Independence Day concert featuring Machina and Rita (among others) at Kikar Rambam

As far as Independence Day traditions go, the Israeli one (free, municipality-funded concerts at night, BBQ with family and/or friends the next day) is right up there with the best of them.  

The concert nearest to me happened to feature acts I was really interested in seeing.  Machina might be loosely compared to Manic Street Preachers.  Both bands try to exude a certain sense of danger and aggressiveness, an image which is aided by not infrequent intra-band disputes during their history and tight, energetic live shows.  But dig a little deeper and both bands are fairly soft on the inside and have achieved considerable chart successes with slickly produced pop-rock and anthemic choruses.  That's not a dig at either band, but more of a statement of how they've managed to adapt and find ways to remain popular after sixty years of combined history.  Machina were going through the motions a bit on this night, perhaps partly restrained by the mere 40 minutes allotted to their set.  They made sure to choose songs that would turn into big singalongs in front of a very mixed crowd that obviously wanted to have something to sing along to, and by this measure their appearance was a big success.  The band's job is sometimes easy when everybody loves your songs and nobody has to be won over, but I loved their show regardless.

Rita is a different story completely, closer to an Israeli version of Cher with her ageless appearance and the way she makes every second of every song sound like a big dramatic moment.  Rita would be described by her fans as a "survivor" too, and whereas Cher was a star in many different musical genres (not to mention acting), Rita is a star in at least three languages (English, Persian, Hebrew).  You'd think that Rita and Machina couldn't possibly share fan bases, and in the US or Canada, they wouldn't.  It's a credit and a constant mystery of Israeli society that many mainstream acts are celebrated by just about everybody.  

Alternative Press - 100 Bands you needed to know in 2001

This article made the rounds last month but if we already waited twelve years to revisit and make fun of some of these bands, another couple of weeks won't change anything.  Here are the AP's comments for a selection of bands from the article, followed by some of my own comments.  The full list is here:

2nd Gen

"The nom de plume of electro-terrorist Wajid Yaseen, 2nd Gen signed to Mute Records in 2001 for the release of his migraine-inducing second album, Irony Is. In 2006, he teamed up with Alice Kemp for a similarly uncomfortable project called Uniform and from all indications, he’s still making a racket and getting paid for it."

This was a great catch by AP in '01. Mute/Novamute released and licensed plenty of electronic and techno music around that time but it still surprises me that they released something this extreme.  Mute was the label of Nitzer Ebb, Laibach, and Renegade Soundwave but none of them blew up your speakers like 2nd Gen could.  Unfortunately, "Irony Is" couldn't have been released at a worse time.  It was several years too late to catch onto the tail end of the hard, tracky techno that was the rage in the 90's, and was several years too early to find a home among the industrial techno that has become somewhat popular today.  At the time, people in the rhythmic noise microscene would have loved it if they had heard of it.  Most of the techno head into minimal and clicks'n'cuts, both of which couldn't be any different than this.  I discovered "Irony Is" in a California bargain bin in 2003, loved it immediately, and really need to revisit it soon. 

Black Dice

"The band who started as an angular hardcore quintet before morphing into a groovy effect-laden beast have slimmed down to a trio of brothers Bjorn and Aaron Copeland and Aaron Warren. Their sixth album, Mr. Impossible, was released last spring."

Black Dice were Animal Collective before most people had heard of Animal Collective.  Their brand of electronic/freak/psych rock could have maybe perhaps been on the verge of breaking through into the indie stratusphere.  They lost me around 2006, when it became clear that their primal drum circle leanings were never coming back, gone forever in favour of twiddling all the knobs on their samplers simultaneously.

Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

"Peter Hayes and Robert Been remain at the core of this menacing, noisy and remarkably influential psychedelic band. Their seventh album, Specter At The Feast, was released March 19. In addition, guitarist/frontman Been has been performing with the Call, the ’80s alt-rock band his father Michael Been formed."

Every generation has its JAMC tribute band?  I'm not sure how "influential" they are but it's amazing that a gimmicky band that seemed primed for a two albums + acrimonious breakup type of career is still going. I suppose you could have said the same about The Raveonettes too, but they're not going away anytime soon either.

Broadcast

"Tragedy hit this respected British electronic band when lead singer Trish Keenan died in 2011 after contracting swine flu. Their last album, the soundtrack to the film Berberian Sound Studio, was issued by Warp this past January. It’s been reported that sole member James Cargill is working on a new album with vocal performances by Keenan prior to her illness."

Broadcast blew my mind in 1998 with their contribution to Warp 100, after that I stayed angry with them for years for never managing to be the same band I'd heard on "Hammer Without a Master".  I was back on board by the time of 2005's "Tender Buttons" and feeling kind of silly for missing out on some solid music they'd released in the interim.  Trish Keenan's death was a shock and a tragedy.

Coldplay

"They fell into obscurity following the 100 Bands issue never to be heard from again. Moving on… "

Yeah, these guys have done all right for themselves.  The most interesting thing about this from a 2013 perspective is the fact that they were tipped by the AP to begin with.  I mean, Coldplay ... alternative?  Tipped as a band to watch alongside nearly one hundred weirdos and obscurities?  But they weren't the only publication to do this -- they were also featured in the Melody Maker's similar feature at almost exactly the same time, in their first issue of the year that tended to have short profiles of bands to watch in the coming year.   (At least I think it was the MM ... it was a British publication, and whatever it was, it was the first time I'd heard about Coldplay)  I remember comparisons to U2 being made, but even the people writing the articles probably thought their ceiling was a poor man's Travis who'd be reuniting in fifteen years for a one off show that would feature their lone hit, "Yellow".

Doves

"History is repeating itself for this U.K. ambient pop ensemble, who announced a break in 2010. They say that if ever they do return, it will be a completely fresh start. That wouldn’t be a first for the band, who restarted from scratch as Doves after they lost their second LP and equipment as former incarnation Sub Sub in a studio fire."

It's amazing to think there was a time when Doves vs Coldplay were battling for the post-U2 Eno-tinged epic stadium rock crown.  

Godspeed You Black Emperor!

"The post-rock band of brothers (seriously, there are a lot of them) released Allelujah! Don’t Bend! Ascend! their first album in more than a decade last October."

A bit late to the party, were we AP?  By 2001 GYBE were already minor legends and had already peaked.

Jega

"Dylan Nathan, aka Jega, came up through the late-’90s British electronica scene. His last record was a two volume set called Variance."

Jega was hyped to the moon by the electronic music press at the time.  I bought his debut album "Spectrum (which was not my usual cup of tea) based largely on the many positive reviews and was soundly disappointed.  I probably haven't heard or even thought about this album in ten years.

Ladytron

"This Liverpool dark electro quartet have kept up their momentum over the years (mostly in the U.K.) and released their fifth album Gravity The Seducer in 2011. Just last month, they unveiled a new video for “International Dateline.” However, vocalist Helen Marnie’s PledgeMusic page for her solo project, Marnie, notes that the group are currently on brief hiatus. Note: It only took three days for Marnie to reach full funding on PledgeMusic."

An interesting pick by the AP, because Ladytron in 2001 had "fad" written all over them.  They could have been swept away just like every electroclash-related act were, but they hung around and kept getting better with every new album.  I ignored them up until 2006, but like Beach House, it's a good thing that I kept away from them for a while until they had morphed into a band that I couldn't help but like.  Had I tried listening to either one of them in the early days, I would have pushed them aside and missed out on a lot of great music five years down the line.

Mean Red Spiders

"Four records and several member changes later, the Canadian band are still making music. Their last album came out in 2003. "

Really?  Can't believe the AP knew who these guys were in '01!  I saw them live a couple of times -- the Southern Ontario neo-shoegaze scene was small but the bands were strong (e.g. Hollowphonic, South Pacific). Again, I can't believe Mean Red Spiders made the list.  This was pre-Broken Social Scene's "You Forgot It In People" -- nobody was watching the Toronto indie scene in those days (outside of Toronto.  Even Montrealers wouldn't have cared what was happening in Toronto then)

Sigur Ros

"Masters of ebbing and flowing post-rock, the Icelandic delegation issued their sixth album, Valtari in 2012, before bidding farewell to multi-instrumentalist Kjartan "Kjarri" Sveinsson earlier this year. The band are planning to continue as a trio with additional touring members, and are releasing a new album, Kveikur, on June 18."

I heard about Sigur Ros for the first time in the same Melody Maker (?) article where I first heard about Coldplay.

V/VM

"British sound artist Leyland Kirby would sample and electronically mangle other people’s hits with results that were at times sinister, hilarious and unfathomable. He now makes spooky, unsettling ambient records under his own name and the moniker of the Caretaker."

Perhaps the only act on this list that got more popular as they got weirder, continuing on to the present day?

Vladislav Delay

"A pseudonym of Finnish electronic musician Sasu Ripatti, Vladislav Delay released their newest album, Kuopio, last year."

Vladislav Delay was my least favourite of the major Chain Reaction acts.  There was a lot of watery and directionless ambient techno being released at the time, and Vladislav Delay was one of the worst offenders.    I remember hearing Luomo for the first time in a record store and being shocked when the clerks told me that it was the same guy who did Vladislav Delay.

The Warlocks

"This psychedelic eight-piece are still active, but appear to have never caught on heavily in their 14 years as a band. They have a new album in the works that is likely to be ready for release “fall 2013 or January 2014,” according to a recent blog post."

I agree, it's kind of sad that the Warlocks never caught on.  The Phoenix album was supposed to be their big break, but the next three albums were far superior -- more focused, melodic, but still wonderfully groovy and very much still "out there".  Unfortunately each album in succession was met with increasingly higher levels of contempt and derision.
 

The Voice Israel, Season 2

I didn't get to see the finale live and thought I could manage to avoid hearing about the results for several days until getting back from out of the country.  I thought I was home free until I picked up an English language newspaper several days later and the results were there of all places, buried on the back page of the front section.

I was really invested in this show (the first season of The Voice I've watched in any country) and this is but one of many reasons that I never even think about what's happening on American Idol any more.

Lina Makhoul emerged as a very capable winner in a season loaded with talent.  I was blown away by the quality of the contestants who were eliminated in the duets round -- the round of 48!  And to think that American Idol can't even put together a top ten without a few embarrassments in most years.

Lina wasn't anywhere near the top of my list (possibly not even top ten), and in fact, based on talent alone, I might not have kept her in the duets round if it were up to me.  Based on charm and star potential it was obvious that she'd be sticking around for a while.  She managed to advance to the finals partly because of the  unfair bracketology of the show.  She had very little competition because she was the class of a very weak group.  Her jaw-dropping Fayrouz cover (in the round of 20, I believe), by far her finest moment of the season, practically cinched her road to the finals.

Her opponent in the final pairing, Ophir Ben-Shitrit, fought through a ridiculously talented group mentored by Aviv Gefen and was by far my favourite performer of the season.  In the round of 16, Aviv's group had a reasonable claim to being ranked 1-2-3-4 overall, at the very worst, they were four of the best seven or eight left in the competition.  I thought Ophir vs Lina would be a close contest, but Lina wiped the floor with her despite singing a sterile version of "Hallelujah" as her final song (although Ophir's final song was far from her best performance too).  But Lina had the girl next door smile and charm, whereas Ophir was a bit too much of an ice queen to really connect with the voters.  She could come across as a bit snooty and vain even I'm sure she doesn't have a vain impulse in her body.  Personality is key in these shows, and the singer who lets down their guard and bares their soul tends to do well.  Lina seemed more like an open book throughout the season, Ophir was more distant.  

In a season where judges took shots at each other over who could and couldn't connect to the lyrics in English language songs, where several contestants were judged largely on their abilities to sing in different genres and languages, almost nobody seemed to have a grasp on what a good English performance sounds like.  Natives of the Middle East have a lot of difficulty enunciating hard consonants in English, particularly the "r"'s, and for this reason a lot of performances throughout the season came off sounding sloppy, as if they were trying to sing with a mouthful of food.  Words and sentences would be slurred together into a complicated jumble, and often I doubted I would be able to understand what they were singing about if I didn't already know the words to the songs.  The cadence of the lyrics would be inconsistent, and melisma was often totally misapplied. This was easily the most frustrating thing about the season because performances of very famous English language hits were more often than not praised to the heavens, even though they were at best average.  Lina's audition performance of "Empire State of Mind" is exactly the kind of thing that would have gotten her eviscerated by the judges in the semifinals of American Idol.  She'd have found herself quickly in the bottom three after a few "that's tough, taking on a great singer like Alicia Keys" (i.e. the "never sing songs by Whitney or Mariah on talent shows" rule) and "I don't know, for me it was a bit all over the place" type of comments from the judges.

The only contestants on "The Voice" who could sing well in English were Atalia Pierce and Roni Perry.  Neither of them made it to the finals (how Dana Tsalah made it past the duet stage, let alone into the finals, is a complete mystery to me) but this might not be the last we hear from them, particularly (if justice and Aviv Gefen have anything to say about it) from Roni Perry.

My wedding, music in Barcelona

A rare post where my personal life overlaps with my music, where my music helps me get through obstacles in my personal life ...

To follow up on the previous post (now updated with a tracklist), it was not a mix of music intended to be played at a wedding.  I was itching to make a new mix, specifically a more free flowing and laid back kind of mix like the one from Podcast Episode 6 (which I've been listing to a lot recently), but couldn't find the time.  It was only in the few days before the wedding, when we'd finally run out of important things to do, that I found the time one Friday morning to record the mix.  And in the days following the wedding, I spent a few free hours listing to the mix and doing some minor editing.  It was a simple task and therefore a helpful distraction to keep me busy and relatively free of nerves.

I had asked the DJ at the wedding to record his set.  Wait, let's back up ... I met with the DJ a week earlier and handed him a lengthy list of songs not to play. Almost immediately, I regretted doing it.  Even though I had already told him I'd be bringing him a "do not play" list (something he'd happily agreed to), he seemed put off and even a bit insulted when I showed it to him. First, it was a long and detailed list, filled with minute details like "no slow songs by Stevie Wonder", "nothing by Phil Collins except for possibly 'Against All Odds'", and a list of specific disco songs not to play.  Was he supposed to print it out and/or memorize it and/or remove certain files from his hard drive for the evening (actually, I thought the last of these was possible and not altogether unreasonable)?  Second, an experienced professional DJ might resent the impression that he was being handed a list of detailed instructions about how to do his job.

In the end, the list simply confused matters.  We'd told him he'd be playing in front of a very mixed crowd so he should mix it up between pop, rock, Middle Eastern, and some of our personal requests.  In that sense, his set was perfect in terms of style and flow.  He seamlessly combined genres and covered all the musical ground we asked him to.  But the "do not play" list was a failure.  All it seemed to do was stick the names of certain songs in his head, without the negative associations.  So now I have to live with the fact that dreck like Joan Osborne's "One Of Us" got played at my wedding.  The saving grace is that almost all of these slip-ups were for "slow" portions, when people were eating and the music was in the background.  In fact, the DJ's only real comment on my list was that it wasn't a problem because most of them were slow songs, IOW, when people were actually dancing he could just go by feel and wouldn't need my list.

Of course the truly most important thing is that I was generally too happy to really care about the DJ's mistakes.  The guests enjoyed themselves and certainly didn't care about stuff like that either, which is the second most important thing.  I have a recording of the set and can relive things "as they really were" whenever I want, warts and all, and that was important to be.

The DJ came through for us in two other, very underappreciated ways:

1) He chose the "glass breaking" song, i.e. the song immediately played after the ceremony.  His first suggestion was the Beatles' "She Loves You" -- happy, upbeat, not too serious but also a bit too old fashioned.  His second suggestion was the Cure's "Friday I'm In Love" which I didn't think would work because not everyone would know the song.  He insisted it didn't matter, it was all about setting the mood and that everyone would be able to understand that from the first note. It was perfect because a lot of people complimented us on a great choice of song even though we didn't pick it (of course we gave him his due credit!).  The DJ correctly guessed I was a Cure fan based on the music I like.

2) I gave him a list of suggestions for the welcoming reception.  I didn't want to tell him what to play but told him I'd appreciate it if he could slip in a few of these songs, just so my fingerprints could be on a small portion of the music for the night.  I was busy and/or not present for significant parts of the reception, but I vaguely remember hearing Spiritualized's "Cool Waves" and Beach House's "Walk in the Park".  But my clearest memory of the reception was in the few moments before the ceremony started, when we were already running late and really had to get out there, and you're trying to have a few more moments to relax and breath but you know there really isn't any time for that ... and that's when I heard the muffled sounds of  Beach House's "The Hours" drifting into our dressing room.  I hadn't requested that song, but he knew I really liked Beach House (why?  I'd sent him a copy of my top 10 albums of 2011 and 2012) and played it as a bonus.  And that's when time proverbially stood still for a couple of moments and I knew everything was under control.

The following week, we were in Barcelona, and unfortunately it was a trip filled with missed opportunities on the music side of things (but a great trip otherwise).  There wasn't much to piqued my interest on the club side of things (although Italo Disco night featuring a live performance by Alexander Robotnick could have been interesting), which might have something to do with Easter week being a slow time for clubs.  I didn't get a chance to do any serious music shopping, and besides, a lot of places seem to be closing based on the information on this page (and the number of dead links it contains).  We also missed out on seeing the Magic Fountain because we mixed up the summer and winter performance hours.  Seeing the final couple of minutes from afar (too far away to hear the music) while walking from the train station somehow made our mistake even sadder and more pitiful.

On the bright side, the buskers in Park Guell were wonderful.  There was a classical guitar/violin duo who were so great we bought their CD, a didgeridoo player in one of the many mini-caves in the park, and a acoustic rock band who I jokingly thought looked just like Coldplay right before they broke into a rather pleasant version of Radiohead's "No Surprises".  Best of all was the music and parades on Palm Sunday, where costumed monsters and stampeding horses roamed the streets with a succession of brass and drum ensembles.  

Diary of Musical Thoughts Podcast 14

"The Wedding Mix" - 123 minutes

Not a mix of love songs, or a selection of songs that are necessarily recommended for play at weddings, but something that brought me much peace of mind.  A snapshot of a moment in time.

(tracklist will be posted at a later date)

The Wedding Mix by Bruiserfs on Mixcloud

Dave Ogilvie did what? and the return of Hollowphonic

As if the "Call Me a Hole" mashup wasn't unbelievable enough, it turns out that the man who mixed "Call Me Maybe" was none other than Dave "Rave" Ogilvie, who made a name for himself by working with industrial bands such as Skinny Puppy and Nine Inch Nails.  What's more, he mixed "Call Me Maybe" with NIN in mind.  I couldn't make this up if I tried.  It's also no less than the most bizarre and spectacular bit of music trivia to come along in ages.  I was reading about how he feared that the beats were a bit rough for a pop record, only to be told by the producers that it was exactly what they were shooting for, and it made such perfect sense and seemed so bleedingly obvious.  And yet at the same time who could have ever made the connection on their own, without it being spoon fed to you?  It's like the "Smells Like Teen Spirit"/"More Than A Feeling" connection, only ten times more awesome and unexpected.

What's more, I'm hearing odd connections everywhere now, like on this brand new song by Hollowphonic. Can you convince me that Brad Ketchen didn't ask for a "Call Me Maybe"-style kick drum to be glued onto his song during the mixing process?  Up until a week ago I probably would have said this was Hollowphonic's homage to MBV's "Soon", but now I hear a catchy danceable intro and a big pop chorus.

History in photos, Black Swans in music

Catching up on some older links I've been meaning to say something about:

I can't recall seeing a better collection of photos that take you right inside New York club culture in the 70's and 80's. You really feel as though you're sitting in the room with them in these pictures.  The comments and reminiscences are revealing too, in particular, Nicky Siano's memories of Bianca Jagger's birthday party at Studio 54 (with photographers magically appearing out of the woodwork and bums lining the streets in the back) really sums up NYC's legendary highs (clubs, artists, glamour) and lows (crime, everyday dangers) that made the city so notorious in the 70's.

Why did I only find out about Slices DVD Features a couple of months ago?  In the latest installment, Alva Noto talks about how he was influenced by physics and oscilloscopes (which could be inferred from listening to his music for ten seconds, but it's still nice to hear him talk about it) and the whole interview and all the music in it could have been recorded at almost any time between 2000-2013.  Don't ever change Carsten!  He's been dong exactly the same thing since forever but he knows exactly who he is.

Finally, I woke up to a lot of "best mashup ever!"/"this wins the internet"-style posts today (which of course happens a few times most weeks) but this time it really might be true.  I always say that one of the main reasons I write about music is to be able to look back on what I write in a few years time and laugh about how wrong I was about something (and also to gloat about being right).  But just about everyone (which obviously includes me) writes intrinsically conservative predictions, neglecting to speculate on the Black Swan events that are usually more eye-catching.  Not that there aren't good reasons for this -- Black Swan events are by definition completely impossible to predict, so it's a bit silly to waste time on fantasy booking when you could be writing about the art that's sitting in front of your face.  Nevertheless it would be interesting if we could place Superbowl-type prop bets on music and musicians.  For instance, in 1991, what odds would you give on Trent Reznor winning an Oscar?  1000 to 1?  Maybe the odds come down a bit when he improbably won a Grammy for Best Metal Performance in 1992, but still.  You can assign almost any number you want to these odds -- these events were so improbable that nobody would have known how to place a value on them.

This is still true today.  In 2007, what were the odds of a reject from a Canadian reality show scoring the runaway biggest pop hit of the year in five years time?  I'd have gone a lot higher than 1000 to 1 on that.  There are precedents for renegade rock artists switching to soundtrack work and winning awards in their 40's and 50's.  There was no precedent for Carly Rae Jepsen.

If I traveled back in time to 1991 and told you that Nine Inch Nails would "collaborate" with a bubblegum pop artist on a "rerecorded" version of "Head Like a Hole" (nobody knew what a mashup was so it would have been described in those terms) and that fans of both bands and music in general would say it was cool and awesome, would you have believed it?

Grammys 2013

I didn't watch the show this year, save for The Black Keys' amazing performance of "Lonely Boy" via Popmatters (all the links to the other performances were quickly taken down).  My predictions were spectacularly wrong this year, save for the one I was most sure about (i.e. the snubbing of Frank Ocean).  Black Keys upset Springsteen in the categories that he's owned for more than a decade, and although I have hated generally every two person drums/guitar garage-y rock band that's come along since 2001 (with No Age still being a somewhat inexplicable exception), Black Keys are the real deal, "Lonely Boy" is a killer song, and I feel safe in agreeing with Popmatters that their was the best performance of the night even without seeing another minute of the show.  

Instead of sitting through the entire three hour ceremony, it's probably better to read what really smart people had to say about the Grammys anyway.   Philip Sherburne found some silver linings in Skrillex's dominance of the dance music categories on his SPIN blog.  First, he argues, it's good that Grammy gave the awards to the act that's currently at the top of their game, as opposed to what they usually do (in rock, R&B ... apparently no genre is safe from this!) -- giving the nods to established acts that gets their nominations and awards mostly due to name recognition.  Skrillex's music might be indistinguishable from 90% of Chemical Brothers' back catalogue, but it sure is nice to see those kids and their hip new sounds taking the big win away from those old farts!  Second, the Grammys have given up on trying to integrate electronic music into the rest of the show.  They're content to let the categories stand in their own little quaint corner of the awards universe, much like the classical and jazz categories that most Grammy viewers couldn't give a crap about, rather than forcing the likes of Dave Grohl to play nice with David Guetta to the benefit of nobody.  I completely agree with Sherburne here.  Why force these cross-cultural mashups -- is it an attempt to "contextualize" the music for viewers who like rock but don't know anything about DJ culture?  Was Dave Grohl really going to act as a gateway for new fans possibly getting into Deadmau5?

Jon Caramanica touched on some of the same points in his Grammy piece for the NYT.  Every year we see younger performers on stage with veteran ones, and it's starting to feel like, in Caramanica's words, that the younger generation are being "effectively supervised by an older peer".  It's cool to see "dream pairings" of performers that span generations of music fans, but there are diminishing returns associated with them.  They catch your eye the first through tenth times you see them, but afterward they become just another gimmick that the Grammys use to get people to tune into the broadcast, and they cease to be special.

On the other hand, the Grammys happen only once a year (it's not as if Paul McCartney and Jay-Z are forced to tour together or anything) and the Grammys have always been at least one generation behind popular trends.  Just look at the awards handed out in the 1960's -- almost none of it has any critical cache today.  Caramanica looks at Grammy success of Black Keys and Mumford and Sons with the glass empty.  He sees their wins as enforcement of a Grammy narrative that nothing innovative has been done in music since the 1960's.  But that sort of music was going to win anyway, because the Grammys need thirty years to adapt to new trends.  That being the unavoidable state of things, I say it's better to give the awards to the young guys rather than the older ones.  It's incremental progress, but at least it's something.  

Hyden's winners

Grantland's Steven Hyden has been posting a series of articles that he calls "The Winners' History of Rock and Roll", where simply put, he examines why huge bands became huge and remained huge.  The project was born of the idea that music critics have given too much attention to the plight of the underdogs, that there have been far too many essays written on the likes of the Velvet Underground, the rise of punk rock, and the bands whose music went relatively unnoticed in their time and is due for a reappraisal.  Therefore, if we want to learn something new about the last 30-40 years of music history, it's time to stop combing through the underground obscurities and start focusing on what the mega-successful acts can tell us about changing trends and tastes in music.

Hyden seems to be working from a premise that's clouded by the democratization of music criticism that's taken place relatively recently due to the rise of blogs, social media, and specialty publications/websites.  The median age of music critics has (I think) gotten younger than it was in the magazine and newspaper dominated eras of a couple of decades ago.  More importantly, the nexus has shifted -- and shifted rather quickly -- from writers weaned on music from the 60's and 70's to those weaned on music from the 80's and 90's.  The "missing" generation in the middle, I believe, is mine and Steven Hyden's, i.e. the people in their 30's who didn't have an outlet to write about the music we cared about because the media for doing so (blogs,  tumblrs, etc.) didn't exist. When I was growing up, music criticism was ALL about the winners, and the only way to avoid the steady stream of hero worship and TV specials about the Beatles or Led Zeppelin was to listen to the one alternative radio station in your city or town (assuming there was one), hang around indie music shops, read fanzines, and find like-minded message boards on the then-fledgling internet.  Music criticism circa 1990 was about nothing other than the "winners" that have been unfairly overlooked according to Hyden, and I'm not sure how he could have forgotten that.   

The music fans and critics born between 1970 and 1980 (which includes me) grew up in an age where they were pulled in opposite directions by two very different philosophies.  On one hand was the music of the Beatles and Stones generation, the stuff we wouldn't dream of rebelling against (even though it was our parents' favourite music) because it still sounded so ridiculously good.  On the other hand, there was the "punk saved rock and roll from itself" narrative that was equally well entrenched and well argued by our favourite DJ's and record store clerks.  You kind of had to pick one side.  It wasn't that both sides couldn't agree that the Beatles were a great band, but one side looked backward, confident in the knowledge that music would never be that good ever again, and the other side refused to accept that.  Those viewpoints were, and are, for the most part incompatible.

That said, just about every 70's baby who came down on the side of the punks had a eureka moment where they realized that their side wasn't as infallible as they once thought it was.  Mine happened sometime in 1996, when I heard Fleetwood Mac's "Rumours" in full for the first time since ... well, the first time ever*.  Of course I was already familiar with many of the songs, as they were inescapable on FM radio even in the early 1980's, years after "Rumours" was released.  For the punks, Fleetwood Mac were the ENEMY, a key symbol of why punk had to come along to rid the world of multi-million selling soft rock pussies and their sunny LA cocaine addicted friends. One problem though -- when I heard those songs again, for the first time in over a decade (or at least since Bill Clinton's first presidential campaign), my reaction couldn't have been more surprising.

"This is soooo much better than any punk album."

*I wrote about rediscovering "Rumours" back in 2001 ... and when searching for that post, I discovered a "hidden" post, i.e. two separate pieces in the same post that I must have missed when carrying my old blog over to blogspot.

That's when it all came crashing down.  I didn't even like punk (or post-punk) all that much, but it was the philosophy of punk (and the alternative music I loved so much) that got overhauled.  I never looked at idealized, messianic histories of alternative music (which included early 90's grunge by that point) the same way ever again.  On the other hand, as much as I love "Rumours" and other "winners" albums, I don't write very much about them, and in that sense Hyden stance is absolutely right.  I wrote about another long time favourite of mine, Sinead O'Connor's "I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got", for the first time just a few weeks ago.  All in all, I've been enjoying Hyden's work a lot, both in this series and in general on Grantland.

However, he picked a strange example with which to explain himself as he introduced the series though -- Arcade Fire's surprising "Album of the Year" win at the Grammys.  If there's any institution that can be counted on to honour the winners at all times, always going with the safest and most uncontroversial choices and never falling prey to critical buzz bands or emerging trends, it's the Grammys.  Arcade Fire's win was an outlier, which is why it was such a surprise.  It's really odd to see Hyden singling out the Grammys as an institution that would confuse acts that the critics consider great with those that consistently move units.

To take it even further, if popularity is dictated by whatever "Middle America" wants to hear, as Hyden states many times in his Led Zeppelin and Kiss pieces, then why aren't Arcade Fire a lot more popular?  Kiss and Led Zeppelin were selling a lifestyle but they were also selling their audience a means of escape.  Isn't that exactly what Arcade Fire are about?  Hyden writes "Middle America" many times when he really means "the suburbs".  Plenty of bands were writing about happenings in New York, but the teenager population in the suburbs across the country was many times higher, ergo, Kiss and Led Zeppelin wrote for them and became as huge as bands could possibly be.  Today, Arcade Fire's third album is called "The Suburbs" and is all about life in the suburbs. Where's the logic gap?

The problem is that writing about the suburbs not the same as writing for the suburbs.  In the same way, writing about the need to escape isn't the same as writing music that makes you feel as if you've already escaped.  Led Zeppelin sold the dream, but they didn't engage in self-reflection, they were famous but they didn't write an album about the "pressures of fame" (e.g. Sly Stone's "There's a Riot Goin' On", Pulp's "This is Hardcore").   The kids in the suburbs don't want to hear about things as they really are, about the ups and downs of living the glamorous life.  If you're writing about the gritty reality of life then you've ruined the fantasy no matter how rich and famous you are, you're practically halfway to writing about life on the streets of New York to a limited audience. The airbrushed version of being famous is what sells.

Kiss might have understood that better than anybody.  The third band in Hyden's series, Bon Jovi, were simple kids from New Jersey who mastered the "I dream of escape" vibe that Springsteen had perfected.  What was "Livin' on a Prayer" if not Springsteen with bigger hairdos?  Bon Jovi made it work mainly for two reasons.  First, they presented a simple message in its most basic, most unconflicted form.  No family pressures, no trouble with the law, no teenage angst, just "we're young so let's get out of here".  Second, they looked the part of pretty boy rock stars at exactly the right time in music history when you needed to look like a pretty boy rock star to break through (i.e. the height of the video age).  Hyden has a lot more to say on that in his Bon Jovi article.

I found his Aerosmith and Metallica profiles less thought provoking than the first three, but I'm looking forward to his upcoming piece on Linkin Park because for me their success story has completely defied explanation and I really would like to know more.   

Woke up, got out of bed

Dragged a comb across my head, etc.  Packed a lunch, noticed I was late, grabbed a bus and a train, headed to the office, stopped at the bank, did a bit of work, took a short break, finally logged on to Facebook and was floored by the NEW MBV ALBUM INTERNET MULTIVERSE POSTING EXPLOSION.

So you wait 22 years for an album to come out, the lead guitarist of the band (the biggest perfectionist/procrastinator in music) responds to hecklers at a one-off London gig by saying that the new album would be out in three days, and it TURNS OUT TO BE TRUE?  There were follow-up articles written after that London gig that compiled the last fifteen years of new release announcements, and I couldn't believe that anyone took this last one the least bit seriously.  If I had been betting, I would have placed the odds somewhere between the proverbial "when monkeys fly out of my anus" and "when monkeys fly out of the anuses of the monkeys flying out of my anus" because after fifteen years of Kevin Shields saying "there'll definitely be something out by the end of the year", I thought we knew better than to be fooled yet again.

I don't have anything interesting or constructive to say, I'm just posting for the sake of posting.  I haven't even heard the album yet, but so far the responses have been overwhelmingly positive (yes!!) and I'm kind of glad I slept through those manic few hours when MBV's website repeatedly crashed due to all the traffic.

Just ... wow.  First GYBE, then Bowie, now MBV.  New music that appears without warning, after years of waiting, nearly at the point when fans had reached their peace with the idea of never hearing music from them ever again.