Something of a continuation of my grower/dormanter discussion from last autumn ... I've been rediscovering Flying Saucer Attack's "New Lands", and somehow this record sound more messed up and otherworldly to me than it ever did before. When I listened to it for the first time in a good two years, I was puzzled -- it sounded nothing like how I remembered it. There were no recognizable melodies, just hazy slabs of guitar fuzz and Dave Pierce's half-asleep vocals floating by once in a while. It was more lo-fi than I remembered it, filled with atonal squalls and raw, abstract, vaguely formed song ideas. Sure, I love that sort of stuff now, but that's the tolerance built up from years of worshipping the lo-fi and lovely, the Megos and the Tony Conrads, and the "ambient" mixes with three input layered into head-pounding sleet with distortion on top. So how was I able to digest "New Lands" in 1997 (#9 on my Top 10 list for the year)?
We need a new name for this. It's kind of the opposite of a grower. It's a record that you start out liking, but grow to like in a completely different way while losing all recollection of what you used to like about it in the first place. A delayer? An echoer? A returner? A ...
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I'm listening to Mojave 3's "Pictures" right now. A friend once asked for wedding song suggestions, so I lent him "Ask Me Tomorrow" and suggested "Pictures" in particular. He didn't use it, so one might assume that I could still use it for myself one day.
But I live by the principle of "never tell anyone your wedding song". Ideas this important should be protected, and not just because such things backfired for George on Seinfeld and Monica on Friends (with baby names). Therefore, since "Pictures" candidacy as a wedding song has been exposed to the world, I can no longer use it.
I haven't told anybody what it is, and I'm not going to until the reception plans are well in motion, deposits down, rooms booked, signatures on the catering forms, etc. I thought I was as good as hitched with my last gf, and the topic of wedding songs did come up, and I thought about telling her, but I stayed true to my principle and I didn't. "Then I'm not telling you mine", she said, which was A-OK with me at the time. But you just never know, because now we're broken up, but my secret remains safe with me, so all is good.
Friday, February 06, 2004
Sunday, February 01, 2004
Some stuff I've been learning:
1. Catatonia's "Equally Cursed and Blessed" has not aged well. In particular, the lyrics for "Dead From the Waist Down" are horribly daft, and I can't imagine how I didn't notice it before. Chorus = "make hay, not war" = stupid, stupid, stupid. Releasing this as the first single was a huge career mistake, because the song was a departure (for them) sonically, and the charts had already been clogged for five years with "To the End" weepy epic soundalikes, and nobody was clamouring for any more of them. Releasing "Londonium" would have been far smarter -- livelier tune, better singalong factor, radio friendly at any time day or night, yet the subdued subject matter clearly signaled their shift toward a more introspective agenda. That's not to say that Catatonia's spectacular fall from grace wouldn't have happened anyhow (after all, they did have the gall to use the phrase "fall from grace" in a song, instant karma, yadda yadda) ... oh, and did I mention that "Dazed Beautiful and Bruised" remains one of only two decent power ballads in the history of music (Suede's "The Chemistry Between Us" is the other, and these days it's leaving "Dazed" in its dust).
However, "International Velvet" is still a boatload of fun, even though. 1998 was such a shit year for music, which makes memories of this album seem fonder, if anything.
2. Richie Hawtin is a very busy man when he's spinning. He spun for an hour at a free performance at the HMV on Queen Street, and it was the first time I've ever seen him work at floor level (and with the lights on). His weapons of choice are two turntable, TWO iMacs, a mixer that ressembles the dashboard of a fighter jet, and an effects controller. His literally moving all the time, always tweaking a knob or tapping a button. He also spends almost no time cueing records/beats. His mixing is as seamless as any DJ I've ever heard, a trait which obviously comes with a lot of practice, but the guy literally didn't spend more than seven or eight seconds cueing anythings, freeing up 97% of his time for shaping the mix with his multitudes of toys. These synching abilities can't be tought, it must be like with perfect pitch. You're just born with the ability. Richie Hawtin could walk into a parking lot, pick out two cars at random, smash their windows, and have the car alarms synched in less than five seconds.
He signed autographs afterward and I'm proud to report that I now have a signed white label of the classic "Loop" by LFO/FUSE. Boo. Yah.
3. When did CD's get so cheap? How am I supposed to save my money if such a situation sustains itself. First, there was the rack of ten dollar old-school techno compilations at Metropolis. Then there was the (seemingly inevitable) liquidation of all non funk, dub and hip-hop discs at Kops. I even scored a nice two-disc reggae compo at HMV for just ten bucks. And today, I spent a hefty chunk of time flipping through the racks in the ginormous Sonic Boom, which may be turning into the Amoeba Records of Toronto. Massive space, posters adorning the walls (albeit at 1/10 th Amoeba density), cheap used gem after cheap used gem. Not bad at all. If I never step foot in Amoeba again, that'll be oka .... all right, it damn well won't be okay, but my music needs are well attended to in right here in Toronto nonetheless.
1. Catatonia's "Equally Cursed and Blessed" has not aged well. In particular, the lyrics for "Dead From the Waist Down" are horribly daft, and I can't imagine how I didn't notice it before. Chorus = "make hay, not war" = stupid, stupid, stupid. Releasing this as the first single was a huge career mistake, because the song was a departure (for them) sonically, and the charts had already been clogged for five years with "To the End" weepy epic soundalikes, and nobody was clamouring for any more of them. Releasing "Londonium" would have been far smarter -- livelier tune, better singalong factor, radio friendly at any time day or night, yet the subdued subject matter clearly signaled their shift toward a more introspective agenda. That's not to say that Catatonia's spectacular fall from grace wouldn't have happened anyhow (after all, they did have the gall to use the phrase "fall from grace" in a song, instant karma, yadda yadda) ... oh, and did I mention that "Dazed Beautiful and Bruised" remains one of only two decent power ballads in the history of music (Suede's "The Chemistry Between Us" is the other, and these days it's leaving "Dazed" in its dust).
However, "International Velvet" is still a boatload of fun, even though. 1998 was such a shit year for music, which makes memories of this album seem fonder, if anything.
2. Richie Hawtin is a very busy man when he's spinning. He spun for an hour at a free performance at the HMV on Queen Street, and it was the first time I've ever seen him work at floor level (and with the lights on). His weapons of choice are two turntable, TWO iMacs, a mixer that ressembles the dashboard of a fighter jet, and an effects controller. His literally moving all the time, always tweaking a knob or tapping a button. He also spends almost no time cueing records/beats. His mixing is as seamless as any DJ I've ever heard, a trait which obviously comes with a lot of practice, but the guy literally didn't spend more than seven or eight seconds cueing anythings, freeing up 97% of his time for shaping the mix with his multitudes of toys. These synching abilities can't be tought, it must be like with perfect pitch. You're just born with the ability. Richie Hawtin could walk into a parking lot, pick out two cars at random, smash their windows, and have the car alarms synched in less than five seconds.
He signed autographs afterward and I'm proud to report that I now have a signed white label of the classic "Loop" by LFO/FUSE. Boo. Yah.
3. When did CD's get so cheap? How am I supposed to save my money if such a situation sustains itself. First, there was the rack of ten dollar old-school techno compilations at Metropolis. Then there was the (seemingly inevitable) liquidation of all non funk, dub and hip-hop discs at Kops. I even scored a nice two-disc reggae compo at HMV for just ten bucks. And today, I spent a hefty chunk of time flipping through the racks in the ginormous Sonic Boom, which may be turning into the Amoeba Records of Toronto. Massive space, posters adorning the walls (albeit at 1/10 th Amoeba density), cheap used gem after cheap used gem. Not bad at all. If I never step foot in Amoeba again, that'll be oka .... all right, it damn well won't be okay, but my music needs are well attended to in right here in Toronto nonetheless.
Wednesday, January 28, 2004
As George Costanza demonstrated, certain pastimes are better left to be enjoyed separately, rather than in combination. Take music and pro wrestling, for instance. Separately, I enjoy both, but I have no interest in hearing music performed by wrestling stars. Unfortunately, such a thing has indeed come to pass, and it's called "WWE Originals".
I dumped my integrity at the foot of the listening booth in HMV and gave it a listen. I did it out of curiousity and immense dedication to this unpaid writing job of mine, because I love music so much I'm even willing to sacrifice my boundaries of good taste in the name of my art.
Of course, the CD is, by and large, atrocious. The production is flat and lifeless compared to modern radio hits. Most of the songs were written by one man (Jim Johnson, long-time WWE theme composer), but asking him to affix his talents to so many different musical genres in the name of being competitive with real acts in each of these genres is a bit too much to ask. Short of John Cena's track (which must be no accident, since any fan of WWE programming will tell you that the boy's got the most legit skillz of any performer on here), it's hard to imagine any of these songs believably meshing into a mainstream radio playlist. Too much of them sound gimmicky and amateur, but maybe I'm not capable of judging properly. That is, every week I suspend my disbelief when watching them perform on TV, but I just can't do the same while listening to Booker T's rapping without thinking "ugh, this is Booker T trying to do a rap song".
Trish Stratus' answering machine message during the intro to "I Just Want You" is perhaps the most daft piece of spoken word ever to appear in a song. That covers a lot a ground, including "music" performed by cast members of the original Star Trek. Bless her Torontonian heart otherwise.
The Dudley Boyz' rap-metal "We've Had Enough" is actually shockingly good, which is partly due to the Dudleyz surprisingly strong vocal presence but also due to songwriter Johnson doing what he does best -- metal. Most WWE stars have hard rock or metal themes, including the Dudleyz, so everyone's in their element here. When the disc strays from this sort of element, the results are Desired Genre By Numbers, such as Stacy Keibler's Cher-lite Dancepop By Numbers and Rikishi's Barry White By Numbers.
Some people have criticized the album by noting that there are few surprises vis a vis the track selection, i.e. Cena does a rap song, the Guerreros do a Latin song, etc. Well, duh, the best performers usually live their gimmicks, so there's no point in acting surprised when these exact personalities spill from TV onto CD. In that sense, the lone unexpected track is Lillian Garcia's uptempo rocker, which she pulls off with aplomb. Again, no big shock that Cena and Garcia have nailed the best songs on this disc.
Chris Jericho, who is a fine heavy metal singer for those who think that heavy metal singers have fine voices, gains more credibility by the day for his musical side projects with each nice thing that's written about the Darkness. Is there any discernable difference between the mission statements of Fozzy and the Darkness? How can Fozzy be considered a joke by the same people who dig the Darkness. Chris, you clearly have a fallback position in case you ever decide to give up your day job (but please don't, because you're the best thing on RAW).
I dumped my integrity at the foot of the listening booth in HMV and gave it a listen. I did it out of curiousity and immense dedication to this unpaid writing job of mine, because I love music so much I'm even willing to sacrifice my boundaries of good taste in the name of my art.
Of course, the CD is, by and large, atrocious. The production is flat and lifeless compared to modern radio hits. Most of the songs were written by one man (Jim Johnson, long-time WWE theme composer), but asking him to affix his talents to so many different musical genres in the name of being competitive with real acts in each of these genres is a bit too much to ask. Short of John Cena's track (which must be no accident, since any fan of WWE programming will tell you that the boy's got the most legit skillz of any performer on here), it's hard to imagine any of these songs believably meshing into a mainstream radio playlist. Too much of them sound gimmicky and amateur, but maybe I'm not capable of judging properly. That is, every week I suspend my disbelief when watching them perform on TV, but I just can't do the same while listening to Booker T's rapping without thinking "ugh, this is Booker T trying to do a rap song".
Trish Stratus' answering machine message during the intro to "I Just Want You" is perhaps the most daft piece of spoken word ever to appear in a song. That covers a lot a ground, including "music" performed by cast members of the original Star Trek. Bless her Torontonian heart otherwise.
The Dudley Boyz' rap-metal "We've Had Enough" is actually shockingly good, which is partly due to the Dudleyz surprisingly strong vocal presence but also due to songwriter Johnson doing what he does best -- metal. Most WWE stars have hard rock or metal themes, including the Dudleyz, so everyone's in their element here. When the disc strays from this sort of element, the results are Desired Genre By Numbers, such as Stacy Keibler's Cher-lite Dancepop By Numbers and Rikishi's Barry White By Numbers.
Some people have criticized the album by noting that there are few surprises vis a vis the track selection, i.e. Cena does a rap song, the Guerreros do a Latin song, etc. Well, duh, the best performers usually live their gimmicks, so there's no point in acting surprised when these exact personalities spill from TV onto CD. In that sense, the lone unexpected track is Lillian Garcia's uptempo rocker, which she pulls off with aplomb. Again, no big shock that Cena and Garcia have nailed the best songs on this disc.
Chris Jericho, who is a fine heavy metal singer for those who think that heavy metal singers have fine voices, gains more credibility by the day for his musical side projects with each nice thing that's written about the Darkness. Is there any discernable difference between the mission statements of Fozzy and the Darkness? How can Fozzy be considered a joke by the same people who dig the Darkness. Chris, you clearly have a fallback position in case you ever decide to give up your day job (but please don't, because you're the best thing on RAW).
Monday, January 19, 2004
Much Music VJ Search ... was quite interesting at times. My top unanswered question: the rejected talent videos that they played and replayed and replayed ad nauseum were funnier than most of the finalists'. What happened there?
They were spot on with the first round of eliminations. Gone were Nina, the "I'm better than all of you" overachiever who didn't care much about music and was mainly there to add another line to her resume. And T-Roy, who was likeable, but his goofiness seemed forced and was trying a bit too hard to rip off Bradford How (but he shouldn't feel bad about it, because 90% of the people who try for this job are trying the same thing). And of course, Vanessa, who had zero personality in front of the camera and somehow pulled off the amazing feat of looking 100X hotter sitting on the toilet in her submission video than she did dolled up and made up in the Much environment.
I didn't mind Chad, but thinking about him now, I can't remember a single individual thing he did or said, and without looking at his picture on the Much website, I can't remember what he looks like at all. I guess that's not the reactions you want from a TV personality.
I think they dropped the ball with JC. Much has this fascination with white bread (no pun intended) semi-hipster college-age types. I was never a big fan of Master T or Sook-Yin Lee, but both had a look and a manner of speaking that you can't find in an ordinary university dorm without searching really hard for the freaks and geeks at the end of the hall blasting the music 180 degrees out of sync with their floormates tastes. JC has great street cred without appearing thuggish, looks nothing like the other finalists or anyone else working for Much at the moment, and is extremely well spoken (and has a post-secondary education). The best TV moment thus far in 2004 was JC smugly giving the camera the finger at the beginning of Sunday's finals. There were rumblings during the recaps/comments clips about JC being off in his own world and distancing himself from the other finalists, but I couldn't find fault with his on-camera work.
This left Devon, Dale, and Nahri. Between the guys, Dale was far more relaxed in front of the camera, and had a wittier way with his words, but that's likely to be expected considering the ten year age gap between them. Maybe I'm partial to Dale because he's in my age demographic, but it's not my age demographic that Much is after, it's Devon's, and that's what made the difference in the end, I'm sure of it. If indeed this was the case, then it needs to be said that Rick Campanelli is looking waaaay older than the other VJ's these days, which is a bit sad for me to say about a guy who's about my age, but then again, Rick looks his age and I don't (and neither does Dale).
However, Nahri was the best of the three finalists, I don't think it was even close. She was the first one to catch my eye at the start of Saturday, and you can't chalk that one up to an Asian fetish on my part because I generally don't go for Asian women. The trouble is, her strengths are her amiability, bubbly good looks, and enthusiasm, and these are the same strength as two other female VJ's already working for Much (Hannah, Amanda), and this considerable personality overlap was likely her downfall.
If I learned anything else this weekend, it was the reconfirmation that Amanda Walsh has an open invitation to drop by my apartment for some TLC. Amanda, if you happen to read this, just stop by. There's no need to call ahead. Just come over. And don't look at my picture on the research web page. I'm much better looking in person.
They were spot on with the first round of eliminations. Gone were Nina, the "I'm better than all of you" overachiever who didn't care much about music and was mainly there to add another line to her resume. And T-Roy, who was likeable, but his goofiness seemed forced and was trying a bit too hard to rip off Bradford How (but he shouldn't feel bad about it, because 90% of the people who try for this job are trying the same thing). And of course, Vanessa, who had zero personality in front of the camera and somehow pulled off the amazing feat of looking 100X hotter sitting on the toilet in her submission video than she did dolled up and made up in the Much environment.
I didn't mind Chad, but thinking about him now, I can't remember a single individual thing he did or said, and without looking at his picture on the Much website, I can't remember what he looks like at all. I guess that's not the reactions you want from a TV personality.
I think they dropped the ball with JC. Much has this fascination with white bread (no pun intended) semi-hipster college-age types. I was never a big fan of Master T or Sook-Yin Lee, but both had a look and a manner of speaking that you can't find in an ordinary university dorm without searching really hard for the freaks and geeks at the end of the hall blasting the music 180 degrees out of sync with their floormates tastes. JC has great street cred without appearing thuggish, looks nothing like the other finalists or anyone else working for Much at the moment, and is extremely well spoken (and has a post-secondary education). The best TV moment thus far in 2004 was JC smugly giving the camera the finger at the beginning of Sunday's finals. There were rumblings during the recaps/comments clips about JC being off in his own world and distancing himself from the other finalists, but I couldn't find fault with his on-camera work.
This left Devon, Dale, and Nahri. Between the guys, Dale was far more relaxed in front of the camera, and had a wittier way with his words, but that's likely to be expected considering the ten year age gap between them. Maybe I'm partial to Dale because he's in my age demographic, but it's not my age demographic that Much is after, it's Devon's, and that's what made the difference in the end, I'm sure of it. If indeed this was the case, then it needs to be said that Rick Campanelli is looking waaaay older than the other VJ's these days, which is a bit sad for me to say about a guy who's about my age, but then again, Rick looks his age and I don't (and neither does Dale).
However, Nahri was the best of the three finalists, I don't think it was even close. She was the first one to catch my eye at the start of Saturday, and you can't chalk that one up to an Asian fetish on my part because I generally don't go for Asian women. The trouble is, her strengths are her amiability, bubbly good looks, and enthusiasm, and these are the same strength as two other female VJ's already working for Much (Hannah, Amanda), and this considerable personality overlap was likely her downfall.
If I learned anything else this weekend, it was the reconfirmation that Amanda Walsh has an open invitation to drop by my apartment for some TLC. Amanda, if you happen to read this, just stop by. There's no need to call ahead. Just come over. And don't look at my picture on the research web page. I'm much better looking in person.
Saturday, January 17, 2004
WHOA! It's been four years since I started writing on these pages. Although I completely forgot my first three anniversaries, I planned something a little special this time.
I believe the year was 1995, and I was on a bus returning from my (then) annual trip to the Montreal Jazz fest. Somehow, my friend Sandra and I got to talking about really well known albums that we'd somehow never gotten around to hearing (note to self: maybe start a thread on I Love Music about this). I was really surprised that she'd never heard "The Queen is Dead", but not as shocked as she was to find out that I'd never heard the Smiths debut. By pure coincidence, she had the tape with her so she grabbed it and forced me to listen to it right then and there.
I also confessed that I'd never heard the Cure's "Disintigration". This, to me, was my number one surprising neverheard (SNH). But in those formative years, such things were more common than they are now. Money was more scarce, and good songs on the radio were more common. I didn't hear Depeche Mode's Violator until a good eighteen months after it's release -- DM songs new and old were played on CFNY all the time, I owned the Violator singles, I owned most of their other albums, so there was no shortage of ways to get a regular DM fix. Similarly, I didn't hear New Order's "Technique" until 1992 or 1993. And much of the same was true of the Cure at the time. Anyhow, in the summer of 1992 all the good DJ's left CFNY, I essentially quit the radio cold turkey and the Cure were on an extended hiatus, so it was out of sight, out of mind for a few years.
That covers the story/excuses up to 1995. More time has passed since then than had passed since "Disintegration"'s release at that time. And I still haven't heard it!
Amazing. The conditions that led to those early SNH's are long gone. I buy a LOT more music now and my tastes are broader. When there's something I'm curious about hearing it usually isn't a problem to find it and hear it. Today, I buy music based on pure speculation all the time. Sometimes I don't even bother to listen to it first. With filesharing, it's even simpler -- the time between a curious inkling and music to my ears is only a few minutes. The bottom line, SNH's used to be not uncommon, but now they're practically an impossibility.
I can't even put this stuff into words. It's preposterous. Everyone knows how trivial it is to obtain music these days. How could I have managed to avoid one album for fifteen years, particularly one as lauded as "Disintegration"? All those times I could have found it in a used CD shop, all those times someone said "I'll lend it to you sometime", I said "OK", and then we never got around to doing it. It's nonsensical.
In some sense, the fifteen year wait is ending today. I don't have "Disintegration" in front of me right now, but I do have "Entreat". The existence of this live document of the "Disintegration" era was news to me until a couple of weeks ago. I remember the singles containing live tracks from back in the day, but I didn't know there was an actual live album released as well. As for the songs, I have "Disintegration" from the Finsbury Park 1993 bootleg, and of course I know "Pics of You" and "Fasc Str", but the other five tracks are new to me! So here it is ... the last of the great SNH's?
"Pictures of You". This is actually my first Cure CD, period. I have a bunch of cassettes and the "Just Like Heaven" remix 12" (from the Mixed Up period), but no CD's until now. Hey, eight minutes just flew right by, how about that. Great song.
"Closedown". I feel like such an idiot. Fifteen years ... the intro to this is just totally beautiful, good and long, but the perfect length, unlike the intros to some of the "Kiss Me" songs which were long for the sake of being long. The lack of the bass drum and wistful, yet downtrodden mood reminds me of Travis' "Driftwood", although that may be because I listened to "The Man Who" this morning.
"Last Dance". Nice, but I'm still hung up on the last two songs.
"Fascination Street". I'm 99% sure that this is the version that was on the single, and got played on CFNY almost as much as the studio version. I always preferred the studio version. Even better, I preferred the eight minute extended remix.
"Prayers For Rain". This album isn't bowling me over, but I've heard enough Cure to know what to expect from them. I'm getting flashbacks to their concert in 2000, which was the one and only time I saw them. Yeah, it even took me eleven years to get around to going to one of their concerts. I was never a hardcore fan (which is blatantly obvious by now, otherwise this entire article wouldn't have been necessary) but I've known enough hardcore fans to know that this is the good stuff. This type of song is what the hardcore types swoon over.
"Disintegration". The song goes on for a healthy time, but I'm still hung up on "Prayers for Rain". This is also the only album track I know, so I don't have to listen as carefully. "Prayers for Rain" is my kind of Cure track, long, gloomy, swirling, and mildly hellish. "One Hundred Years" is one of my fave Cure tracks, to put that in context. "Homesick"/"Untitled". I'm beginning to think that this entire article is pointless. This is like the Kraftwerk Euro Music awards performance (which I wrote about at length at the time and happened to mention again just a few days ago). I'm finally hearing these songs, it's taken so long for this to happen, and now time is anonymously passing by and before you know it, it's over. Fifteen years of waiting and now it's over. No fireworks, no nothing. Imagine how I'll react if/when Kevin performs on the Oscars. I won't have a damned thing to write about.
"Untitled" is a suitable ending, almost a lullaby despite the breezy tempo, drifting on for minutes on end ...
I believe the year was 1995, and I was on a bus returning from my (then) annual trip to the Montreal Jazz fest. Somehow, my friend Sandra and I got to talking about really well known albums that we'd somehow never gotten around to hearing (note to self: maybe start a thread on I Love Music about this). I was really surprised that she'd never heard "The Queen is Dead", but not as shocked as she was to find out that I'd never heard the Smiths debut. By pure coincidence, she had the tape with her so she grabbed it and forced me to listen to it right then and there.
I also confessed that I'd never heard the Cure's "Disintigration". This, to me, was my number one surprising neverheard (SNH). But in those formative years, such things were more common than they are now. Money was more scarce, and good songs on the radio were more common. I didn't hear Depeche Mode's Violator until a good eighteen months after it's release -- DM songs new and old were played on CFNY all the time, I owned the Violator singles, I owned most of their other albums, so there was no shortage of ways to get a regular DM fix. Similarly, I didn't hear New Order's "Technique" until 1992 or 1993. And much of the same was true of the Cure at the time. Anyhow, in the summer of 1992 all the good DJ's left CFNY, I essentially quit the radio cold turkey and the Cure were on an extended hiatus, so it was out of sight, out of mind for a few years.
That covers the story/excuses up to 1995. More time has passed since then than had passed since "Disintegration"'s release at that time. And I still haven't heard it!
Amazing. The conditions that led to those early SNH's are long gone. I buy a LOT more music now and my tastes are broader. When there's something I'm curious about hearing it usually isn't a problem to find it and hear it. Today, I buy music based on pure speculation all the time. Sometimes I don't even bother to listen to it first. With filesharing, it's even simpler -- the time between a curious inkling and music to my ears is only a few minutes. The bottom line, SNH's used to be not uncommon, but now they're practically an impossibility.
I can't even put this stuff into words. It's preposterous. Everyone knows how trivial it is to obtain music these days. How could I have managed to avoid one album for fifteen years, particularly one as lauded as "Disintegration"? All those times I could have found it in a used CD shop, all those times someone said "I'll lend it to you sometime", I said "OK", and then we never got around to doing it. It's nonsensical.
In some sense, the fifteen year wait is ending today. I don't have "Disintegration" in front of me right now, but I do have "Entreat". The existence of this live document of the "Disintegration" era was news to me until a couple of weeks ago. I remember the singles containing live tracks from back in the day, but I didn't know there was an actual live album released as well. As for the songs, I have "Disintegration" from the Finsbury Park 1993 bootleg, and of course I know "Pics of You" and "Fasc Str", but the other five tracks are new to me! So here it is ... the last of the great SNH's?
"Pictures of You". This is actually my first Cure CD, period. I have a bunch of cassettes and the "Just Like Heaven" remix 12" (from the Mixed Up period), but no CD's until now. Hey, eight minutes just flew right by, how about that. Great song.
"Closedown". I feel like such an idiot. Fifteen years ... the intro to this is just totally beautiful, good and long, but the perfect length, unlike the intros to some of the "Kiss Me" songs which were long for the sake of being long. The lack of the bass drum and wistful, yet downtrodden mood reminds me of Travis' "Driftwood", although that may be because I listened to "The Man Who" this morning.
"Last Dance". Nice, but I'm still hung up on the last two songs.
"Fascination Street". I'm 99% sure that this is the version that was on the single, and got played on CFNY almost as much as the studio version. I always preferred the studio version. Even better, I preferred the eight minute extended remix.
"Prayers For Rain". This album isn't bowling me over, but I've heard enough Cure to know what to expect from them. I'm getting flashbacks to their concert in 2000, which was the one and only time I saw them. Yeah, it even took me eleven years to get around to going to one of their concerts. I was never a hardcore fan (which is blatantly obvious by now, otherwise this entire article wouldn't have been necessary) but I've known enough hardcore fans to know that this is the good stuff. This type of song is what the hardcore types swoon over.
"Disintegration". The song goes on for a healthy time, but I'm still hung up on "Prayers for Rain". This is also the only album track I know, so I don't have to listen as carefully. "Prayers for Rain" is my kind of Cure track, long, gloomy, swirling, and mildly hellish. "One Hundred Years" is one of my fave Cure tracks, to put that in context. "Homesick"/"Untitled". I'm beginning to think that this entire article is pointless. This is like the Kraftwerk Euro Music awards performance (which I wrote about at length at the time and happened to mention again just a few days ago). I'm finally hearing these songs, it's taken so long for this to happen, and now time is anonymously passing by and before you know it, it's over. Fifteen years of waiting and now it's over. No fireworks, no nothing. Imagine how I'll react if/when Kevin performs on the Oscars. I won't have a damned thing to write about.
"Untitled" is a suitable ending, almost a lullaby despite the breezy tempo, drifting on for minutes on end ...
Tuesday, January 13, 2004
I've spent the last few weeks getting acquainted with new music (the Berlin + Boxing Day hauls) and reacquainted with old music (the long overdue filing of most of my CD's into space-saving binders). I've learned that Branca rules it, Talk Talk's "Laughing Stock" is no "Spirit of Eden", Rhythm and Sound have done it again, As One's "21st Century Soul" delivers the Detroit techno soul goods, Fennesz's "Live in Japan" rocks your universe, Vertical Form is a hit-or-miss label, and so on.
And Pluramon's "Dreams Top Rock" is NOT all that. After reading mountains of praise about beautiful guitarscapes, post-shoegaze gossamer, the rightful follow-up to Loveless, etc., my heart started beating faster and I searched all over Berlin to no avail. Finally, I found it back home, and it's good, but ... come on people.
The five CD random play method has been my listening proceedure of choice during the last couple of weeks. I've been playing one game with it in particular, let's call it the Similarity Game for lack of a better title. Example: I put in CD1 of Aphex's "Druqs", along with work by Bochum Welt and Eight Frozen Modules (plus two other discs which aren't part of the game). When I mashed all of their work together in the random play format, a) on initial listen, I started to forget who is who, b) upon checking the liner notes, I noticed that I the BW and EFM stuff better, causing me to wonder what happened to Aphex Twin's glory years. Who needs Aphex when you have BW and EFM -- they're doing far better impressions of classic Aphex than Aphex is himself these days.
Similarly, Pluramon shared space in the carousel with the "Projekt 100 : The Early Years 1985-1995" compiliation. Stunning, synth-as-guitar-drone material (mid 90's Dubstar also did this well, but in a completely different style, of course) went blow-for-blow against "Dreams Top Rock". Pluramon's album is far more than a curio, it's an inventive experiment that blends guitar, glitch, and the long-forgotten Julee Cruise and it succeeds most of the time. But it's certainly not a classic. As far as being "what MBV should have done after Loveless", Bowery Electric's "Beat" and Third Eye Foundation's "Semtex" have already covered that ground quite nicely.
As for the real thing -- is an Oscar nomination on Kevin Shields' horizon? If Elliot Smith and Eminem can get nominated, then why not Kevin? I'm strongly rooting for "Lost in Translation" for this year's Oscars. Kevin performing on the Oscars would be one of those Surreal Moment You'd Never Imagine You Would Ever See, kind of like Kraftwerk on the MTV Europe Video Awards.
And Pluramon's "Dreams Top Rock" is NOT all that. After reading mountains of praise about beautiful guitarscapes, post-shoegaze gossamer, the rightful follow-up to Loveless, etc., my heart started beating faster and I searched all over Berlin to no avail. Finally, I found it back home, and it's good, but ... come on people.
The five CD random play method has been my listening proceedure of choice during the last couple of weeks. I've been playing one game with it in particular, let's call it the Similarity Game for lack of a better title. Example: I put in CD1 of Aphex's "Druqs", along with work by Bochum Welt and Eight Frozen Modules (plus two other discs which aren't part of the game). When I mashed all of their work together in the random play format, a) on initial listen, I started to forget who is who, b) upon checking the liner notes, I noticed that I the BW and EFM stuff better, causing me to wonder what happened to Aphex Twin's glory years. Who needs Aphex when you have BW and EFM -- they're doing far better impressions of classic Aphex than Aphex is himself these days.
Similarly, Pluramon shared space in the carousel with the "Projekt 100 : The Early Years 1985-1995" compiliation. Stunning, synth-as-guitar-drone material (mid 90's Dubstar also did this well, but in a completely different style, of course) went blow-for-blow against "Dreams Top Rock". Pluramon's album is far more than a curio, it's an inventive experiment that blends guitar, glitch, and the long-forgotten Julee Cruise and it succeeds most of the time. But it's certainly not a classic. As far as being "what MBV should have done after Loveless", Bowery Electric's "Beat" and Third Eye Foundation's "Semtex" have already covered that ground quite nicely.
As for the real thing -- is an Oscar nomination on Kevin Shields' horizon? If Elliot Smith and Eminem can get nominated, then why not Kevin? I'm strongly rooting for "Lost in Translation" for this year's Oscars. Kevin performing on the Oscars would be one of those Surreal Moment You'd Never Imagine You Would Ever See, kind of like Kraftwerk on the MTV Europe Video Awards.
Tuesday, December 30, 2003
Xmas Eve in Berlin was spent in the best way a Lonely Jew On Xmas knew how -- at the Tresor club. After nine weeks in the city over two separate visits, I finally made it. And it was more than worth it.
The top floor isn't too different than your typical club, with extended bar, video screen circling the dancefloor, and tech-house pumping along to keep the crowd moving. But it's the cellar which made me feel like I was in a legendary establishment. The walls were lined with thin, rusty, dingy shelves -- remnants of safety deposit boxes left over from the buildings' tenure as a bank. Further in this vein are the metal gates which divide the cellar into three section. Obviously they used to be for security purposes, now it gives the place a feel of a dark dungeon. The dancefloor is dark, and the flashing lights and regular dousings of dry ice smoke render it difficult to see eight feet in front of your face most of the time. And the music ... hard, pounding, minimal techno (I'd be proud to spin any of it) and a dense, sweaty crowd going 10 times more mental than in the upstairs room. In Toronto (and in most other cities) the situation would be the exact opposite. And somehow, these reactions transcended the sexes, as there were hotter girls downstairs than upstairs. All hail Berlin, the city where the cover for a mythical club on a holiday sets you back a mere three Euros (!) and techno stirs the emotions in such passionate fashion.
After all night at the Tresor, I woke up in the middle of the afternoon and set to the task of packing up and drinking the remainder of the beer in my fridge. And I watched MTV Germany's top videos of 2003. Somehow, I followed pop music more closely on this trip than I have in many years, including listening to pop radio regularly for the first time since 1988. In retrospect, it makes sense. MTV Germany was the only non-news station which broadcast shows in English. My increasing disenchantment with the Brit music papers gives me a craving for trash and gossip that I just don't get from the music I normally listen to. Plus, I'd become thoroughly bored of the 50 CD's I'd brought with me by the fourth week, hadn't had time to shop for anything new and therefore was desperately in need of something new to hear.
I watched the final 30 videos uninterrupted:
30. JT -- Cry Me a River. What more can be said? I was surprised it wasn't higher.
29. Blu Cantrell f. Sean Paul -- Breathe. Putting SP in
your video seems to guarantee a hit with an underwhelming song these days.
28. Nena -- Leicht Turm (Light Tower). Yes, it's THAT Nena. And she looks all right twenty years on, having apparently settled into a niche that Dido fills for the English-speaking world.
27. Snoop + Pharrell -- Beautiful. The song took months to hook me, but it did eventually. At the start of his career, I hated Snoop for his pompousness and arrogance. Now I love the guy to death. He's one of the ten coolest people in the world.
26. Linkin Park -- Somewhere I Belong. Whatever.
25. Xtina -- Fighter. Does this remind anyone else of an "Adore"-era Smashing Pumpkins video? That's not a compliment, by the way.
24. Busta f. Mariah Carey -- I Know What You Want. Busta was virtually unrecognizable the first time I heard this (with his singing). Mariah's career resurgence hasn't happened yet, but it's unevitable. Trust me.
23. Jay-Z f. Beyonce -- '03 Bonnie and Clyde. Beyonce's only purpose here is as the eye-candy sidekick, but that IS the subject of the song and I'm certainly not complaining.
22. Dido -- White Flag. Is Dido the new Jewel, except with better lyrics?
21. Ja Rule -- The Reign. It hasn't been a great year for JR, but he should have known better. Everybody knows that you can't have a hit by casting Patrick Swayze in a tough guy role, he has to play the sensitive tough guy role.
The top floor isn't too different than your typical club, with extended bar, video screen circling the dancefloor, and tech-house pumping along to keep the crowd moving. But it's the cellar which made me feel like I was in a legendary establishment. The walls were lined with thin, rusty, dingy shelves -- remnants of safety deposit boxes left over from the buildings' tenure as a bank. Further in this vein are the metal gates which divide the cellar into three section. Obviously they used to be for security purposes, now it gives the place a feel of a dark dungeon. The dancefloor is dark, and the flashing lights and regular dousings of dry ice smoke render it difficult to see eight feet in front of your face most of the time. And the music ... hard, pounding, minimal techno (I'd be proud to spin any of it) and a dense, sweaty crowd going 10 times more mental than in the upstairs room. In Toronto (and in most other cities) the situation would be the exact opposite. And somehow, these reactions transcended the sexes, as there were hotter girls downstairs than upstairs. All hail Berlin, the city where the cover for a mythical club on a holiday sets you back a mere three Euros (!) and techno stirs the emotions in such passionate fashion.
After all night at the Tresor, I woke up in the middle of the afternoon and set to the task of packing up and drinking the remainder of the beer in my fridge. And I watched MTV Germany's top videos of 2003. Somehow, I followed pop music more closely on this trip than I have in many years, including listening to pop radio regularly for the first time since 1988. In retrospect, it makes sense. MTV Germany was the only non-news station which broadcast shows in English. My increasing disenchantment with the Brit music papers gives me a craving for trash and gossip that I just don't get from the music I normally listen to. Plus, I'd become thoroughly bored of the 50 CD's I'd brought with me by the fourth week, hadn't had time to shop for anything new and therefore was desperately in need of something new to hear.
I watched the final 30 videos uninterrupted:
30. JT -- Cry Me a River. What more can be said? I was surprised it wasn't higher.
29. Blu Cantrell f. Sean Paul -- Breathe. Putting SP in
your video seems to guarantee a hit with an underwhelming song these days.
28. Nena -- Leicht Turm (Light Tower). Yes, it's THAT Nena. And she looks all right twenty years on, having apparently settled into a niche that Dido fills for the English-speaking world.
27. Snoop + Pharrell -- Beautiful. The song took months to hook me, but it did eventually. At the start of his career, I hated Snoop for his pompousness and arrogance. Now I love the guy to death. He's one of the ten coolest people in the world.
26. Linkin Park -- Somewhere I Belong. Whatever.
25. Xtina -- Fighter. Does this remind anyone else of an "Adore"-era Smashing Pumpkins video? That's not a compliment, by the way.
24. Busta f. Mariah Carey -- I Know What You Want. Busta was virtually unrecognizable the first time I heard this (with his singing). Mariah's career resurgence hasn't happened yet, but it's unevitable. Trust me.
23. Jay-Z f. Beyonce -- '03 Bonnie and Clyde. Beyonce's only purpose here is as the eye-candy sidekick, but that IS the subject of the song and I'm certainly not complaining.
22. Dido -- White Flag. Is Dido the new Jewel, except with better lyrics?
21. Ja Rule -- The Reign. It hasn't been a great year for JR, but he should have known better. Everybody knows that you can't have a hit by casting Patrick Swayze in a tough guy role, he has to play the sensitive tough guy role.
20. Puffy + B2K -- Bump Bump Bump. Yeah, we all know who the real star power is here. As if these little kids know anything about bumping.
19. Wolfsheim -- Kein Zuruck (~No Way Back). It was new to me, and it wasn't offensive or anything.
18. DJ Tomekk f. Kurupt, Tatwaffe, and G-Style -- Ganxtaville Part 3. This rates through the roof on the unintentional comedy scale. It's like they went out of their way to copy every rap cliche, but only from the years 1992-1994. The closing cry of "Fo Shizzle ma nizzle" had me rolling on the floor.
17. Seeed -- Music Monks, 16. Outlandish -- Aicha. These must have been German hits from the first half of the year. Respect for the way they respresent the homeland as well as the Brit/American megastars.
15. Xtina -- Beautiful. The song that made me regain some respect for her.
14. Black Eyed Peas -- Where is the Love. BEP are nothing more than the 21st Century Fugees. They make hip hop that it's OK for soccer moms to like. It takes such a simple-minded band
to distill a complicated issue of world politics down to such basic language.
13. Robbie Williams -- Come Undone. This must be the sickest video to ever accompany a pop song. The only competition
is the similarly styled "Owner of a Lonely Heart" by Yes, but that was far less of a "pop" song, and it certainly wasn't by a "pop idol". Lord knows what British ten-year olds thought of this.
12. Avril Lavigne -- I'm With You. It's the only Canadian entry in the Top 30. In case you were wondering, yes, Avril is indeed played on the radio in Germany every bit as much as she is over here. This song contains a truly amazing Great Pop Moment, it's the chorus that comes about 2:50 into the song, when the longing and admiration in her voice has risen to a boiling point and the song's title flows from her not-such-a-bad-girl mouth with one of pop's most emotional outbursts of the last few years. 11. Eminem -- Sing for the Moment. This is his weakest single to date. I'm just not moved by anything associated with Aerosmith.
10. The Rasmus -- In The Shadows. Decent to good Catchy Pop-Rock from a band I know absolutely nothing about. It's just not rock's year, but you already knew that.
9. Beyonce f. Jay-Z -- Crazy in Love. It's amazing to see how this track and Outkast's "Hey Ya" have united just about every writer in every genre in every major publication in picking the top singles of the year. Now THAT'S perfect pop music.
8. Sean Paul -- Get Busy. Again, not much to say about his amazing success, except that I was somehow unaware of his Toronto connections until recently (he partly grew up here and still has family living in T.O.) and I thought that last year's "Gimme the
Light" was a Neptunes-aided fluke, only to be proved wrong
in startling fashion.
7. Lumidee f. Busta + Fabolous -- Never Leave You (Uh-Oh). The most danceable song of the year that didn't have a backbeat. Not as if there was much competition. A song I rather like as long as I don't hear it three times a day. Therefore, flipping radio stations or listening to CD's once in a while was neccessary. 6. Robbie Williams -- Feel. The video isn't much cop, but the song is wonderful. I never get bored of it.
5. TATU -- All the Things She Said. You'd be forgiven for
thinking that everything had been tried in pop music, every gimmick
extended beyond it's worth, every good idea previously taken or explored by somebody else. But there's always that small subset of music intelligensia who find an opening and drive a Mack truck
of determination and ambition straight through it. This is but one way that great music gets made. In this case, somebody had the foresight to say "You know what we need in pop music? We need RUSSIAN LESBIANS. And they don't even have to be real lesbians, they just have to be really hot young girls who make out at every available oppurtunity so that people think that they're lesbians. Then we paste them to a dance-rock song about love and jealousy and we sell it to the world".
When the song came out, and every struggling music entrepreneur realized they'd been beaten to the punch, they must have simply hung their heads in despair. Russian lesbians? How could that NOT sell records? It makes you marvel at the simplicity of the concept and wonder why you didn't think of it yourself. And the reason you didn't is precisely the genius behind the concept, naturally. Add it all up and you've got the best pure pop single of the year. The
best pop choruses leave you wishing they'd go on and on, but then the song ends so you have no choice but to play it again. Just tremendous stuff.
4. 50 Cent -- In Da Club. Huge, although I could probably rap on a record with Dre and Eminem pulling the strings and it would be a hit.
Let's talk about something else. I was innocently
watching MTV Germany one night, and "P.I.M.P." comes on, a video I've seen many times. I'm not really paying attention, and then suddenly, all the girls aren't wearing any clothes! And 50's on the couch feeling them up! Whoa! Snoop and 50 spend the rest of the video cavorting and enjoying the booty of naked women. What's with this X-rated version? I'd never heard anything about it before. I guess you gotta love European non-censorship.
3. Evanescence f. Paul McCoy -- Bring Me To Life. This song was everywhere in Germany during my trip there in the summer. I certainly can't argue with its placing here, but when half-decent songs become megahits they eventually become suspended in some opinionless netherzone. Great songs (i.e. most of the rest of this top 10) can be heard over and over while losing little of their impact. Half-decent songs get boring after half a dozen listens but remain good enough to not be despised, but bad enough to not care if you never hear it again for as long as you live and breathe.
2. RZA f. Xavier Naidoo -- Ich kenne nichts (das
so schön ist wie du). I'd translate the title as "I Don't Know (What's as Beautiful as You). I suppose this song hasn't been pushed in North America due to the language thing, but I see no reason why it couldn't be as massive here as it was in Germany. It's got a summery hook, a laid back feel, and music is supposed to transcend language barriers.
1. Eminem -- Lose Yourself. The best and most
surprising Oscar-winning song ever, this track probably has done more to motivate young people than an entire year of after-school specials.
Wednesday, December 24, 2003
I was browsing in Mr. Dead and Mrs. Free yesterday (a primarily indie-rock store in downtown Berlin) and they had the top albums of the year lists from Mojo and NME posted on the wall. Number One according to Mojo, NME, and the two staff members' lists posted on the wall is Elephant by the White Stripes.
Am I missing something? When did the White Stripes become the best and/or most important band in the world? Sure, my tastes haven't been in sync with the NME since the fall of Britpop, but this years' list had me growling like an old curmudgeon, "rrrgghh, this rock and roll garbage, in my day we listened to real music, not this shouty crap". It's one thing to be out of sync, and quite another thing to hold very little respect for the NME's list in part because I don't like most of the stuff on it. The NME Xmas issue has been a holiday highlight for me for a decade, but this year, after seeing the list and the featured contents on their web site, I doubt I'll bother with it this year.
Jon Spencer must be hanging himself -- he released "Orange" a decade too early. I never heard "Plastic Fang", but it must have been really atrocious to have been panned and shunted aside so quickly in the Strokes & Stripes world which we live in, particularly after the large promotional push behind it.
This most recent breed of rock bands has been pushed down our collective musical throats. They've been championed far out of proportion with their bottom line. Enough time has passed for these bands to take their mantle at the forefront of music. But it hasn't happened. The White Stripes are not the Next Big Thing. They are barely even a big thing.
It should be obvious that the biggest trend in music is rap/R&B/urban/etc. It is the dominating style in pop music today, by far. Not only that, the quality is through the roof, as good or better than pop music has been at any time during the rock era. Nobody hyped the urban music takeover, because discussions of the Next Big Thing in music is limited only to the Next Big Rock Thing, because most music criticism is still rock based and the people who write about it are rock-centric to the point that rock is the Music That Truly Matters and everything else doesn't.
The White Stripes struggle to sell a million albums but textbooks of ink are spilled on them. In the meantime, the Neptunes and Timbaland productions dominate the pop charts. Like the Beatles and Motown before them (to name but two examples), they have styles that are indisputably groundbreaking because their music has raised the bar for anyone who plans on writing and producting a hit. Do they get their credit as hitmakers and pop music success stories? Absolutely. Do they get credit for making important, vital, relevant music? Almost never. Does Motown? Of course. Do the Beatles? Ha, what a stupid question.
In 1998, I wrote (in a notebook which preceed the construction of this web site) that a rather large amount of time had passed since the most recent Next Big Thing (grunge, or Britpop if you consider the UK). As a result, writers were subconsciously (or consciously, in some cases) desperate to find the next megatrend and gain lifetime bragging rights for being the first to hype it. They were so desperate that they resorted to hyping anything, such as swing. Like swing had a chance in hell. Or, in the case of electronica, they lumped a whole load of unrelated musics under one buzzword-friendly umbrella and expected it to shift product just based on the holy word alone, giving no thought to marketing strategy or intentions of the artists. Furthermore, I now believe (in 2003) that there will never be another Next Big Thing, no single style such as grunge or soft rock or synth pop that will take over the charts and the papers, no matter what the hype or the critical acclaim. It will never happen again. Let me repeat that. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. Never. Again.
Why? Because people's tastes are too diverse. The pop charts mesh dance, rock, and rap without a second thought; music is proliferating at a rate far faster than before, and the internet has made everything readily readible and downloadable, so broadening one's horizons has never been easier. So, a fine website like Pitchfork can ruin a perfectly good year in review by saying that nothing summed up 2003 like the Rapture did. In ten years, people won't remember 2003 as the year of dancepunk any more than we remember 1994 as the year of the New Wave of New Wave (exactly: nobody does remember NWONW, that's the point). They will, however, remember it as the year the Rapture released a pretty decent debut album. Just like I'll remember 2003 as the year I got bigtime into Tindersticks again, and the year of one totally amazing MUTEK festival, and the year I bought the classic MBV albums on vinyl. I won't remember it in terms of some grandiose summary statement, i.e. the year that 90's angst and post-yuppie consumerism gave way to 00's global anti-war 9/11 backlash and public services over fiscal responsibility. Because such loftly summation statements are no longer relevant.
Thus, discussion of the NBT invariably leads down a dumbass path. The electronica hype is a great example of this, because to the average Joe all this music came out of nowhere, the industry didn't know how to sell it and most writers didn't know how to write about it. The only thing everyone could agree on was how to hype it, but of course without the proper context the whole thing came off as looking stupid. I recall a Depeche Mode interview circa "Ultra" (sorry, can't remember what publication), smack in the middle of the electronica uber-hype, and the interviewer asked Dave Gahan if the electronica buzz indicated that it was finally cool to like DM. Gahan lucidly and bluntly blew off the question, merely noting that DM's two biggest albums came at the height of grunge. That just about sums up the magic of early 90's DM.
Behind every electronica story was the endless repartees of "can this stuff sell?", invariably asked by people who had no clue how to sell it. How come nobody brought up the fact that nearly ten years previous, Depeche Mode had sold out the FUCKING ROSE BOWL for the finale of their "101" tour. Yes, I'd say that the music can sell, then. Before "alternative" became "mainstream", Nine Inch Nails had sold two million records and Jane's Addiction had sold out arenas throughout the summer for the inaugural Lollapalooza. In both cases, minimal radio play and MTV hype were involved. Magazines and TV weren't screaming at people about how cool these bands were. That fall, Lollapalooza lucked out when they signed up Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a then-unknown Pearl Jam to play the festival the following summer, only to have all these bands break out simultaneously into the bigtime. Lollapalooza 1992 could have been the almighty grunge celebration extravaganza, but in fact, nobody remembers it for those three bands, they remember it for Ministry blowing everybody off the stage each night. Ministry, the band that had sold out 2000-3000 capacity venues at every stop on their previous national tour, unbenownst to nearly everybody who discovered "alternative" when Nirvana dethroned Michael Jackson.
The point of all these ramblings is that acts can frequently become a Very Very Big Thing without necessarily being hyped as the Next Big Thing. And just as such successes often defy hype and tidy labels, a year of music doesn't deserve to be summarized in one sentence as "The Year of ____". And there's my Year in Review.
Am I missing something? When did the White Stripes become the best and/or most important band in the world? Sure, my tastes haven't been in sync with the NME since the fall of Britpop, but this years' list had me growling like an old curmudgeon, "rrrgghh, this rock and roll garbage, in my day we listened to real music, not this shouty crap". It's one thing to be out of sync, and quite another thing to hold very little respect for the NME's list in part because I don't like most of the stuff on it. The NME Xmas issue has been a holiday highlight for me for a decade, but this year, after seeing the list and the featured contents on their web site, I doubt I'll bother with it this year.
Jon Spencer must be hanging himself -- he released "Orange" a decade too early. I never heard "Plastic Fang", but it must have been really atrocious to have been panned and shunted aside so quickly in the Strokes & Stripes world which we live in, particularly after the large promotional push behind it.
This most recent breed of rock bands has been pushed down our collective musical throats. They've been championed far out of proportion with their bottom line. Enough time has passed for these bands to take their mantle at the forefront of music. But it hasn't happened. The White Stripes are not the Next Big Thing. They are barely even a big thing.
It should be obvious that the biggest trend in music is rap/R&B/urban/etc. It is the dominating style in pop music today, by far. Not only that, the quality is through the roof, as good or better than pop music has been at any time during the rock era. Nobody hyped the urban music takeover, because discussions of the Next Big Thing in music is limited only to the Next Big Rock Thing, because most music criticism is still rock based and the people who write about it are rock-centric to the point that rock is the Music That Truly Matters and everything else doesn't.
The White Stripes struggle to sell a million albums but textbooks of ink are spilled on them. In the meantime, the Neptunes and Timbaland productions dominate the pop charts. Like the Beatles and Motown before them (to name but two examples), they have styles that are indisputably groundbreaking because their music has raised the bar for anyone who plans on writing and producting a hit. Do they get their credit as hitmakers and pop music success stories? Absolutely. Do they get credit for making important, vital, relevant music? Almost never. Does Motown? Of course. Do the Beatles? Ha, what a stupid question.
In 1998, I wrote (in a notebook which preceed the construction of this web site) that a rather large amount of time had passed since the most recent Next Big Thing (grunge, or Britpop if you consider the UK). As a result, writers were subconsciously (or consciously, in some cases) desperate to find the next megatrend and gain lifetime bragging rights for being the first to hype it. They were so desperate that they resorted to hyping anything, such as swing. Like swing had a chance in hell. Or, in the case of electronica, they lumped a whole load of unrelated musics under one buzzword-friendly umbrella and expected it to shift product just based on the holy word alone, giving no thought to marketing strategy or intentions of the artists. Furthermore, I now believe (in 2003) that there will never be another Next Big Thing, no single style such as grunge or soft rock or synth pop that will take over the charts and the papers, no matter what the hype or the critical acclaim. It will never happen again. Let me repeat that. IT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN. Never. Again.
Why? Because people's tastes are too diverse. The pop charts mesh dance, rock, and rap without a second thought; music is proliferating at a rate far faster than before, and the internet has made everything readily readible and downloadable, so broadening one's horizons has never been easier. So, a fine website like Pitchfork can ruin a perfectly good year in review by saying that nothing summed up 2003 like the Rapture did. In ten years, people won't remember 2003 as the year of dancepunk any more than we remember 1994 as the year of the New Wave of New Wave (exactly: nobody does remember NWONW, that's the point). They will, however, remember it as the year the Rapture released a pretty decent debut album. Just like I'll remember 2003 as the year I got bigtime into Tindersticks again, and the year of one totally amazing MUTEK festival, and the year I bought the classic MBV albums on vinyl. I won't remember it in terms of some grandiose summary statement, i.e. the year that 90's angst and post-yuppie consumerism gave way to 00's global anti-war 9/11 backlash and public services over fiscal responsibility. Because such loftly summation statements are no longer relevant.
Thus, discussion of the NBT invariably leads down a dumbass path. The electronica hype is a great example of this, because to the average Joe all this music came out of nowhere, the industry didn't know how to sell it and most writers didn't know how to write about it. The only thing everyone could agree on was how to hype it, but of course without the proper context the whole thing came off as looking stupid. I recall a Depeche Mode interview circa "Ultra" (sorry, can't remember what publication), smack in the middle of the electronica uber-hype, and the interviewer asked Dave Gahan if the electronica buzz indicated that it was finally cool to like DM. Gahan lucidly and bluntly blew off the question, merely noting that DM's two biggest albums came at the height of grunge. That just about sums up the magic of early 90's DM.
Behind every electronica story was the endless repartees of "can this stuff sell?", invariably asked by people who had no clue how to sell it. How come nobody brought up the fact that nearly ten years previous, Depeche Mode had sold out the FUCKING ROSE BOWL for the finale of their "101" tour. Yes, I'd say that the music can sell, then. Before "alternative" became "mainstream", Nine Inch Nails had sold two million records and Jane's Addiction had sold out arenas throughout the summer for the inaugural Lollapalooza. In both cases, minimal radio play and MTV hype were involved. Magazines and TV weren't screaming at people about how cool these bands were. That fall, Lollapalooza lucked out when they signed up Soundgarden, Red Hot Chili Peppers, and a then-unknown Pearl Jam to play the festival the following summer, only to have all these bands break out simultaneously into the bigtime. Lollapalooza 1992 could have been the almighty grunge celebration extravaganza, but in fact, nobody remembers it for those three bands, they remember it for Ministry blowing everybody off the stage each night. Ministry, the band that had sold out 2000-3000 capacity venues at every stop on their previous national tour, unbenownst to nearly everybody who discovered "alternative" when Nirvana dethroned Michael Jackson.
The point of all these ramblings is that acts can frequently become a Very Very Big Thing without necessarily being hyped as the Next Big Thing. And just as such successes often defy hype and tidy labels, a year of music doesn't deserve to be summarized in one sentence as "The Year of ____". And there's my Year in Review.
Thursday, December 18, 2003
I got home at seven AM yesterday, but I couldn't sleep. Why? I started flipping channels, scanned through all of the music video channels on Berlin TV (i.e., MTV, VIVA, etc.) and was entranced by quantity of CHEESY VIDEOS. Honestly, all this shlock came on within the span of twenty minutes.
Ace of Base -- The Sign. Not only is the video cheesy, but the song's production is too. The Neptunes have really spoiled us. Were fast panning, flash cutting, and flying colours considered edgy in early 90's pop video, or is this the exception? Ace of Base were completely harmless pop fluff, therefore, it's easy to recognize why they were so popular. Also, I believe they paved the way for the cute girls + utterly useless boys = pop group trend of the mid to late 90's. I think that trend died with the boy band resurgence. I think people got bored of the implication that pop was excessively manufactured and needed explicit reassurance that this was the case, hence, the boy bands. After all, we are living in the George W. Bush era, so things need to be dumbed down. It's also interesting to recall that those were the days when excessive T&A weren't neccessary for making a pop video. These days, the Ace of Base girls would have been 85% naked on the cover of Maxim within two weeks of the song hitting #1. We all lost out.
Haddaway -- What is Love. A Night at the Roxbury notwithstanding, this is one of those Songs That I Can't Respect Myself For Liking, But I Like Them Anyway. House of Pain's "Jump Around" and Backstreet Boys "As Long As You Love Me" fall into the same category. Let's all recall the early 1990's, a time when black performers sported hairstyles straight out of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air". Haddaway must have loved the video for Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love", because the setting here is a virtual replica, albeit with 1/20th of the budget. And unlike the Meatloaf song, there's no storyline to either the video or the lyrics, it's just Haddaway singing the same nine words over and over while engaging in exagerrated hand foppery. Still, I love the tune. Really.
Wham! -- Last Christmas. The campest video of all time featuring horny young singers cavorting with innocent-looking girls-next-door. Except, of course, for Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough". At least Wham! had a half-decent excuse, with this being a Christmas song and all. Christmas songs are supposed to be feelgood campy drivel. DM have no excuse and no recourse except to blame the whole thing on Vince Clarke. The scene where they share the sodas in the diner with the girls may be the lowest moment in Depeche Mode's career. They all look about fourteen and the whole thing is so junior high double date, it's embarrassing.
For some reason, this song gets played on pop radio a lot here. I've heard it more times than I'd care to mention, although not nearly as often as Pink's "Trouble", Black Eyed Peas' "Shut Up" and Westlife's "Mandy" (and it pains me to report that "Mandy" has been added to the list of Songs That I Can't Respect Myself For Liking, But I Like Them Anyway). Back to the video, where Andrew Ridgeley comes across as 100 times cuter and more heartthrob-worthy than the ugly duckling he had the poor misfortune to make over. For the sake of his career, Wham! came along a decade too early. These days boy bands commonly splinter into separate successful solo careers. Ridgeley could have at least been Gary Barlow to George Michael's Robbie Williams.
TV Allstars -- Do They Know It's Christmas? There is no conceivable reason that this recording should exist. Who are these people? British TV stars? Do I really care who they are (no)? I have no desire to watch cheery-eyed kids singing any tune, under any circumstance (this falls under the under-16 rule I formulated during the summer). Seriously, this dancepop-lite rendition is so lightweight it makes Aaron Carter sound like Ritchie Hawtin.
Whitney Houston -- I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Daft colours, daft clothes, daft dancing, and even daft floors. Saturday Night Fever and Billie Jean were the last word in light-up dancefloors, any subsequent attempt to use one has come off looking silly.
Ace of Base -- The Sign. Not only is the video cheesy, but the song's production is too. The Neptunes have really spoiled us. Were fast panning, flash cutting, and flying colours considered edgy in early 90's pop video, or is this the exception? Ace of Base were completely harmless pop fluff, therefore, it's easy to recognize why they were so popular. Also, I believe they paved the way for the cute girls + utterly useless boys = pop group trend of the mid to late 90's. I think that trend died with the boy band resurgence. I think people got bored of the implication that pop was excessively manufactured and needed explicit reassurance that this was the case, hence, the boy bands. After all, we are living in the George W. Bush era, so things need to be dumbed down. It's also interesting to recall that those were the days when excessive T&A weren't neccessary for making a pop video. These days, the Ace of Base girls would have been 85% naked on the cover of Maxim within two weeks of the song hitting #1. We all lost out.
Haddaway -- What is Love. A Night at the Roxbury notwithstanding, this is one of those Songs That I Can't Respect Myself For Liking, But I Like Them Anyway. House of Pain's "Jump Around" and Backstreet Boys "As Long As You Love Me" fall into the same category. Let's all recall the early 1990's, a time when black performers sported hairstyles straight out of "The Fresh Prince of Bel Air". Haddaway must have loved the video for Meatloaf's "I Would Do Anything For Love", because the setting here is a virtual replica, albeit with 1/20th of the budget. And unlike the Meatloaf song, there's no storyline to either the video or the lyrics, it's just Haddaway singing the same nine words over and over while engaging in exagerrated hand foppery. Still, I love the tune. Really.
Wham! -- Last Christmas. The campest video of all time featuring horny young singers cavorting with innocent-looking girls-next-door. Except, of course, for Depeche Mode's "Just Can't Get Enough". At least Wham! had a half-decent excuse, with this being a Christmas song and all. Christmas songs are supposed to be feelgood campy drivel. DM have no excuse and no recourse except to blame the whole thing on Vince Clarke. The scene where they share the sodas in the diner with the girls may be the lowest moment in Depeche Mode's career. They all look about fourteen and the whole thing is so junior high double date, it's embarrassing.
For some reason, this song gets played on pop radio a lot here. I've heard it more times than I'd care to mention, although not nearly as often as Pink's "Trouble", Black Eyed Peas' "Shut Up" and Westlife's "Mandy" (and it pains me to report that "Mandy" has been added to the list of Songs That I Can't Respect Myself For Liking, But I Like Them Anyway). Back to the video, where Andrew Ridgeley comes across as 100 times cuter and more heartthrob-worthy than the ugly duckling he had the poor misfortune to make over. For the sake of his career, Wham! came along a decade too early. These days boy bands commonly splinter into separate successful solo careers. Ridgeley could have at least been Gary Barlow to George Michael's Robbie Williams.
TV Allstars -- Do They Know It's Christmas? There is no conceivable reason that this recording should exist. Who are these people? British TV stars? Do I really care who they are (no)? I have no desire to watch cheery-eyed kids singing any tune, under any circumstance (this falls under the under-16 rule I formulated during the summer). Seriously, this dancepop-lite rendition is so lightweight it makes Aaron Carter sound like Ritchie Hawtin.
Whitney Houston -- I Wanna Dance With Somebody. Daft colours, daft clothes, daft dancing, and even daft floors. Saturday Night Fever and Billie Jean were the last word in light-up dancefloors, any subsequent attempt to use one has come off looking silly.
Monday, December 15, 2003
I've had far too many late nights lately. Day and night have become indistinguishable and I have no clue what day of the week it is. However, I damn well know what time of year it is, it's time for the
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2003.
However, I'm far less certain of the choices on this year's list than I was in past years. I reserve the right to post something in the new year about how I got the whole thing wrong and left several deserving albums off of the list. This doesn't mean that I
churned it out in my sleep and didn't take the rankings seriously. Far from it. There are few things in life I take more seriously than compiling a Top 10 list. However, when you spend the last two months of the year working in another country and get dumped over the phone while you're there, you tend to have other things on your mind other than music. Not to mention that I've been cut off from the overwhelming bulk of my music collection -- including many of this year's releases -- therefore, this list deserved more thought and perspective than I was able to give it. But I did the best I could.
Some end-of-year thoughts regarding the list include the following:
-- The toughest decision was not the rankings themselves, but
deciding whether Broken Social Scene's "You Forgot it in People" belonged on the list. Even though it was released in October 2002, many publications didn't review it until this year, particularly those based outside of Canada. Heck, even Exclaim!, which is as Canadian as they come, ranked it on their Top 10 this year, which almost convinced me I would be justified in doing the same. But I just couldn't do it. 2002 is 2002, and 2003 is 2003. The record wasn't released this year, so it doesn't belong. If you just got the album this year, or didn't know about it last year, or didn't fully appreciate it twelve months ago, then too bad. I've always held fast to that rule. If I broke it for something from 2002, I might as well put "Loveless" and "Unknown Pleasures" in there too (at least that's always been my reasoning). I still make jokes
about CFNY ranking "Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" as the #1 album of 1995 AND 1996. But the BSS record is a jewel -- Top Five and maybe even Top Three material -- so look for it in six years when I rank the best albums of the decade.
-- The last twenty minutes of Ekkehard Ehlers' "Politik Braucht Keinen Feind" are amazing, amazing, near Album of the
Year Material. The rest of it isn't even close to that level. Maybe I need to start a sub-category of Verve Releases to cover cases like this. The same could be said of Arab Strap's "Monday at the Hug and Pint".
-- You'd have scored big money in Vegas by betting on Blur, Kraftwerk, Spiritualized and Super Furry Animals releasing albums in the same year but having none of them appear on this Top 10. It didn't quite happen, but it almost did. The Blur album is simply shite, I downloaded it and could hardly bear to listen, I was so bored. But back in the day, Blur were The Band I Liked As Much As You Could Possibly Like a Band Without Loving Them, so "Think Tank" wasn't a catastrophic letdown or anything. The SFA album is good, better than "Rings Around the World", but I just haven't gotten around to hearing it much. It's on a hard drive back in Toronto right now. The Kraftwerk album is excellent in parts ("Vitamin", most notably), but also bland and formulaic in other parts
(there was certainly no need for a three part Tour de France suite). As for SPZ, they put out a record I wasn't expecting : a Verve Release.
Two words : O Canada. Total number of Canadian releases on my Top 10 charts, 1993-1997 : 0 .... 1998-2001 : 5 ... 2002-2003 : 9 (!)
So,
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2003.
10. V/A -- 45 SECONDS OF (A SIMBALLREC COMPILATION). Crazy, wild,
breakneck, pick your adjective. Unless someone puts out a "30
Seconds Of" compilation, this will remain the standard bearer on how to convey the most possible musical information on one disc.
9. DESORMAIS -- I AM BROKEN AND REMADE. Plucked strings buzz, groan and wail among an organic, yet unsettling sonic backdrop. And that's only the first track.
8. SPIRITUALIZED -- AMAZING GRACE. Intense, blazing rockers combined with glacial soul ballads -- that's been the SPZ way of life for over a decade now, so perhaps this album isn't such a departure after all. What else -- oh yeah, it's this year's Verve Release.
7. THE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA BAND WITH CHOIR -- THIS IS OUR PUNK ROCK, THEE RUSTED SATELLITES GATHER + SING. They don't always make it too easy to love: the deliberately strained vocals, the epic track lengths, maudlin interval after maudlin interval -- but the beauty is down there once the layers are peeled off.
6. DO MAKE SAY THINK -- WINTER HYMN COUNTRY HYMN SECRET HYMN. DMST have shifted from proggy noodling and dubby grooves into far more complex, nearly symphonic song structures. The title implies this tri-movement approach, and the music makes good on the promise.
5. POLMO POLPO -- LIKE HEARTS SWELLING. White noise and backporch guitar licks were underrepresented on PP's debut, but never in his live shows. Finally, he's delivered an album that captures that pulsating, trance-y, head-caving spirit. That last sentence makes it sound like a 4/4 techno album -- but it's not that at all. Totally unique.
4. MOGWAI -- HAPPY SONGS FOR HAPPY PEOPLE. Sonically, it's "Rock Action II". But the songwriting took a great leap forward. They're barely hiding their melodies behind noise anymore, they're letting them hang bare instead. Their most tuneful and anthemic album by far.
3. BARDO POND -- ON THE ELLIPSE. Mind blowing jams, crashing noise, tender melodies, and eye-crossing drone-fests are Bardo Pond staples. But usually aren't done this well. And all on the same album. And often all on the same track. Their finest blast of raw power and subtlety.
2. TINDERSTICKS -- WAITING FOR THE MOON. In which a once-great band returns to their former greatness by doing exactly what made them great in the first place. So, it's more or less the same as what they'd been doing all along, but it happened to work out perfectly this time.
1. PLASTIKMAN -- CLOSER. Hey. This is the voice inside your head
telling you to get a pair of headphones and turn out the lights, or walk down a dark street, or stare at the floor, or think unsettling thoughts, and listen to this album. Dark dark pitch black DARK. You can even dance to it if you want, but you probably won't feel like it. Album of the Year.
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2003.
However, I'm far less certain of the choices on this year's list than I was in past years. I reserve the right to post something in the new year about how I got the whole thing wrong and left several deserving albums off of the list. This doesn't mean that I
churned it out in my sleep and didn't take the rankings seriously. Far from it. There are few things in life I take more seriously than compiling a Top 10 list. However, when you spend the last two months of the year working in another country and get dumped over the phone while you're there, you tend to have other things on your mind other than music. Not to mention that I've been cut off from the overwhelming bulk of my music collection -- including many of this year's releases -- therefore, this list deserved more thought and perspective than I was able to give it. But I did the best I could.
Some end-of-year thoughts regarding the list include the following:
-- The toughest decision was not the rankings themselves, but
deciding whether Broken Social Scene's "You Forgot it in People" belonged on the list. Even though it was released in October 2002, many publications didn't review it until this year, particularly those based outside of Canada. Heck, even Exclaim!, which is as Canadian as they come, ranked it on their Top 10 this year, which almost convinced me I would be justified in doing the same. But I just couldn't do it. 2002 is 2002, and 2003 is 2003. The record wasn't released this year, so it doesn't belong. If you just got the album this year, or didn't know about it last year, or didn't fully appreciate it twelve months ago, then too bad. I've always held fast to that rule. If I broke it for something from 2002, I might as well put "Loveless" and "Unknown Pleasures" in there too (at least that's always been my reasoning). I still make jokes
about CFNY ranking "Melon Collie and the Infinite Sadness" as the #1 album of 1995 AND 1996. But the BSS record is a jewel -- Top Five and maybe even Top Three material -- so look for it in six years when I rank the best albums of the decade.
-- The last twenty minutes of Ekkehard Ehlers' "Politik Braucht Keinen Feind" are amazing, amazing, near Album of the
Year Material. The rest of it isn't even close to that level. Maybe I need to start a sub-category of Verve Releases to cover cases like this. The same could be said of Arab Strap's "Monday at the Hug and Pint".
-- You'd have scored big money in Vegas by betting on Blur, Kraftwerk, Spiritualized and Super Furry Animals releasing albums in the same year but having none of them appear on this Top 10. It didn't quite happen, but it almost did. The Blur album is simply shite, I downloaded it and could hardly bear to listen, I was so bored. But back in the day, Blur were The Band I Liked As Much As You Could Possibly Like a Band Without Loving Them, so "Think Tank" wasn't a catastrophic letdown or anything. The SFA album is good, better than "Rings Around the World", but I just haven't gotten around to hearing it much. It's on a hard drive back in Toronto right now. The Kraftwerk album is excellent in parts ("Vitamin", most notably), but also bland and formulaic in other parts
(there was certainly no need for a three part Tour de France suite). As for SPZ, they put out a record I wasn't expecting : a Verve Release.
Two words : O Canada. Total number of Canadian releases on my Top 10 charts, 1993-1997 : 0 .... 1998-2001 : 5 ... 2002-2003 : 9 (!)
So,
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2003.
10. V/A -- 45 SECONDS OF (A SIMBALLREC COMPILATION). Crazy, wild,
breakneck, pick your adjective. Unless someone puts out a "30
Seconds Of" compilation, this will remain the standard bearer on how to convey the most possible musical information on one disc.
9. DESORMAIS -- I AM BROKEN AND REMADE. Plucked strings buzz, groan and wail among an organic, yet unsettling sonic backdrop. And that's only the first track.
8. SPIRITUALIZED -- AMAZING GRACE. Intense, blazing rockers combined with glacial soul ballads -- that's been the SPZ way of life for over a decade now, so perhaps this album isn't such a departure after all. What else -- oh yeah, it's this year's Verve Release.
7. THE SILVER MT. ZION MEMORIAL ORCHESTRA & TRA-LA-LA BAND WITH CHOIR -- THIS IS OUR PUNK ROCK, THEE RUSTED SATELLITES GATHER + SING. They don't always make it too easy to love: the deliberately strained vocals, the epic track lengths, maudlin interval after maudlin interval -- but the beauty is down there once the layers are peeled off.
6. DO MAKE SAY THINK -- WINTER HYMN COUNTRY HYMN SECRET HYMN. DMST have shifted from proggy noodling and dubby grooves into far more complex, nearly symphonic song structures. The title implies this tri-movement approach, and the music makes good on the promise.
5. POLMO POLPO -- LIKE HEARTS SWELLING. White noise and backporch guitar licks were underrepresented on PP's debut, but never in his live shows. Finally, he's delivered an album that captures that pulsating, trance-y, head-caving spirit. That last sentence makes it sound like a 4/4 techno album -- but it's not that at all. Totally unique.
4. MOGWAI -- HAPPY SONGS FOR HAPPY PEOPLE. Sonically, it's "Rock Action II". But the songwriting took a great leap forward. They're barely hiding their melodies behind noise anymore, they're letting them hang bare instead. Their most tuneful and anthemic album by far.
3. BARDO POND -- ON THE ELLIPSE. Mind blowing jams, crashing noise, tender melodies, and eye-crossing drone-fests are Bardo Pond staples. But usually aren't done this well. And all on the same album. And often all on the same track. Their finest blast of raw power and subtlety.
2. TINDERSTICKS -- WAITING FOR THE MOON. In which a once-great band returns to their former greatness by doing exactly what made them great in the first place. So, it's more or less the same as what they'd been doing all along, but it happened to work out perfectly this time.
1. PLASTIKMAN -- CLOSER. Hey. This is the voice inside your head
telling you to get a pair of headphones and turn out the lights, or walk down a dark street, or stare at the floor, or think unsettling thoughts, and listen to this album. Dark dark pitch black DARK. You can even dance to it if you want, but you probably won't feel like it. Album of the Year.
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