove.  John Cale polished what little talent they had into a hypnotic VU-style drum/guitar loop, and all in all, these days, their debut is more fun to listen to than "Garage Flower".  However, the Roses were far closer to the peak version of themselves than the Mondays were.  "I Wanna Be Adored" and "This Is the One", the two "Garage Flower" songs that eventually appeared on their debut, are far from being the standout tracks.  With slower tempos, more dynamic highs and lows, and guitar playing that can actually be heard, both would sound immeasurably better on the debut four years later.  In general, their formula of shouty intro leading to an aggressive drum fill and caterwauling guitars can't be sustained over an entire album.  It must be said, however, that even at this stage, the Roses had a knack for landing the big chorus.  Again, the elements are there, but they hadn't made the Leap. 

   

Jean Sibelius

I am slowly making my way through Alex Ross' exhausting but fascinating "The Rest Is Noise".  I am in the middle of the chapter that covers Berlin in the 1920's, and the sheer volume of music I need to hear is overwhelming -- the audio clips on the book's website are just the tip of the iceberg.  But the biggest revelation for me by far has been the music and the cultural force that was Jean Sibelius. 

Youtube comment boxes are filled with comparisons between Sibelius' music and the climate and nature in Finland.  The wind, frost, snow, and darkness are frequently referenced, "THIS IS FINLAND!" is a common exclamation that shows, even one hundred years later, that the music speaks to the depth of the Finnish soul in ways that outsiders can't entirely appreciate.  The intricate linkage between the innate character of the musicians' home country and their music reminds me of the writing surrounding Sigur Ros, at least for their earlier albums.  Had Sibelius been born 75 years later, he might have become a Steve Roach-type of composer and produced electronic-based freeform ambient and tribal-ambient works.  The way Sibelius draws out the passages in his symphonies, giving the feeling of time slowing to a crawl, makes him the most "ambient" of orchestral composers that I've heard.  His knack of landing, for lack of a better phrase, the "big notes" is truly wondrous, drawing timbres from the massed orchestra that you just don't hear from most composers.  The overall effect is similar to electronic drone music -- unique tonality + time stretching = motion and form within the notes that can't be heard otherwise. 

Arcade Fire: Miroir Noir (dir. Vincent Morisset), Live at Lollapalooza Chicago 2017

Arcade Fire used to be an incendiary band, a once in a decade instance of a band that arrived perfectly formed upon their debut album, without an obvious predecessor, without even a whiff of corporate guidance or a all-seeing mentor lurking behind the scenes.  Like The Smiths and Suede before them, they knew exactly who they were upon arrival, didn't fit into any existing niche in indie rock, and yet managed to find a huge fanbase waiting for them who didn't even know what they were waiting for until they heard it.

Watch their performance from Lollapalooza 2017, and see that on any given night (or even most nights considering how good they are on stage), they can still be that incendiary band.  The talent is clearly there, their intensity and boundless energy on stage remains among the best in the world, and based on recent interviews, they still have the drive to succeed.  But perhaps it's never been easier to fool jaded fans like me into thinking they still have it, based on a nostalgia-heavy live show.  The Killers debuted in the same year as Arcade Fire and are the poster children for releasing three great albums and milking them ad infinitum.  They can headline wherever they want, play sets based around those three albums, and be certain of sending fans home happy, anything they've released in the past decade scarcely seems to matter in the big ticket selling picture. 

I hadn't seen "Miroir Noir" until now, and it's been surprisingly under-publicized over the years.  Admittedly, a documentary without a narrator, obvious story arc, and barely any dialogue can be a very tough sell.  It's shot almost entirely in sepia tones or antique-looking colour, and frequently resorts to odd, intrusive camera angles and the camera shakes or jitters with virtually all performance-based shots.  We get a fly on the wall view of the "Neon Bible" recording sessions, and a few representative on stage performances.  That's what passes for a story arc in "Miroir Noir", and the only commentary or sorts comes from the mostly crackpot calls to the 866 number that fans and interested parties could call to hear previews of the album prior to its release.  Despite all this, it's not a densely abstract art film because it's packed with incredible music that produce a string of memorable moments -- "Wake Up" played acoustically amongst fans on the floor of a concert hall, the elevator versions of "Windowsill" and "Neon Bible", the orchestral recording of "Intervention", and countless more.

Where did things start to go wrong? Ten years ago, didn't I review "The Suburbs" and praise them for embracing synths, taking cues from dance music, and hope they'd continue on that road in future albums?  I stand by those comments, while noting that there's a world of difference between a rock band recognizing and absorbing disco into their songs (e.g. Blondie) and concocting a fictional band name (The Reflektors) as part of a tongue in cheek promotional campaign while playing dress up on stage and encouraging audience members to do the same.  When you choose to work with trendy producers because you can, while retaining a pseudo-ironic detachment from the scene you're trying to glean inspiration from, then you're making "Emotional Rescue", not "Atomic".

Through their first three albums, nobody could ever accuse Arcade Fire of not being sincere, it was their most endearing quality.  Even their detractors knew that they *meant it* as much as any proverbial punk band ever had.  U2's "Pop" is now considered a mis-step, and three years later they reset themselves with "All That You Can't Leave Behind", signalling to any lapsed fans that the "real" U2 was back.  However, you can't say that they weren't all-in on that sound at the time -- "Zooropa" in 1993 further attests to this.  Arcade Fire feel like they hedged their bets before this phase even began.  If people liked "Reflektor" and "Everything Now" then great, and if not, they can reset and blame their critics for not understanding the subtext and laughing at the jokes.  Oh wait, they've already started doing this!

Most of all, their last two albums annoy me as a long time dance music fan for the same reasons that I used to rip on Radiohead twenty years ago.  Paranoia over a rapidly changing world, fear and distrust of technology, and criticism of consumer culture were already boring when Radiohead did it, and Arcade Fire have sadly taken many cues from them.  Both bands are also trying to tell us that electronic music is vacuous due to its mostly faceless, wordless nature, and only a rock band can enable such music to reach its true potential by adding conscious lyrics and guitars, thereby providing the music with a social context that was sorely missing until they came along.  Fuck all that.  What emotions do these bands always bring to the music?  Do they try to expand the palate of electronic music, and find new ways to express joy, rage, sadness, love, and all the other common themes in rock music?  No, they always loop back the stereotypes, i.e. they use cold, emotionless electronic music as a conduit to criticize cold, emotionless, uncaring, unsympathetic corporations and misusers of technology.

That said, "Everything Now" is an incredible song, and "Afterlife" shows that if you're going to blatantly copy, you might as well copy from the very best (New Order's "Temptation").  So I still have hope.   

The National - A Series of Exciting Communal Events

During the two months at home it was easy to lose track of what day it was.  However, I always knew which day was Monday because that was the day that the National would stream an Exciting Communal Event.  These concerts, mainly drawing from the band's nearly limitless supply of festival appearances, became a highlight of my week and helped keep me grounded to the idea of a normal life that would one day return.  Obviously plenty of other artists are doing similar things and connecting with their fans via their archive of live recordings or by livestreaming songs from their homes.  But the National's Exciting Communal Events were my favourite vice during the shutdown, and as a way to enjoy great music for two hours and reset one's brain for the coming week, I could find nothing better.  It certainly helped that the streams would go live at midnight my time, when the house was dark and quiet.  It was my secret, private portal into a world where real life can be suspended for happier reasons, and festivals can seem like the most important things happening in the world.  

The Exciting Communal Events will seemingly continue into the foreseeable future.  The National have headlined a couple of dozen festivals each year on their past few tours, so they're not going to run out of content.  Most importantly, the band are using these events to publicize a Gofundme to support their tour crew, and have also set up a separate fund to help their crew using profits from online merch sales.  It might be one or two years before concerts and festivals of this size can take place, so out of the millions of workers currently furloughed, they are among the last people who will get their jobs and normal lives back.  It's a great cause and I would encourage any National fan -- or fans of other bands organizing similar funding drives -- to donate and help out people who work so hard behind the scenes to stage these concerts.

So far there have been eight Exciting Communal Events, all of which are streamed at 5 PM EDT and then archived to the band's Youtube channel here.

High Violet Live from Brooklyn Academy May 15, 2010

This was directed by D.A. Pennebaker (one of his final works) and streamed live back in 2010 on the eve of the release of "High Violet".  At the time it probably blew a few minds and heralded a new era for the band.  Only bands that have "arrived" have their concerts professionally shot by a famous director in a beautiful theatre.  However, as a concert film it's nothing extraordinary, and the backstage stuff isn't particularly revealing, but that's partly because we've been spoiled by the volume of content that came afterward.

Live from Hurricane Festival June 21, 2013

The summer of 2013 was probably the last year you'll find them performing before sunset at a festival.  With only one hour allotted, they aim for highspots only by playing only fast, propulsive songs from their catalogue, with no ballads or slow passages.

  

Live from Primavera Sound, June 1, 2018

Live from Primavera Sound, May 30, 2014

This is clearly one of the band's favourite festivals.  Setlists from the "Sleep Well Beast" tours are always fantastic, and their 2018 appearance is no exception.  However, their 2014 appearance is more unique and fun.  The songs are played at noticeably faster tempos, with an energy and intensity beyond their typical gigs.  Matt Berninger seems tipsier than usual, and a few songs threaten to go careening off the edge into chaos, but the band somehow holds it together.  

Live from Ypsigrock, August 9, 2019

"I Am Easy To Find" drags in parts, weighed down by longer song lengths and experimental passages that don't always slick.  That problem extends to the resultant tour, but fans will still find plenty to like in this 2+ hour show in a beautiful Sicilian square. 

Guilty Party: Basilica Hudson

The band play on a circular stage encircled by a select number of fans.  This was a very special show in an intimate setting, featuring the entire "Sleep Well Beast" album played in order.  They are accompanied by a number of guests (Mouse on Mars, So Percussion, Nadia Sirota, Buke and Gase) who perform on the songs they collaborated on for the album.  There are no video screens or fancy lighting, just simple blue and red lights that dimly illuminate the stage, engulfing the band in an eerie glow as if they're playing under the moonlight.  The camera work is exquisite too, DVD quality work no doubt.  If you only have time to watch one Exciting Communal Event, and it's after midnight where you are, then this is the one to watch.  

Live from Pukkelpop, August 18, 2019

The band grabbed some headlines surrounding this gig by asking fans to choose the setlist.  Natually this meant that the set was skewed toward many older songs.  I wasn't as high on this concert as most people were -- The National don't have an exceptionally deep catalog, and all these older songs make frequent appearances in their sets even today, it's just rare to hear so many of them in the same set in 2019.  

Live from Best Kept Secret, June 9, 2018

The best of the lot in my opinion, and the impetus behind writing this post.  This show was readily available on youtube until about two months ago, leading many fans to speculate that it was intentionally removed so that the band could host it themselves, presumably in perpetuity, on their own channel.  Sure enough, here it is, pretty much the perfect National gig, with exceptional sound, a great crowd, and peak performances of almost every song.  This was my go-to concert for the band, and I know I'm not alone in calling it my favourite.   

If I had to put together a wishlist, I'd start with a full recording of the From the Artists Den show at Park Avenue Armory in May 2013.  Filmed right before the release of "Trouble Will Find Me", the fifty minute video currently available on youtube features a mix of live recordings and interviews, but surely a recording of the complete concert exists somewhere.  Playing in such a cavernous building produces an intimidating, dense wall of sound that I've never seen duplicated from any of their other gigs.  Or how about one of the "I Am Easy To Find" warm up gigs, with a parade of guest performers chosen according to the city they appeared in?  And what about some pre-2010 stuff? 

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Updated (May 31, 2020):

Just a few days after I posted this, they streamed the final Exciting Communal Event, and it was indeed quite the event.  They screened the complete "A Lot Of Sorrow", a collaboration between the National and Icelandic artist Ragnar Kjartansson, in which the band appeared on a stage at the MoMA in New York and played their song "Sorrow" repeatedly for six hours.  This was an exercise/endurance contest that spoke straight to my heart, making me think fondly of the days when I would occasionally experiment with my own sanity such as the time I listened to Rhythm and Sound's "See Mi Yah" continuously for 24 hours.

Unfortunately, the stream was not archived, likely because it's still an active exhibit in many modern art museums around the world.  But I was entranced by the hour or so that I saw.  Sadly, the band decided to put an end to these weekly events.  The pandemic seems to be far from over but many countries are opening up again whether the situation warrants it or not, and thus, perhaps it's best that the ECE's wrap up here, a shared experience confined to a specific time period in all of our lives.   

Florian Schneider RIP

There were a string of deaths in the music industry in the past month, including Little Richard and Dave Greenfield of the Stranglers.  But the passing of Florian Schneider was the most personally affecting for me.  He died as quietly and as privately as he lived.  We know he had a battle with cancer and little else.  How had he been passing his time since leaving Kraftwerk over a decade ago?  Nobody really knows.  And yet, the list of musicians who truly transformed music in multiple genres is a very short one, and Florian Schneider is on it. 

Is it wrong to be rankled by the obits who make note of the David Bowie song "V2 Schneider", as if he were a footnote in a song title by a more famous musician? 

Florian Schneider has died, but what is there to write about?  Kraftwerk were a monolithic entity, the individual contributions of the group members have been blurred out almost completely.  There are no amusing anecdotes about how Schneider composed a cool keyboard riff, about a song jelling in the studio, about life on the road.  It is assumed that he, along with Ralf Hutter, were the key creative forces in Kraftwerk, and indeed, the band hasn't released any new material since he left.  Kraftwerk and Hutter haven't said anything outside of a brutally dispassionate statement confirming his death, no personal remembrances, nothing.  The statement had all of the emotion of a company-wide email from the CEO's office, informing the masses of an unfortunate death within their ranks.  It was courteous and respectful, but gave no indication that they knew anything about the man other than what appeared in his employee file.

However, there's no indication that Schneider would have wanted it any other way.  He was an intensely private person when he was in Kraftwerk, and had ample time to set the record straight since leaving the band in 2008.  He could have written a book or started new collaborations but he didn't. It's a sad day for music, but music continues on exactly as it did before.   

"Fyre: The Greatest Party That Never Happened", dir. Chris Smith

I finally got around to watching this, and I can safely say that I've never seen a documentary come across more like a horror film.  I can't ever remember covering my eyes at the sight of an *interview*.  Later, I went back and re-read some criticism after the film's release in January last year, and I was a bit surprised to see the horror film comparisons come up again and again. After hearing that they were forty five days out and hadn't found anyone to physically stage the concerts, I could do nothing but bury my head in my hands.  By the time they were a couple of weeks out and were still finalizing the location, I was close to a full-on Colonel Kurtz stunned breakdown.

It was not a "mere" case of gross incompetence, of energetic twenty-somethings that got in over their heads.  They thought it would all come together at the last minute, only to discover that organizing a festival isn't like cramming for a final exam the night before.  But they also had the audacity to think that their customers wouldn't know the the difference between what they'd promised and the haphazard shit show they attempted to present.  The artists hadn't arrived (or been paid), none of the local workers had received a dime, the housing wasn't ready, the food was an atrocity, their guest were effectively stranded, and they somehow, inexplicably allowed the festival to go on.

Somehow, Fyre managed to retain many well-intentioned, hard working people right up until the end.  In the face of all evidence that the festival was careening towards disaster, collective hysteria won out. 

Ja Rule comes off worse than anyone.  Far from the detached celeb who tweeted "IT WASN'T MY FAULT" when his feet were put to the fire (no pun intended), he was an enabler from the beginning and was actively involved in the cover-up/spin doctoring efforts in the aftermath.  His comments during the post-festival conference call ("I wouldn't call it fraud, I would call it ... false advertising") shows that he was as scummy as any of the other principals. 

But at the same time, you can't help but laugh at these entitled assholes getting what they deserved at the end.  Even while watching it all unfold in 2017, I happily took part in the chorus of ridicule just like many other people.

"Coachella: 20 Years in the Desert", dir. Chris Perkel

The release of this Youtube Original documentary coincided with the scheduled start of Coachella's first weekend.  Right now nobody has a clue when even medium sized gatherings will be allowed again, let along multi-day megafestivals.  "20 Years in the Desert" is a fun way to spend two hours while under lockdown, although it already made me feel nostalgic for what already feels like ancient times (i.e. pre-January 2020), when flying in to attend a big festival could be so easy and straightforward.   

The only real historical/critical worth of the documentary happens in the first twenty minutes, which details the festival's origins and features interviews from all the founders and other principal players.  I didn't know that the organizers at Goldenvoice Entertainment came from both the punk and electronic music scenes, providing a synergy between two very distant genres in the 80's.  Their foresight appears prophetic today.  I also had no idea that tickets for the first Coachella went on sale the day after the end of the disastrous Woodstock '99.  Talk about bad timing.

The rest of the documentary is a combination of festival highlights and self-promotion, the latter mostly centred around the festival's cultural cache.  There are a few nods to major European festivals, but nothing in the way of a serious compare and contrast.  What does Coachella offer that other worldwide festivals can't, or won't?  In its admittedly large California-based sphere of influence, Coachella is definitely a trend-setter.  It's a revolutionary festival only if it's the only festival you know or care about.  Just to name one example, Glastonbury put electronic acts in headlining spots more than a decade earlier, and Jay-Z headlined there two years before his supposedly history-making set at Coachella.

In the early years, Coachella was mainly known as the festival of reunions.  Organizing the Jane's Addiction reunion was a coup that made the festival relevant almost overnight.  The Pixies had reunited months before they appeared, but their headlining set was still a huge accomplishment. It arguably launched the wave of cult band reunions and proved that there was huge money to be made from Gen-X nostalgia.  But they risked letting the reunion gimmick define and limit them, because there are only so many truly big reunions you can have. The documentary didn't give them enough credit for ransforming their image from an indie rock festival to a truly eclectic one that hands over headline spots to DJs (Tiesto) or to newer talents without a pre-existing legacy (Travis Scott).  Another understated achievement was the decision to livestream nearly the entire festival starting a few years ago.  This boosted their global presence immensely.

I would have liked to hear more about the logistics of organizing the two weekend festival, starting in 2012.  How did they convince all the bands to go for it?

Moby brought up a point I'd never considered before, that European festivals are mostly enjoyable and have great atmospheres, but they're also cold, rainy, and muddy a lot of the time.  A big part of making the yearly multi-day festival a viable concept in the US was undoubtedly the more favourable California weather. 

Moby, "Then It Fell Apart" (book)

Moby's first autobiography, "Porcelain", was in many ways not even about him.  Big parts of it were about chronicling the early rave scene from an insider's perspective and documenting the smells and sounds of early 90's New York.  In this telling, Moby's career developed organically and almost accidentally out of the chaos of the fledgling American rave scene.  If it were a play, the set design (mainly the recreation of clubs that have long since closed down and entertainment districts that would be unrecognizable today) would be the star, while Moby and his friends would be acting out their personal dramas in the background.

"Then It Fell Apart" is much more of a standard rock star autobiography.  Chapters alternate between his post-1999 rise to A-list stardom, and all the crazed debauchery that went along with it, and his upbringing as a poor, shy, and lonely kid of a single mother in upscale Darien, Connecticut.  Each chapter stands as a self-contained story, usually taking place within a single day.  His earliest memories as a neglected and sometimes horribly mistreated child are heartbreaking and were the most difficult parts of the book to get through.  In this first part of the book, these childhood stories alternate with tales of the astonishing and wholly unexpected success of "Play".

Young Moby never finds comfort or success but he does develop an identity, largely filtered through his love of music -- punk and new wave, Joy Division, Echo and the Bunnymen.  Viewed through this lens, Moby could be me or any of us weirdo alternative music loving kids.  I was born nine years after him, but I was obsessed with Joy Division too, treated the first records I bought like crown jewels, and couldn't come clean to most people in my high school about how much I loved Depeche Mode.  These chapters alternate with portraits of an adult Moby who is completely unrelatable -- globetrotting, filthy rich, and profoundly unhappy.  His excesses go from entertaining to depressingly predictable in a hurry.  Invited to fundraisers and political functions for the NYC elite, he finds himself no closer to happiness and acceptance than he did as a poor boy growing up among rich kids.

In the final part of the book, mid-80's Moby has a glimmer of a future and a measure of self-confidence.  Against the odds, it looks like he'll escape Darien and end up OK.  Adult Moby has also come full circle.  He starts the book as a megastar in waiting, but he ends it as a mid-40's has been and professional alcoholic.  Just when you can't bear to read another mind-numbing tale of his slow self destruction, he chooses to get help, and the book ends.  He leaves the door open for a third book detailing his recovery, prolific post-sobriety music career, and activism.

While not the home run that "Porcelain" was, "Then It Fell Apart" is still a powerful continuation of the Moby story.