NPR just put out a list of the 150 best albums made by women. Compiled by over 50 NPR women, more precisely as put by Ann Powers:
"It features albums by artists who identify as female — including some by mixed-gender bands, like Fleetwood Mac and X, that, in our view, relied on women's creativity for their spark.... It stands for music history, touching upon every significant trend, social issue, set of sonic innovations, and new avenue for self-expression that popular music has intersected in the past fifty years...."
Powers lays out some of the pitfalls of list-making, even bringing up one obscure feminist notion that list-making itself is hierarchical, and as such might be anti-feminist. OK, so there's that. But we're taking about art here. Perspective and feeling, are defined by subjectivity, and to pretend that we shouldn't have personal hierarchies - to enjoy some thing more than others is just, well... too sad. And not fun. And uninteresting. So, with that in mind, I present my own, entirely subjective response based on how I have experienced these artists, according to my own repertoire of response. First, I must say that the list was very political, in that it tried to please a lot of people. It's multicultural, high and low. That's fine. But it is a "list" after all, and that implies a trajectory. Compiling a list by committee is going to be filled with contradictions. Famous critics' lists tend to be from institutions that represent more narrow perspectives, which smooths this out. But that's also the point. Music (especially rock) is generally written, performed, produced, released and written about by men. Enough said. OK, then. My taste runs heavily towards rock, with smatterings of reggae, hip hop, country, jazz thrown in. I also like a lot of music that is fundamentally Not Great. It is derivative, cheesy, overproduced, and at some level simply soul-less. I would place most popular music in this category. Your Foreigners, your Everly Brothers, your (I'm so going to get a kick out of this... your Beach Boys). Then you have music that is well-crafted, earnest, and yet just not interesting enough. It doesn't move me. I'm talking here about your Paul Simons, your Carpenters, your Didos, Adeles and Sara McLaughlins. To get on any Best Of list of mine your art has to be singular, brave, raw, and at some level have really made an impact on me. Going through the NPR list, many of the artists I simply haven't heard of. Some, like maybe Aretha Franklin or Roberta Flack, I would agree are great - but just have never been moving enough to me personally. (As for Flack, Killing Me Softly is a classic, but I would be able to name much else from her). So, the following stand out to me:
Breeders (Pod was a better album. And le me just say that the fact that this came in at #144 while Britney Spears was at #92 sort of sums up everything that one might despise in the particular NPR overeducated, safe, milktoast, dumbly arch set. It's just this sort of thing that makes me want to vomit on a pair of Tevas and huck them over the fence into their DMB concert.) Ahem...
Joanna Newsom (milk-eyed mender was better)
Cocteau Twins (Heaven or LV is spot-on)
Sonic Youth (my fave is thousand leaves)
X (Los Angeles hard to beat)
Sleater Kinney (weirdly, can’t really deal with them, but the Woods is a fucking epic)
Portishead (Dummy is excellent)
Hole (Live through This), Kate Bush (really hard to choose), Bjork (never really made a good album, but taken individually, has a handful of brilliant songs)
PJ Harvey (Rid of me was really a lesser album, I’d place Dry as tops, followed by Stories and White Chalk)
Fleetwood Mac (Rumors is correct)
Lauryn Hill (I haven’t listened t it in years, but it was amazing when it came out - has it aged well?)... and, that's all.
From this list, I'd place Kate Bush and Breeders (Kim Deal) as tied for my tops.
A lot there that I haven't heard of. I'm also wondering who I would add. Plenty of bands with women as driving forces that aren't mentioned: Beach House, Camera Obscura, Cat Power, The Dirty Projectors, My Bloody Valentine, Dum Dum Girls, The Fiery Furnaces, Frankie Rose, The Joy Formidable, Laura Veirs, Low, Mitski, Kristen Hersh, Patsy Cline, Quasi, St. Vincent, Stina Nordenstam, Nico, White Lung.
I've been toying with an idea to see what I can come up with as my favorite songs for every year, going back fifty years, to 1967. It's somewhat daunting. You can't pick just one, of course. Or can you? Different genres mean different things.
Different songs have different resonances. It's one thing to take a song on its own, by its own merits. It's another to add one's own response, which then must incorporate space and time, one's own history. When I heard Corey Hart talk about wearing his sunglasses at night, I felt some serious emotions at the age of 8. There were certainly many more interesting things going on in 1986. I say now.
But I'll get my feet wet here. A friend recently lamented that nothing good is being made anymore. Now, that's just cranky. So I figured I'd make him a list.
My favorite albums since 2000. With a favorite track from each.
1. Split: Rumah Sakit - Self-Titled / Faraquet - The View From This Tower (2000)
The first, well, what happens when your favorite people make your favorite music? And you are way too picky about both? ... The second, Ryan Jones turned me on to this. I still swear the singer is channeling someone. But I can't figure out who. Maybe firehose, but that can't be it. Math + emotion doesn't happen often enough. runners-up: Radiohead - Kid A; PJ Harvey - Stories From the City, Stories From the Sea
2. Pinback - Blue Screen Life (2001)
I first heard Pinback on John Baez' answering machine. It doesn't get any more pop than that. runner-up: Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds - No More Shall We Part; Califone - Roomsound
3. Hella - Hold Your Horse Is (2002)
OK, I'll admit that I didn't like Hella when I first heard them. It was through Ryan Jones' (again) tinny computer speakers and sounded like some kind of malfunction. But when it clicks, and you realize there's method to the madness, your head kind of explodes. Seeing them live with Quasi at the Khyber Pass in Philadelphia was a highlight of that particular misadventure in residential planning. runners-up: Mum - Finally We Are No One; Baxter Dury - Len Parrot's Memorial Lift; +/-: Self-Titled Long-Playing Debut Album; Dilute - Grape Blueprints Pour Spinach Olive Grape; Howard Hello - Self-Titled
4. The Notwist - Neon Golden (2003)
When I first put this on I was put off by the unabashed electronic instrumentation. But it quickly grew on me, bowling me over with hook after hook, as well as the rich, earnest German accented vocals. runner-up: Sun Kil Moon - Ghosts of the Great Highway; Frog Eyes - The Golden River; Jaylib -Champion Sound; A Perfect Circle - Thirteenth Step; TV On the Radio - Young Liars
5. John Vanderslice - Cellar Door (2004)
There are a lot of interesting touchstones in this album. Overwrought narratives somehow hang around like overstayed guests who just won't leave, but somehow possess key information. Runner-up Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat; Madvillain - Madvillainy; Arcade Fire - Funeral; Joanna Newsom - Milk-Eyed Mender; Mastodon - Leviathan
6. Sleater Kinney - The Woods (2005)
The weird thing about that record is that, despite not really liking much at all of the band's previous or subsequent work, this album stuns from start to finish. The constant clipping is beastly, a bold move that only puts the whole thing over the edge as epic. runners-up: The Walkmen - Bows + Arrows; Bloc Party - Silent Alarm; Wilderness - Self-Titled;
7. Mew - And the Glass Handed Kites (2006)
Umm, I'm not sure I even want to listen to their latest album. Which is really too bad, because this may be the greatest album ever recorded. It's complex, sublime, bizarre, cheesy, sentimental, and pushes about the most ambitious hooks I've ever heard. The melodic choices are consistently odd and inventive, but completely directional. runner-up: Destroyer - Destroyer's Rubies; Beirut - Gulag Orkestar; Tool - 10,000 Days; Lavender Diamond - Imagine Our Love
8. Shugo Takemaru - Exit (2007)
A post-punk Legend of Zelda. Your welcome. runners-up: St. Vincent - Marry Me; Band of Horses - Cease to Begin; Deerhunter - Cryptograms; Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond; PJ Harvey - White Chalk
9. Fucked Up - The Chemistry of Modern Life (2008)
Somehow I manage to embrace the constipated Fear-core vocals as the guitars slowly build their sweet machinery. This is an example of synthesizers being our friend. runners up: Atlas Sound - Let the Blind Lead Those Who Can See But Cannot Feel; Crystal Castles - Self-Titled; Frightened Rabbit - Midnight Organ Flight; Gnarls Barkley - The Odd Couple
10. The Joy Formidable - A Balloon Called Moaning (2009)
More math in service of sweet tension and release. Many of these songs were redone on their following release, but it was kind of downhill from there. A brilliant moment in time though, methinks. So much delicious noise. Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest;Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orca; St. Vincent - Actor; Real Estate - Self-Titled; Beirut - March of the Zopotec/Realpeople Holland; BLK JKS - After Robots
13. Ariel Pink's Haunted Graffiti - Before Today (2010)
So, maybe don't go and see this band. Some things might be better behind the veil. But that said, imagine if you took Karen and Richard Carpenter, sent them to a seance with Bootsy Collins, and had them all channel Lou Reed. runners-up: Sufjan Stevens - The Age of Adz; Twin Shadow - Forget; Wild Nothing - Gemini; Baths - Curulean
12. The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - Belong (2011)
OK, my Smashing Pumpkins weakness is showing here. It isn't done as well, but that's also part of what makes it so good. If you know what I mean. runners up - runners-up: Cut Copy - Zonoscope; Girls - Father, Son, Holy Ghost; Kate Bush - 50 Words for Snow
13. Beach House - Bloom (2012)
Something weird to note about the LP: it's 2 discs and played at 45rpm, which is totally annoying. But also totally worth it because everything about this album is honey. Victoria Legrand finally decides she isn't fucking around. runners-up: Frankie Rose - Interstellar; Lotus Plaza - Spooky Action at A Distance; Grizzly Bear - Shields; Joyce Manor - Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired
14. These New Puritans - Field of Reeds (2013)
Fun fact, the drummer is a former (?) male model. Which makes perfect sense somehow. When you listen to the record, you'll have no idea what I mean. But then you will. This is the kind of music that needs to get made. Neither fancy rock, nor dorky classical. Just good, tasteful, serious music. runners up - Bombino - Nomad;
15. Cloud Nothings - Here and Nowhere Else (2014)
The nice thing about punk rock is just how good it can be, how much it can do with so little. runners-up: Real Estate - Atlas; TV On the Radio - Seeds
16. Car Seat Headrest - Teens of Style (2015)
This is still new to me. In time, things may change. There's just so much music, and I'll admit I probably haven't listened to this enough. But it's one of those things where you can just tell. runners-up: Mew + -; Angel Olsen - My Woman; Tame Impala - Currents
17. Mitsky - Puberty 2 (2016)
There's something about this kind of woman that frightens me. In a good way. It's probably some kind of weird statement about my male ego. But PJ Harvey and Cat Power would I think also agree that I need to just shut up and listen. runners-up: Blood Orange - Freetown Sound; Case/Lang/Veirs - Self-Titled
Well, until next time. I'm going to see if I can add some runners-up. And look for my more ambitious 50 year list of songs. It isn't fair, of course. But why not?
Oh yeah, then there's my little album from 2016. I have to say it's my favorite, but I'm biased. It exists secretly on my tiny planet. Eli Rector - Summer
I had originally intended this series of posts to be focused on a list of my favorite albums of the year. However, looking at media in general turned out to a more lengthy exercise.
But here we are. I should start with an embarrassment. At my particular age and space and time, I've somewhat lazily come to depend pretty much primarily on pitchforkmedia.com's album recommendations. I've been following that site for over a decade now, and am generally satisfied that I'm not missing out on much that they don't catch. (Although, one might ask, how would I know?)
But in the end, it really comes down to the amount of new music that I really have time to digest. Between listening to four decades of popular music in alternating rotation, and discovering older material for the first time, there is only so much time in the day to properly involve oneself with brand new albums in an intimate way. The albums on this list earned their status only after repeated listens, each of which is a great album in the classic sense: that it is generally excellent from start to finish.
Julia Holter - Ekstasis
The Men - Open Your Heart
Grizzly Bear - Shields
Frankie Rose - Interstellar
Lotus Plaza - Spooky Action at a Distance
Beach House - Bloom
Stina Nordenstam - The World Is Saved
Joyce Manor - Of All Things I Will Soon Grow Tired
Perfume Genius - Put Your Back N 2 It
dissapointments: Wild Nothings, Twin Shadow
One of my favorite experiences in the appreciation of music is the rare occasion upon which an album that seems dull, or even downright awful, on first listen grows on me more and more until something suddenly switches and I fall in love with it. It is a strange and beautiful feeling, and at a larger level makes listening to music that much more exciting, as first impressions are not necessarily to be trusted, especially negative reactions. An element of abandon is introduced in which I must give in to the process, trusting that the art itself, and not my reaction to it, will lead me to its beauty.
This happened in part with a few albums this year. Julia Holter's Ekstasis felt oddly removed and alien, its avante garde stance feeling at first maybe gimmicky in the way that studiously fragmented classical new music can. But rather quickly its emotion began to resonate and a strange beauty shone through.
Open Your Heart, by the Men worked in a somewhat opposite way. It unfolded as a series of songs that felt kind of pedestrian at first. Been there, done that, maybe. Bonehead guitar solos were fun enough on the first couple of tracks, sliding then into countryfried psychedelia jamming. Its like the Supersuckers took a break and channeled the Spacemen 3. But out of this, midway into the album the tone becomes a bit more fragmented and dissonant, with abstract vocals, and sounding more like Sonic Youth. Abruptly then, the jangling noise hardens into a thick mass of distortion, with delicate harmonies melancholically spinning above. One can only think of My Bloody Valentine, a high honor indeed. In its final half, the album plays with each of these themes, blending them together at times, in a mixture of emo/thrash and post-punk/shoegaze. That these disparate elements can be pulled together with such consistent dexterity is quite a feat.
Joyce Manor's Of All This I Will Soon Grow Tired is classic hardcore emo, and as such, you have to be up for its in-your-face, heart-on-its-sleeve emotional exposition. I suppose my listening habits have strayed in the past ten to fifteen years since bands like Fugazi were on heavy rotation. As such, Of All This... felt somewhat of a throwback, and I probably will not ever be as excited about it as I might once have. Nonetheless, it is enormously well-made. The songs are short and sweet, and filled not just with hooks but with an admirable gravity.
Perfume Genius' Put Your Back In 2 It is a sad record. It is beautiful, raw, and earnest, but terribly sad. It may be that this year has been an emotional struggle for me in many ways, but I'm not sure I've still really been up for meeting the album on its own terms. It's also a very gay album. There's such a sense of fragile outsiderness to it, singer Mike Hadreas pouring out his vulnerability in a lilting, delicate tone. Gospel progressions give the songs a sense of deep pain, struggle and triumphalism. But all of this, not to mention the sort of Castro disco pseudo-R&B number pun in the title, makes me feel like I am listening to a gay record. Again, an album to be taken on its own terms.
The other albums on the list were pretty much known quantities, constructed with the same brilliant dexterity as the artists' earlier works. Bloom, by Beach House might just be my favorite of their yet. Victoria Legrand seems to keep getting more and more powerful and determined with each new album.
Frankie Rose far surpassed anything with the Dum Dum Girls, creating in Interstellar a hugely dynamic and fascinating electro-pop orchestra. There has been a movement in recent years that might be called "Better Than the 80's", in which contemporary artists pick up the synthesized sounds, guitar tones, simple beats of eighties pop and, well, do it better. There was always something haunting and melancholy about that era's production values and awkward danceability of its beat. Shades of The Smiths, Depeche Mode, The Cure, as well as sillier pop acts like The Go Gos, the Bangles, The Eurythmics or Cindy Lauper echo throughout this new sound. Frankie Rose works heavily in this area, sharing space with DIIV, Wild Nothings, Twin Shadows. Other bands work deeper angles, such as Washed Out and M83's more ambient, Krautish sound, or How To Dress Well's thoroughly deconstructed R&B.
Which of course, can get old. Disappointingly, Wild Nothings' album this year was unremarkable. And Confess, Twin Shadows' follow up to 2010's gorgeous Forget, was, apart from its generally great first track, Golden Light, an often times aimless, unlistenable mess.
All in all, here's hoping 2013 is more interesting.
Friends of mine know that I tend to have pretty "interesting" taste in music. Which, among this crowd, means I enjoy a lot of tasteless music. These are people who would rather die than be caught with a Madonna cd on their shelf. Or Foreigner, or Sara McLaughlin, or Iron Maiden, for that matter. Which brings me to Coldplay.
But let us begin with cold cuts.
Anthony Bordain, travel channel food critic, is known for his appreciation of both the high and the low in culinary arts. He seems to have an especial affinity for heaping piles of greasy meat. Not exactly Michelin-approved fare. But, as he might put it, the food is authentic, i.e. something created by ordinary people - not for mass consumption but whomever turns up at their particular bodega counter. Now, this is actually a quite high-minded, multi-cultural and humanist recognition of the social and cultural nature of cuisine. Bordain is not simply eating a spicy pile of goose thighs, but ingesting the dynamic interplay of the people of San Pablopalooka - their parents, grandparents, and relative's gastronomic peculiarity.
Fine. But it isn't as if his palate is consumed by sociology. He turns his nose up plenty, notably iguana ("tastes like pond scum"), and coal-fried eggs ("bits of charcoal in my teeth"). And when he does find something he likes, his praisings are confined to the actual entree, which he devours with considerable bacchanalian relish. At the end of the day, he is still human, his salivary glands activated not nearly as much by anthropological charms as the biomechanics of taste receptors in his mouth and nose. Food must largely be reduced to, well, food: it lives or dies by the particular dynamics of fat, salt, sweet, etc. that it signals in the the pleasure centers of the brain.
I listen to music in my head. Quite literally, I mean, most of my music appreciation these days takes place between a set of headphones. And while I've seen a good number of musical performances, enjoyed an album spun by a friend round his record player, and sung along to the stereo with a carload of travelers. But my deepest experiences of music have generally come without distraction. Even in social settings, my most transcendent experiences have been spent in a reverent solitude, mediated by the power of music to transport me away from the physical realm and into a quasi-religious state of pure emotional absorption.
Many people are not as enthralled with music as am I. To each his own. I'm honestly not a huge fan of food. Oh, I like it alright. But it's just never been something that affected me so deeply. As I often like to say, on a scale of 1-10, the most sublime pizza might be a 9, but a frozen pizza straight from the oven rates a better than decent 6 or 7. I'm also somewhat of a recluse, so I'm probably not interested either in devouring the cultural context of one or another "great little joint". Food, for me, can indeed be reduced down to an awfully base, biomechanical level. I wouldn't quite call myself indiscriminate, but maybe more semi-discriminate.
Mouth. Open. Food. Enter. Yum.
But let us return to music, where things will get much more complicated. Not only am I a passionate music listener, and devoted entrepreneur of new musical experiences, but a musician as well. Given my reclusive, anti-social tendencies neither has my music production been social. Few have ever heard what I have made musically, but it has nonetheless been rather copious. I have written and recorded four indie-rock oriented, full-length albums, as well as one pseudonymous rap album (if a bear has a pseudonym in the woods, is it really a pseudonym?). I absolutely love music.
And I am discriminate. There is much I desperately do not like. Most music, probably. Whole genres of music are uninteresting to me. Bluegrass is certainly pleasant, but I get more stimulated watching cats sleep. "World music"? What does that even mean. I think most Arabs these days listen to technopop.
No, give me originality. Give me passion and challenge. Give me darkness and experimentation. Let Death Metal transport me to roiling seas of demons and rusted caves. Let reverb and pedal effects wash over syncopated drum and drone of bass and snare. Let plaintive, obscure lyrics launch existential projectiles over Elysian fields of gentle acoustic minority.
Everyone likes television. Everyone likes porn. They won't admit it. These things have all sorts of political connotations. Everyone, too, likes french fries and greasy meat. Even from McDonalds. Even Anthony Bordain.
Everyone likes resolving chord progressions. Everyone likes harmonic dynamics. Everyone likes a beat. Everyone likes a pattern. Everyone likes a well-written pop song, because they start with these things. They are popular, because they end with them. Pop songs are by their nature unchallenging. They do little that is very new. They take what has been done before, rework it, repackage it - maybe with different instruments, different singers, and different emphasis on different aesthetic elements. But in the end, there is more that Britney Spears and Fugazi have in common than not. Short, cyclical, rhythmic, dynamic pop songs. Its just that Fugazi sings about masturbation as a metaphor for social discomfort, and Britney Spears sings about her ass. Repeater, meet Hit me Baby One More Time. Their musical choices highlight these priorities.
And so this gets political, as a difference in values arises. Britney Spears gets airplay worldwide, with media marketing blitzes and corporate payola. She is the epitome of the mass-market, corporatization of art, focus-grouped and merchandized within an inch of its life. Fugazi listeners are after the antithesis of this. They are the artistic equivalent of off-the-grid, hippie communalists, living their principles and giving the finger to all that has been cynically processed and delivered unto them in a attempt to spoon feed an habitually lazy lifestyle of uncritical consumption. What underlies their appreciation of Fugazi is not merely its aesthetic charms, but what it represents. Much as Bordain glorifies the meta-cognitive experience of "authenticity", so too do the anti-consumerist music fans glorify their music as free from the chains not of fast-food, but what you might call "fast music".
I get this. Not only am I sympathetic, but I engage in it myself. I'll even go so far as mark my aversion to corporate music as part of my identity, both as a self-image, but as a social signal. My music in some ways represents my politics. It also represents my socio-economic status as one who knows better. My cultural/political critique reflects as well my lifelong grooming as a member of somewhat good standing among the cognoscenti , a person with superior, usually specialized knowledge or highly refined taste, from the Greek Gnosis, or knowing. In the circles I have been raised to travel, knowledge for knowledge sake is one of the highest values. As such, my ability to think critically - and digest subsequently knowledgeable indulgences - is a primary status indicator. Fugazi is therefore an expression of individual, enlightened and cognitive discrimination, as opposed to populist, unenlightened, uncritical nondiscrimination.
Yet here we run into what I call the cheeseburger problem. There is all that meta, analytical stuff. But then there is the awesomeness that is the cheeseburger. There is the cocaine-like drip of grease over one's lip. Might we find a rhyme, in the cocaine-like dip of the hip? As I write this paragraph, I'm listening to a duet between Coldplay's Chris Martin and Rihanna. It takes discipline to not want to move my hip. Very un-PC.
Coldplay is an interesting band. A decade a go they shot onto the mainstream charts with Martin cooing about everything being yellow. It was noticeable for its sly derivativity. Apparently Martin himself called his bands music "limestone rock" as opposed, I imagine from "hard rock". A respectably honest self-assessment. An amalgam the bubble-gummiest bits of U2 and Radiohead, they are romance more than angst. Pushing the envelope only ever so slightly, they certainly aren't afraid of staying within the lines. And yet it cannot be said that when it comes to hooks - those oh so important and yet so hard to quantify and explain secret spices of pop sauce - they are experts. No doubt hidden producers lurk like digital svengalis, refining and orchestrating whatever magic the band originates naturally and spinning it into even more sumptuous and digestible gold. Maybe more than any other rock band in recent history, Coldplay are the perfect pairing of organic, "authentic" artistry and corporate discrimination.
Modern food corporations pay flavor factories to give their products perfect appeal. Essences are scientifically extracted and mixed into precise morsels of consumptive bliss. Glutamates and sodiums fold together into sensory bombs designed to flood the brain with oxytocin. The same can be said for popular music. To the extent that many strive for authenticity, much of the formula has already been accepted and internalized. Fugazi is popular music, wrapped as it is in respectable and impassioned political statement. The envelope is pushed, further indeed than Britney Spears, further too than Coldplay. But it remains largely intact. In a strange irony, to the extent that Fugazi's music represents the politics of authenticity, it gathers strength from the very brain bio-mechanics of musical pleasure that it finds co-opted by the creative hegemony of corporate music. Fewer hooks, fewer patterns, fewer resolving chord progressions and Fugazi leaves the envelope for obscurity.
This tension between radicalism and moderation has always existed. The radical argues for total purity at the cost of pragmatism, the moderate makes pragmatic concessions to acquire less corruption. The hippie communalist who goes off the grid gives up the prospect of influencing the larger culture, carving out instead his own individual victory. Maybe this is has its own unique power, gaining larger change in less direct ways. Fugazi fans will never hear their music on the radio, but many corporate bands will have been influenced by Fugazi's values.
I might be described as a moderate. Maybe my enjoyment of Journey, Depeche Mode, the Smashing Pumpkins and Coldplay represents a moderation. So too my enjoyment of frozen pizza. But maybe my devotion to music runs so deep, my fascination so profound, that I feel compelled to honor every note without the petty intrusion of political, social intrusions. Chris Martin may be kind of a derivative dork, but he means well, and it simply can't be said that his band doesn't consistently produce hook-driven music.
Or maybe, like an addict, as the King of Pop himself Michael Jackson once sang, "I just can't stop loving you."
I've wanted to write about this for a while now, but I never thought I had enough worth saying. But here goes.
I'm a pretty serious music fan. As long as I can remember, music has had an unmatched power in my life to move me in transcendent ways. I don't think a day has ever gone by when I haven't at some point hummed a melody, whether from a popular piece of music or my own improvisation. As a child, I used to create my own little songs, frequently nothing more than percussive rhythms composed of oral clicks and pops.
I took up the banjo at age 17. Well, not quite the banjo, per say - I never figured out how to tune it properly. I simply used it as a stringed instrument, something with which to experiment. I fell in love with its possibilities. I began to record small arrangements on a tape deck, which I would then play back as I recorded a new "track" on a different tape deck, repeating the process again until the original recording had deteriorated beyond recognition. One of my most inspirational memories was when at one point in a particular recording a streetcar rang its bell outside in just the right spot. The song might now be lost to history, but here's a different example of my work from that era:
I've since gone on to further develop my songwriting, eventually completing a number of complete, although unpublished albums. Music - both its production and appreciation - remains central to my life.
I remember my first album, a cassette tape of Bob Marley's greatest hits. My older brother got into punk rock, and hung Dead Kennedys posters in his room. Who could forget the controversial Penis Landscape by H.R. Giger, included in the album Frankenchrist. In 5th grade, I dropped LSD and vividly recall the magical disbelief I felt when I was able to light a match by striking it across the cover of Metallica's Kill 'Em All. To this day, it still bears the phosphorous mark.
Growing up in Santa Cruz, I regularly attended performances by reggae artists who made sure our appreciative town was on their tour schedule. Marijuana was central to the experience. And it was a beautiful thing. For hours we would dance, reveling in the joy of the rhythm, swaying to the bass. I remember on one occasion being drawn to a stack of bass amps that towered like a wall over my head, closing my eyes and feeling the deep, low wavelengths reverberate through me.
Some of my fondest memories have been digging through used record bins. In high school, I brought home on a $.99 lark what seemed to be the silliest album I had ever seen, Larry Graham's Star Walk, with Graham on the cover in tight pants and a sequined top. Yet as I sat listening to it alone in my room, safe from social pressures, I realized that the music - silly disco as it was - was beautiful! I discovered his earlier work with Graham Central Station, and the larger funk genre. My favorite finds were Hot Chocolate and the obscure Booty People. I couldn't get enough. It felt like my own secret musical universe. And best of all it was made possible by bargain-basement prices. I found a local embroidery company to sew the letters "FUNK" into a black fitted baseball cap. When I discovered bands like Parliament I began to appreciate just how much the sampling of these bands had been a part of the rap music I was listening to. For a research project presentation in social studies class, I played actual examples of how music from the seventies was being used in songs from the 1990s.
With the advent of internet file-sharing, the boundaries of musical discovery have disappeared. Anything you can possibly think of is out there for you to find, and probably download for "free". Of course, the issue of legality arises. Well, in most cases downloading "free" music is clearly illegal. But the moral issue is a bit more tricky. As with any form of digital media, the act of reproduction does no physical damage to the original work. Yet in terms of whether the increased availability of a near-perfect copy limits the original owner's ownership, and thus his ability to exploit its value, the question is open.
No one seems to have a very good answer for where the line is between outright stealing, where harm is actually done to the original owner, and sharing, where value is only added. An argument for the former would be that compensation is limited by those who get for free what they otherwise could only have paid for. An argument for the latter would be that the music may not have been bought, or listened to otherwise. Many independent artists, their work traditionally lacking the institutional marketing muscle to expose themselves to the public in the first place, have argued that by their music being shared, value is added in terms of building public awareness.I think every case is surely different. There are so many variables to the question, and so many pieces we would never be able to know about the pathways to particular artist's compensation.
But maybe a simpler way to look about this is to focus less on individual products, and on our role as consumers in society. Because, if we are to look at the morality of our purchases, could we not then look at our own purchasing power, and our own compensation? What rights do we possess as citizens to enjoy the fruits of society's labors at large? Do I really deserve the condition of the street I live on? Does my contribution to society qualify my enjoyment of its public parks, schools and police? These are public goods paid for by taxation, a system itself designed - in principle - to fairly reflect individual obligation.
A fascinating piece to this conversation is the existence of public libraries. We have a very long tradition of accepting the notion that it is perfectly fair one to borrow books without paying for them. In recent decades, this notion has broadened to include music, magazines and DVDs. The only limitation has been on the number of physical copies a particular branch is able to acquire. And even here, there has historically been inequality among neighborhoods with regards to the selection and general quality of library branches. Yet the library itself rests in no small part on the notion that as a purveyor of ideas, it is a pillar of democracy to spread information to all citizens - both for knowledge but also pure enjoyment. To imagine a world without public libraries is almost impossibly bleak.
I have read many books at a library instead of purchasing them. But I have also read many that I would not have purchased. And what price to put on such an experience? How much wiser am I because of it? How much am I able now able to contribute as a citizen?
In the past 10 years, I have downloaded countless gigabytes of music. Was I stealing, or was I sharing? I've never been able to spend very much on music. As I mentioned previously, I have almost always purchased music used. In many cases, there is simply no compensation being distributed back to the original creator. The compensation is mainly being passed back and forth between previous owners, the shop owner basically collecting a transaction fee. One could argue, I think, that to the extent that a market in used music exist, it drives down the prices of new music. Ought that be called stealing?
In the video game market, there has always existed a robust used market. However, that may be changing as platforms head towards a digital distribution model. Rumors are that the next systems will do away with portable media entirely. You can't sell a used file. In many ways, getting rid of the used market for media would represent a huge win for content creators. Aside from removing the middle man, they would no longer face competition from used versions of their product, from which they derive no profit. And should ebooks become the norm (if you don't like their inflexible, "inorganic" feel now, just imagine someday turning pages that feel just like paper and ink, yet are in fact display conduits for digital ink), what will happen to libraries? The physical location will be unnecessary, as all content will exist online. Will it still be free? Digital content exists today at many libraries, however the selection is quite limited by publishers.
Again, I suggest we return to the concept of ourselves as consumers in society, and specifically to our role as nodes in a larger web of labor transactions. It might clear away much of the muddle if we simply look at the sum totality of our individual contribution, and determine to what extent we ought to contribute. A good example of this model is that of listener-supporter radio. I have determined - in my own, highly unscientific way - that I want to pay about $10 a month to my local NPR station. For that price, I can use them as little or as much as I want. Couldn't we apply this model to our media consumption in general?
I have taken a similar tack with regard to my music purchases. Despite all of the music I have downloaded without paying anyone, I have continued to purchase $10-15 of music monthly. It became convenient to do this through eMusic, as all of the artists I enjoyed could be found there at bargain prices. Yet, I recently realized that I wasn't actually getting anything from them that I couldn't get for free via torrents, and that my main concern was really to support the artists. Because I've always enjoyed listening to vinyl, what I could do instead was spend my money on a record each month, and then continue to download whatever I felt like. I am buying no more or less than I always would have, I am supporting artists, and I am able to completely engage in the process of music appreciation.
Maybe $10-15 isn't the best remuneration for the relative value I am taking from my music consumption. Yet whatever I am not paying music artists, I am paying the grocer, or the monthly check I send to the United way. What is fair for any of us to contribute to society? Isn't that ultimately the real question? How do I spend my free time? Am I smiling enough to passers by? Am I giving enough attention to my daughters? Am I being a supportive husband to my wife? Am I doing my job the best I know how? All of these things are transactions, whether or not someone has developed a way to monetize them. If I fail to be gracious enough to the cashier at Target, am I stealing?
In a way, maybe I am. I have been designed by society to give the love that I have gotten. At least, that is what I believe. I believe in a society in which everyone gives as much as they can to the human project, to a cultural evolution we have been embarking on now for hundreds of thousands of years. Predestined or not, I can only do my best to make as much sense of it as I can and align my integrity with the result.
That is the final transaction, the only one that really matters.
I suppose one of my pet peeves is the tendency towards easy, "common-sense" thinking. In social situations, especially among the like-minded, this often consists of a sort of piling-on session, a mutual masturbation of group think.
An ancient - likely timeless - form of this, is the tendency of an aging generation to besmirch the up-and-coming, often in terms of qualities traditionally associated with the aged, such as wisdom, selflessness, or hard work. Around the age of 40 or so, having entered into what Eric Erikson called the Care stage, in which generativity, or concern for one's generational progeny, a generation inevitably begins to become skeptical of the world it has left behind, or specifically, the capacity of those it has left it to to take up the task of caring for it. Rose-colored glasses are inevitably de rigour, and reductionism and anecdote are driving fallacial tendencies. It may be the case that the phenomenon is rooted in neurosis, and a repressed fear of self-inadequacy or failure has resulted in projection. But I'll leave that to others.
My thoughts today are inspired by an example of this in an article in the NY Times titled, A Generation’s Vanity, Heard Through Lyrics. The author, John Tierney, sets out what he considers the curmudgeonly evidence for what is in essence, the age-old fist-shaking decree - "Today's kids ain't got no respect!". The thesis is largely backed up by a study that uses computers to analyze the appearance of certain words in popular song lyrics over recent decades, finding an increasing degree of "narcissism and hostility". The opening salvo is an interpretation of a Rivers Cuomo (Weezer) lyric that ironically turns a traditional Shaker hymn into something decidedly less sublime.
Where 19th-century Shakers had sung “ ’Tis the gift to be simple, ’tis the gift to be free,” Mr. Cuomo offered his own lyrics: “I’m the meanest in the place, step up, I’ll mess with your face.” Instead of the Shaker message of love and humility, Mr. Cuomo sang over and over, “I’m the greatest man that ever lived.”
A caveat follows, but Tierney's mind is made up.
I think it is all absurdly reductionist. The willingness to find easy interpretations in the Rivers Cuomo lyric said it all. Computer analysis of verbal references in popular songs?
We ought to begin with the very question of what narcissism means. We should then ask what the art is attempting to express, or what transformations it has itself undergone. What does music mean to us today compared to decades ago? How has the music industry changed? Those would merely be the tip of the iceberg, but crucial to laying the groundwork for any project so vast (and possibly hubristic?) as the psychoanalysis of a generation based on music preferences.
None of this is to say that the thesis isn't true. But a serious thesis needs serious thinking. And extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. So far, what has been presented seems largely ad hoc, tailored to fit assumptions in an area - generational criticism - traditionally fraught with bias.
I've been fascinated for a long time with the similarities between hip hop and country music*. Both are literally the only two major genres of modern music where you will hear people singing about the completely mundane aspects of ethnicity. Both country singers and rappers will talk about types of cars, food, women, partying, etc. The worlds they inhabit are explicitly ethnic, and the music is in many ways an all-inclusive soundtrack to a lifestyle.
Unlike other forms such as R&B, rock, jazz, pop, classical, etc., when listening to a rap or country song, the experience is not just a feeling or vibe, or even some pensive poetic consideration. You are actually transported to some abstract yet seemingly geographic location, populated with streets, buildings, people performing routine activities, as well as accurate descriptions of the performer or people they know, down to the jobs they hold and the clothes they wear. Although in country you're going to find more horses and beer. In hip hop definitely more subways and cocaine.
(The only other music I can think of that might involve such ethnic provincialism would be ranchera or tejano. Although I'm not familiar enough with the lyrical traditions of either to make a fair assessment, both have a similar sort of strongly ethnic flavor. Yet still, although a strong current of ethnic identity runs through these Mexican-American forms, I'm not sure they ever reach the pure profanity of describing a particular brand of vehicle or dinner recipe.)
One wonders whether there is some level of group defensiveness, or solidarity at root. Both rap and country have long represented blue collar, often disenfranchised communities. To the extent that a cultural mythology transcends the pathos of life by highlighting the individual's connection to a larger and more meaningful narrative, this profanity can be seen as a source of strength in the face of socio-economic pressures.
For the black community rap has provided a mythology for so many struggles, not the least of which is simply maintaining black ethnic identity in a larger society hostile to its existence. But as issues of racism, poverty, crime, imprisonment, family dysfunction play out through the music, the added ethnic detail serves to strengthen this purpose as a sort of cleansing and liberating art-form.
Yet for rural whites, country music wouldn't need to overcome the same sort of minority tension or socioeconomic dysfunction. After all, the white, christian, traditional ethnicity would in most cases be the dominant ethnic form. So what then would the reason be for inserting such ethnic specificity into the lyrics?
One reason might be the strong theme of blue-collar living. By telling such detailed stories over and over of the trials and tribulations - and yet often the bittersweet joys - of underclass life, seemingly insignificant lives can be redeemed; again, the theme of transcendence. Another reason might be the seeming encroachment of "modern" life into traditional rural norms. This would be somewhat of a backlash against the cultural elites with their gender reversing, multiculturalism, and general subverting of dominant paradigms. As Obama might say, a "clinging" to their cowboy hats and pick up trucks.
Yet just as with rap music, there is a danger here in ethnic identity becoming a false image of itself. Just as not all young black men are not hustlers, all young rural men are not... "rustlers". While there is an element of propaganda in all mythology by definition, much is lost when the rich cultural forms of ethnicity become well-polished caricatures. Instead of just being, the ethnicity becomes something to be, and an inherent authoritarianism sets in.
In the modern age, commodification isn't far off. What was once a genuine cultural artifact arising organically out of social intermingling, becomes a list of categorical memes easily checked off a spreadsheet. When this is then fed back into the social network, a feedback loop is created in which ethnicity has become pre-manufactured and hollow. What was once transcendent has lost all buoyancy and is not up to the task of meaningful spiritual renewal.
Yet humans are wily, and always find a way to evolve. Culture is a fundamentally relative and post-modern process. Memes will peel away, fold back on themselves, and be reabsorbed into something that is altogether similar yet different than what came before. We seem now to be entering an era where the old static tapestries can't be put up fast enough before they are already being taken down, plastered over, or penciled-in.
Modern communications are making it more and more difficult for the old balkanizations to occur. Those that already exist only remain as vestiges of past incarnations that were decades and centuries in the making. But it is hard to imagine current forms taking root with the permanence they ever had before.
There is something utopian in this vision. There is something self-satisfied and present-centric about this view, the "new new". But fiber optics have truly revolutionized the ways in which we experience each other, whether that be our friend, family member, store clerk, politician or global citizen. Our lives will still be as profane. We will still require transcendence. Yet it will have to come in new forms, not because the old forms do not exist, but because they are no longer as isolated and self-evident.
The movie of our lives - to continue the modern metaphor - is less and less being seen in a single darkened movie theater, but in a vast multiplex of many vibrant screens, each bleeding out into our projection. The difficulty will come not in determining what is real - because little of it ever was. But in what is meaningful to us. Where are we up there on that screen? And if that is us, what does it mean?
*Apparently I'm not the only one to have noticed this. My wife also recalls experiencing the same insight, roughly at about the same time as I. Who actually originated the thought has been a longstanding feud between us. However, as this is my blog, I reserve ownership.
