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finito

2006-12-02T12:50:00.000-05:00

That's it--this blog's finito, as someone must've said in some movie once. The "RCD" moniker ceased being meaningful to me eons ago, and the original premise of this blog was tossed out the window even long before that.

All I've done is packed my bags and moved locations--no intentions of blogging regularly in the new year (I'm enjoying having my focus elsewhere), but I will use that space to post the occcasional diatribe, and I may eventually transfer some unfinished business from this blog (the "essential ballads" feature, for instance) to that blog.

I will be focused for a few weeks on my first post: a running 2006 roundup, which is now underway.

Cheers, and thanks for visiting.

no one here to take your call

2006-10-01T21:49:00.000-04:00

Trying to concentrate on other writing and other stuff at the moment, so no intentions of updating here for a while. At some point in December, I'll post some yr-end business, either here or somewhere else, but until then, consider me blogless.

quotable criticism #13

2006-09-19T01:06:00.000-04:00

"I made it a point never to use the word 'I' in an essay, an article. I don't actually do it in a painting, either. I make it a point to get rid of all the slowing down elements. You step along with the spaces I set up. There's not a great deal of wastage. The paintings happen with a great deal of force, and they get finished with a great deal of impact. They're carried through with a sort of tenacity. That's something that's very important to me. Leaving out all the empty words in a sentence is very important."
--Manny Farber (interview with Leah Ollman)

7" art: elvis costello (part 1)

2006-09-14T21:43:00.000-04:00

A chronological visual travelogue of a teenage obsession...

The earliest Elvis 45 in my collection, though I stumbled across it much later in my four or five year pursuit to own every single oddity I could by the guy. The rip right through the middle of 'Alison's' face on the flip side is as classic an EC move as the singer's contorted pose on the front. Also note Stiff's sloganeering genius at work: "Pre-planned deletions."

Pretty sure this was the vinyl unveiling of the positvely insect-like Attractions--a carrot tossed to anxious fans between My Aim is True and the more definitively life-altering This Years Model. Pressed on piss-ugly yellow wax, the a-side here is "Watching the Detectives," while the flip contains live versions of "Blame it on Cain" and "Mystery Dance." The version of "Cain," never one of my favourite songs from the debut, is pretty great, thanks in particular to Steve Nieve's ridiculously inventive keyboard lines (more a preview of Armed Forces' baroque playfulness than This Years Model's "96 Tears" attack) and the guitarist's occasional wound-stabbing fills, which edge a little closer to no-wave than to new wave.

(I'm thanking my lucky stars right now that I own this; it is currently fetching $1.86 U.S. on e-bay.)

Canadian and UK versions of "(I Don't Want to Go To) Chelsea." Curiously, the Canadian pressing (the first EC 45 I owned) left out the parentheses in the title track, but made up for the loss with "Tiny Steps" and "Night Rally," the latter of which was as good as anything from TYM (both eventually showed up on the Taking Liberties compilation). For a long time, it was hard not to be astonished by the quality of Elvis's b-sides, and this is as good an example as any (though it should be pointed out that there was a British-American divide with the early albums, and "Night Rally" was in fact on the UK version of TYM). The British 45 has "You Belong to Me" on the flip, and a back cover shot that predates the look of a certain gloomy Manchester quartet by a year or two.

The photo on the front cover is most un-welcoming and even mildly disturbing (Elvis literally "whipping his band into shape"?). "Big Tears" (featuring a credited Mick Jones on guitar--not that you can tell it's him) is one of the well known EC tunes from this era I don't completely get. Elvis drops into a lower vocal register I was never quite as fond of (it's what prevents Trust, in my mind, from being the masterpiece so many others proclaim it to be), and in truth, I wish producer Nick Lowe had suggested he back up a few inches from the mic. A bit overbearing, in other words. "Pump It Up"? Brilliant performance and a totally key song for a totally key period in my life, but it's as worn now as "Billie Jean" or "Satisfaction." Not sure I'll ever be capable of hearing it again with rejuvenated ears.

"Radio Radio" backed with "Tiny Steps." This and "Pump it Up" are UK releases on Radar Records, distributed by WEA...can't recall what the connection was between Radar and Stiff, or if there was one (Radar was an offshoot of Stiff?). Not sure what's up with the blind fellows on the back, either.

Stay tuned for part 2...

blue rondo: you be the judge

2006-09-13T19:11:00.000-04:00

This was requested in the comments for the last Blue Rondo a la Turk post a few days ago: a copy of the song to preview. Demand for this is no doubt going to be through the roof, so it'll be available for, I dunno, 24 hours or so.
[removed]

quotable criticism #13

2006-09-13T18:39:00.000-04:00

"It is possible to imagine a history of rock and roll that would not be about superstars or record labels or Billboard charts at all--not even about the armies of aspirants and small-time contenders and might-have-beens who in many ways are even more important--but about the use that listeners made of music. Such a project, however, would resemble a history of lighting effects, or sex acts, or breathing."
--Geoffrey O'Brien, Sonata For Jukebox

junior boys =

2006-09-13T14:44:00.000-04:00

a. Suicide* on a good day.

b. Hot Chip on a bad day.

c. Pezband with synthesizers.

d. Kraftwerk with eyeliner.

e. Utterly "fascinating."

f. Unspeakably pretentious.

g. Ridiculously sexy.

h. Simply boring.

i. Better than the Spoons.

j. Not as good as the Spoons.

k. Approximately equal to the Spoons.

l. A welcome return to intelligent dance music.

m. A much feared return to intelligent dance music.

n. A palatable Associates.

o. Muted disco.

p. Mute disco.

q. Neutured disco.

r. None or some of the above?

* (the group)

essential ballads #51-54

2006-09-13T07:46:00.000-04:00

51. "To Know Him is to Love Him" (Teddy Bears)
52. "I Love How You Love Me" (Paris Sisters)
53. "Rhythm of the Rain" (Cascades)
54. "Come Softly to Me" (Fleetwoods)

Pop innocence is a myth, if not an oxymoron (if not an outright lie), but if the i-word can be applied to any music deriving directly from rock 'n' roll, the songs in this grouping wouldn't at least be completely off base. (I should note that I'm not one who believes the Beatles ever "lost their innocence"; I'm not one who believes the Beatles ever really had innocence. Optimism, yes, though that seems to me an entirely different notion.) Forget the lyrics--the innocence reflected from the above comes through not merely in boy-girl sentiments but in sound, mostly in the gee-gosh purity of the voices. Even the audible cracks in the seams (the ominous thunder italicizing the failed puppy love in "Rhythm of the Rain") and the benefit of biographical hindsight (the well-known fact that the Teddy Bears song is named after a tombstone inscription) don't negate the overriding impression of a world that is eternally comforting. (On the other hand, the sort of "cracks" I refer to are what kept Rosie & the Originals' similar-sounding "Angel Baby" off this particular list; something gives in that performance, the high note that Rosie reaches at the end of the chorus is too full of abandon. There's a how'd-she-do-that scariness not present in any of the above. Ditto most of the doo-wop I'd consider.)

David Lynch would no doubt hear something lurking beneath the surface of these songs, and Bryan Ferry camps out in his Paris Sisters cover (though I would insist he truly camps out--that his version is one of adoration, not mere commentary), but these songs in their very quietness and charm and simplicity are pillars from an era (from a feeling) long since vanished. They will not be s(p)oiled.

Teddy Bears

Fleetwoods (partial version of song)

postscript: thinking about this, I now realize this might be yet another reason why Nu Shooz's "Should I Say Yes" is my favourite song of the '80s; it's one, and perhaps the only, contemporary song I can think of that captures something similar to the above.

7" art: blue rondo a la turk

2006-09-09T08:46:00.000-04:00

I relistened to this and was struck by the same sensation that hit me when I first played it back in '82 or '83: WORST SONG IN THE HISTORY OF TIME ITSELF. So of course I'm glad I own a copy.

thoughts on john rockwell's 'all american music'

2006-09-09T00:30:00.000-04:00

I recently finished reading John Rockwell's All American Music, a book that has sat on my shelf for a number of years now. I wish I took notes, as a lot of thoughts were coming to me during my reading, but of course, I didn't, and now, those thoughts have mostly disappeared, but a few general ideas about it spring to mind:

I was quite surprised while reading it--I think it hit me about 1/3 of the way through--just how little discussion there seemed to be about the music. I mean that, I wasn't getting a lot in the way of, "oh, I really need to go out and hear what that sounds like." There didn't seem to be a lot of "that" in the book. It's more a book about profiles of various artists, overviews of the genres they worked in, stories of the hardships they encountered in getting their music heard (especially true of the experimental artists, which is in fact most of the artists covered), their relationship with their audiences...but not a lot of detail about this album or that song. Obviously, there was some of that, it just didn't stand out as a focal point in any way. For instance, I expected that the chapter on Laurie Anderson would talk quite extensively about "O Superman"--about how it sounded, about how it was recorded (the recording of that particular track being kind of a big deal in a way--there's lots you can write just about its main motif), even about how it was reviewed, or about how it was a surprise hit, but the song is covered in a very brief paragraph, with virtually no sonic description. None of this is really a criticism, by the way--I really enjoyed the Laurie Anderson chapter, actually; it highlighted the mischevious, playful side of her character--I was just, for some reason, expecting something a little more, uh, musicological. I don't expect (or want) all my music books to read that way, and the stories Rockwell tells are mostly compelling enough without it. But I certainly don't agree with the review on the back cover that claims the book will have you "rushing out to catch up on tunes and performers you've missed." I did in fact become a little more interested in a few of the artists covered here (mostly those of the electronic persuasion), but the book didn't implore me to go out and hear this record by this artist; it's more along the lines of, this person has an interesting story and fits into the overall story as such.

Actually, I've thought about the whole "not enough stuff about the music" criticism a lot in the last several years. It's a very common criticism nowadays--in some ways, it's always been a criticism directed at music critics. Joe Carducci spent an entire lengthy chapter on that one niggling point in Rock and the Pop Narcotic. He did it entertainingly, so even though I think he was in fact wrong--not to mention incredibly selective with his exhibit a's and exhibit b's--he was getting at something afoot in music criticism, and his attacks were a lot of fun to read regardless. (That he himself proved quite adept at describing certain sounds didn't hurt his arguments, either.)

It's odd that you don't see movie critics charged nearly as often with "not enough about the movie." Is it that movie critics have more leeway to wander around than movie critics? Or is it that movie critics by and large just don't tend to wander around as much as music critics and are therefore not as open to the charge to begin with? Or is it that wandering around makes more sense in regards to movies than it does in regards to music (movies being a more all-encompassing medium)? Hard to say. Pauline Kael certainly wandered all over the place in her reviews, but she did usually bring it back to the screen. Maybe she ventured a bit far out there in some of her early harangues about other critics, but for the most part I'd say she stuck to the picture; it's just that sticking to the picture for her didn't mean precluding stuff from other areas of real life to enter into the picture (why should it? how could it?). And yet, oftentimes when music critics wander away from the subject, or treat the subject as something well beyond the organization of musical notes and riffs or the specific sounds that emanate from a particular performer's instrument--when music critics get "sociological" or political or personal or just fart around and make silly jokes--they get harangued by their critics for not writing enough about the music, or for being pretentious or show-offy. Not that I would compare Kael's way of wandering around with (for instance) Meltzer's or Bangs's way of wandering around. Meltzer would often do more than just "wander around"--he would wander right off the map altogether, not even attempting to discuss the album in front of him, an approach bordering on nihilistic, though it was more often interpreted as contemptuous (contemptuous to the reader, contemptuous of the music), and maybe it was. I have no tidy conclusions to all this, it's a major tangent...let's move on.

When I first took this book out of a library some 15, 20 years ago, I did what I suspect a lot of people might've done: I read (or anyway, skimmed) the chapters on Neil Young and Talking Heads. I didn't get much out of those chapters back then (maybe that's why I didn't open up to the unfamiliar material at the time), but it's pretty obvious why. I had denied myself the context. They both read much better to me this time around, having approached them in sequence, and following the gist of the overall story. That said, I still came away unconvinced by the Neil chapter. Not unconvinced by anything in particular Rockwell says about Neil or unconvinced of his admiration for Neil (though one of my small problems with the book is that it seems more admiring than loving of its subjects), but unconvinced that Neil Young even belongs in this book in the first place. Musically speaking--in terms of artists, and in terms of genres--All American Music jumps all over the map, so in theory I suppose, Rockwell could've written about any (ahem) "American" artist and it would've worked. But the Neil chapter feels like an anomaly--maybe because I don't see how he fits in the tradition of what Rockwell explores. And as vast and disparate as the artists covered are, the book's strength is that it does enable you to see them (Ornette Coleman, Phillip Glass, Walter Murch, et al.) as part of a tradition, even if it's a tradition as defined in this book. But the book kind of halts when it gets to the Young section; the thread seemed to unravel at that point. It was something like, "here's a chapter about a contemporary artist I like named Neil Young," rather than, "here's another piece of this particular puzzle I've been trying to put together." (The "tradition" continues along on much more solid footing when he gets to the Talking Heads. Maybe it's an art school thing.)

I thought I had more to say. I wanted to compare what reading this book in 2006 was like compared to what I imagine reading it in 1983 would've been like, but I'm not entirely sure where to go with that thought, and more importantly, I'm pooped. so let's leave it at that, at least for now.

7" art: carpenters

2006-09-07T07:09:00.000-04:00

7" art: pylon

2006-09-07T07:08:00.000-04:00

quotable criticism #12

2006-09-06T21:12:00.000-04:00

"But the novel as an art form rests on particularity: the particular becomes universal without losing its particularity--that is the wonder. Mr. [Lionel] Trilling might have come closer to the 'essence' of the experience he describes if he had been more willing to see it as the particular experience of particular human beings in a specific situation; perhaps this means: if he had been more willing to face his own relation to it."
--Robert Warshow, "The Legacy of the 30s," 1946

I've trudged through various essays from Warshow's Greatest Hits comp, The Immediate Experience, on a couple previous occasions, but re-reading this particular piece on the way to work this morning was the first time his words really struck me; had I not been expected in the office at the usual time, I would've been happy to just ride the subway around the loop and back again, to keep digging away at it. "The particular becomes universal without losing its particularity" is a wonderfully stated observation about any art experience, but what really gets me about this passage is the placement of the last colon, especially in relation to the previous semi-colon, a technique I don't think I've witnessed (or noticed) before.

two cd comps

2006-09-06T18:36:00.000-04:00

I recently made two CDR comps for my brother Paul. Not sure I have much to say about, either, but let's take a look-see.

WHO ARE THE MYSTERY GIRLS?
1. Biology (Girls Aloud)
2. LDN (Lily Allen)
3. Chewing Gum (Annie)
4. Breathless (the Corrs)
5. Don't Save Me (Marit Larsen)
6. Since U Been Gone (Kelly Clarkson)
7. 4Ever (Veronicas)
8. Breathe 2AM (Anna Nalick)
9. Unwritten (Natasha Bedingfield)
10. White Houses (Vanessa Carlton)
11. Lloyd, I'm Ready to Be Heartbroken (Camera Obscura)
12. If Looks Could Kill (Camera Obscura)
13. Some Girls (Rachel Stevens)
14. Ooh La La (Goldfrapp)
15. I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor (Sugababes)
16. Summer Sunshine (the Corrs)

This doesn't really gel, either conceptually or in terms of flow: the Corrs and Camera Obscura tracks don't belong here (they have female vocalists, are fairly current, and I just wanted my brother to hear them), and Anna Nalick and Vanessa Carlton are maybe a different offshoot compilation entirely (children of Kate & Tori?), though not one I'd be knowledgeable enough to compile and probably not one I could actually sit through more than 20 minutes of. Also, I'd change up a couple of the other individual titles already (I was sick of that Veronicas tune pretty much by the time I familiarized myself with it, though certainly, it works after Kelly Clarkson). Still, the rest of the compilation--what do we have left, two or three tracks?--makes sense to me, even in its formal disparity and unevenness. Forget that horrifying Newsweek-approved moniker, "women in rock"--this is a glorious assemblage of current girl-pop, and not only does the very best of it totally rock, it also just happens to be pretty much my favourite (i.e., my most-personally-listened-to) music of the whole damn decade, give or take a Daft Punk track or two.

Anyway, there's a few catchy tunes in there at the very least.

SCRITTI POLITTI: DIVIDED BY THREE
1. The Boom Boom Bap
2. No Fine Lines
3. Snow in Sun
4. Cooking
5. Dr. Abernathy
6. Petrococadollar
7. Road to No Regret

8. The Word Girl
9. Hypnotize
10. A Little Knowledge
11. Perfect Way
12. Wood Beez (Pray Like Aretha Franklin)

13. Faithless
14. The Sweetest Girl
15. Jacques Derrida
16. Bibbly-o-Tek
17. Doubt Beat
18. Lions After Slumber

Sort of a "beginners guide to..." Purists will note that the formulation's all wrong, that there are four, or even five, Scritti phases, not three, but the fact is, I've never entirely gotten into (or even heard) all the pre-Cupid & Psyche 85 stuff, so that era still kind of all blends in for me (I'm also not overly fond of a good deal of it), and I'm completely unfamiliar with the stuff between Provision and White Bread, Black Beer. I wouldn't even suggest that the "phase one" choices here (I compiled this backwards, for listenability purposes) are the right ones. Tracks 13 and 14, I've no doubt whatsoever about those, but it gets iffy after that, especially given that the whole point of this comp is to turn a non-believer into a believer (and noting that said non-believer doesn't, to my knowledge, have a huge tolerance for jagged indie noise, not to mention occasionally insufferable "poetics"). I'd now substitute "Asylums in Jerusalem" for "Jacques Derrida," and why I left off "Skank Bloc Bologna" was a mystery even while I was putting this together. (Truthfully, three tracks in total from the pre-C&P period would've sufficed for the purpose of this comp.) Tracks 1-7 and 8-12 are what I hear as the jewels from two other phases, though I'm still finding good ones everytime I put on W-B-B-B. I deleted "Boom! There She Was" in a last minute space crunch, and otherwise didn't even consider anything from Provision, which I don't know well, but which sounded completely inessential on a recent listen.

As a crash course, not bad, but it's the work of a student rather than a master, and much as I adore Scritti Politti, I'm more than a little aware that they're an acquired taste and therefore don't expect my brother to be joining the Green Gartside Fan Club anytime too soon.

Anything else obvious I missed or erred on?

quotable criticism #11

2006-09-06T13:33:00.000-04:00

"And the question to be asked is not: What is my opinion of all this? That question is easily answered, but those who answer only that have fallen into the trap, for it is precisely the greatest error of our intellectual life to assume that the most effective way of dealing with any phenomenon is to have an opinion about it. The real question is: What is my relation to all this?"
--Robert Warshow, "The Legacy of the 30s," 1946

musings on christgau

2006-09-06T09:05:00.000-04:00

A couple Christgau pieces of note...

X-ed Out: The Village Voice fires a famous music critic, by Jody Rosen in Slate. An astute profile of Christgau and his legacy at the Voice, but more importantly, Rosen pops the question I've been asking myself for years: "Why, oh why, Bob, must you call keyboards 'keybs'?" (!)

The Dean gets his walking papers, by Ben Wener in Orange County Register, who ponders, "What his former overseers think they'll gain from his departure other than ill will and maybe a cheaper crit as a replacement, I dunno." (thanks to Tom for pointing this one out.)

...And one of un-note:

Twilight of the Rock Crit. Barely concealing his (his? I'm assuming here) contempt for Christgau, the writer of this piece stands atop his populist pedestal and draws a comparison between Christgau and Robert Hilburn: "The antithesis of the exclusionary Crit Snob, Hilburn is an enthusiast who never let his writing become cryptic and impenetrable; he takes pleasure in turning on non-Snob civilians to the music he likes." "Civilians"--ew.

fluctuating top 10 report (sep. 5 edition)

2006-09-05T13:34:00.000-04:00

This is not the be confused with "the Wedding Diaries," but I just want to note that the reception I played on the weekend was unremarkable in so many different ways it will, following this brief post, remain forever unremarked-upon (possibly even by the happy couple). One thing happened of note, that being my succumbing, finally, after weeks of resistance and shrugging it off, to "Promiscuous," which just sounded perfect on the dancefloor. It's the third or fourth time I've played it at a wedding, but maybe the slight sense of suffocation I was feeling on this particular evening left me more vulnerable to its charms, which--now that the song has opened up to me (or vice versa)--are many, indeed. This is why first impressions are often incorrect.

So Nelly Furtado and (a Cocteau Twins-infatuated?) Timbaland enter the Top 10 at #4, while Fergie drops down a few notches and Green Gartside slides right off the banister. Not much else changes. For yours truly, an uneventful week in pop.

kael x 2

2006-09-03T22:51:00.000-04:00

Two Kael links of note:

The Voice of Pauline Kael: Mp3 of a KPFA recording from 1963, which ends with a bang!
(Via the indefatigable and always compelling If Charlie Parker Was a Gunslinger...)

2,826 short Kael reviews online. (Bound to not last, I suspect.)
(Via No More Marriages! A Film Criticism Blog by Andrew R. Horbal)

'nyt' on sackings at the 'voice'

2006-09-02T09:44:00.000-04:00

[This article ran in today's New York Times]

Village Voice Dismisses 8, Including Senior Arts Editors

By MOTOKO RICH

In a move that decimated the senior ranks of its arts staff, The Village Voice, the New York alternative weekly, yesterday dismissed eight people, including Robert Christgau, a senior editor and longtime pop music critic who had been at the paper on and off since 1969.

In a statement released yesterday, Village Voice Media described the layoffs as an effort “to reconfigure the editorial department to place an emphasis on writers as opposed to editors.” The company added, “Painful though they may be in the short term, these moves are consistent with long-range efforts to position The Voice as an integral journalistic force in New York City.”

Michael Lacey, executive editor of Village Voice Media, which is based in Phoenix and owns a string of weeklies around the country, did not return calls seeking further comment. Ward Harkavy, interim editor in chief of The Voice, said that the duties of those laid off “will be distributed, just as they are at many publications, among current local staff. We are obviously editing our own stories.”

The dismissals continue the unstinting turmoil that has plagued The Voice since October, when New Times Media announced its merger with Village Voice Media and assumed the Voice name. Judith Miszner, the paper’s publisher, left in January, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter Sydney Schanberg left in February, citing his objections to new management. Not including yesterday’s layoffs, nearly 20 people have either been dismissed or left voluntarily since the merger.

The paper has had three editors in the past year. Don Forst resigned in December. Doug Simmons, his replacement, was fired in March after a reporter admitted fabricating details of a story. In June, Village Voice Media announced it was hiring Erik Wemple, editor of Washington City Paper, but Mr. Wemple resigned two weeks later. In August, The Voice announced that David Blum, a New York journalist, would assume the editor in chief’s job later this month.

In an interview, Tom Robbins, a longtime reporter and union steward at The Voice, said: “We’ve been looking forward to this new editor coming on and then all of a sudden we get hit with these very deep cuts and firings, including people like Bob Christgau, who helped put The Voice on the map. It cuts the heart right out of the paper.”

Reached by telephone yesterday, Mr. Blum said the decisions to lay off the eight employees, including the theater editor Jorge Morales and the dance editor Elizabeth Zimmer, “were made by Village Voice Media before I was hired.” He added that because he was not assuming his duties until Sept. 12, “it wouldn’t have been appropriate for me to weigh in on these decisions before I even took over the job.”

Since New Times Media took over the paper, Voice staff members have feared that the new management intended to centralize arts coverage and use writers and editors from various Voice Media papers to fill the local pages.

Mr. Blum said “no one has said anything to me about the arts coverage emanating from anywhere but from within The Voice and its staff and its writers, and that’s how I plan to do it.”

He added, “Having said that, I welcome the input of Michael Lacey and the parent company because I think they put out terrific newspapers and are journalists who are committed to the same type of coverage that I am.”

Ed Park, a senior editor in charge of the books section who said he learned by telephone on Wednesday that he was being let go, said he was “shocked and insulted” by the firings. But, he said, “I could see that this was coming,” in part because of talk of centralized arts coverage. He added that Village Voice management had an “attitude of disdain for what I thought were the strong points of The Voice. It was a swaggering attitude that their chain of papers were so good and The Voice was an embarrassment and we have to get up to their level somehow.”

In addition to the five senior editors in charge of arts coverage, The Voice also laid off three members of its design staff, including Minh Uong, the art director.

In its statement yesterday, Village Voice Media management said that the company had “already increased its arts coverage,” citing an expanded calendar selection, the hiring of a staff film reviewer and “a larger theater section that features more reviews,” despite the fact that it had laid off Mr. Morales, the theater editor.

Mr. Christgau, 64, who noted that he had forged the paper’s style of music criticism, with its “serious consideration of popular music at a critical level,” said in a phone interview that before he learned he had lost his job, he had begun organizing the paper’s Christmas consumer review.

“I was really thinking about what I was going to do. I wasn’t planning on going anywhere,” he said. “I was doing my job.”

essential ballads # 48-50

2006-09-01T22:38:00.000-04:00

48. "Mystified" (Fleetwood Mac)
49. "Mysteries of Love" (Julee Cruise)
50. "She's a Mystery To Me" (Roy Orbison)

Into the mystic.

mysterious critical image #4

2006-09-01T22:21:00.000-04:00

AGB

2006-08-31T20:44:00.000-04:00

"Arpeggiated Guitar Ballads" is the nifty moniker Jane Dark assigns to those lustrous mid-80s radio tunes, "Every Breath You Take" and "Missing You" (that's John Waite's "Missing You," not Puff Daddy's "I'll Be Missing You," though by default that would apply as well, I suppose). I've been trying to peg this sound for years, actually, it seems like it's there everytime I turn by an EZ-Rock format, and yeah, come to think of it, "Every Breath You Take" is likely the source material (moreso than "Missing You," which topped the charts ten months later--not quite as close to one another as Dark suggests). "Hungry Eyes," "Voices Carry," "Is This Love," "I Get Weak," "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now," "Nothin' at All," "Hysteria": all perfectly realized Andy Sumners tributes, essentially.

christgau canned

2006-08-31T18:38:00.000-04:00

"It is now official--Village Voice Media fired me today, 'for taste,' which means (among other things) slightly sweeter severance..."

what do you say to that? (not to post such a cool reaction or anything, but...I don't know what to say right now. shocking, and yet not.)

fluctuating top 10 report (aug 29 edition)

2006-08-29T11:30:00.000-04:00

M-i-n-i-m-a-l: That's the story on the sidebar this week, having whittled the 35 or 40 songs previously listed (and rated) down to a much more manageable Rotating Top 10 (at year's end I'll go back to a long list with comprehensive ratings). The idea is that, were I forced to vote for my ten favourite songs of 2006 today, this would be it. At least half of this list will remain unchanged at years end, I suspect (unless something explodes and things unexpectedly start to get really interesting). Part of me thinks I should be holding off on this entirely, so I can surprise all my fans out there in December with a fresh Top 10, but I like talking through it online because it makes me see the very next day just how ridiculously wrongheaded I can be. (Feel free to tell me how wrongheaded I'm being; I'm a DJ, and thus, easily persuaded by someone telling me that something I thought wasn't good actually is good, though you're far less likely to persuade me in the other direction--i.e., trying to convince me that something I like is not worth liking.)

Brand new Top 10 entry this week: Fergie's "London Bridge." This is apparently some mini-phenomenon (yet another one) that has passed me by completely. No idea what it or she is all about (I watched a video on YouTube and it looked like it was made by a 13-year old--maybe it was). The song is on the list because it sounds fantastic, at least right now (I was similarly blown away a few months back by Lily Allen's "LDN," but have found myself hedging a lot in the last few weeks). A good year for "London"/LDN" songs is a very good year, indeed--it's so Paul Weller-like.

What's going on with hip-hop and r&b? I keep hearing good stuff from both genres, but they often just as quickly drop off my radar. Almost none of the hip-hop or r&b singles I've enjoyed this year have stuck; even my current #10, "Ridin'," left me a little cold the last couple times I played it (though not enough to banish it from my list--yet). Thomas Inskeep recently wrote on his blog, "What has happened to urban radio this year? Apart from MJB, Ne-Yo, Beyoncé and a few others, it's nearly unlistenable these days." Reading that, I at first thought Thomas was over-reacting (and I have to say, I definitely don't think a return to neo-soul is the answer!), but you know, specifics of taste aside, he may have a point. (Btw, if there is a return to neo-soul, what will we call it? Neo-neo-soul? Have Mork and Mindy been consulted?)

I'm not especially delighted about "Minimal" or "The Boom Boom Bap" being on there, but when I look through the rest of my 2006 playlist, I can't see anything obvious to replace them with just yet (I still have a nnumber of songs I haven't listened to enough yet; I heard a good Veronicas one this morning called "Everything I'm Not," for instance). "Minimal" is a very decent PSB tune, but I remain unconvinced that it's a Top 10 sort of choice (maybe because, stacked up against their own singles, it barely nudges the Top 20, maybe even Top 30?). I listened to the PSB album three or four times, btw, and didn't hear much there to keep my attention--anything good I may have missed?

Scritti Politti, oddly enough, are my favourite group of 2006. (I'm not in the slightest a "favourite group" sort of guy, so take that comment with a grain of salt.) I would go so far as to call Green's comeback album almost heroic in scope and highly affecting in its own way, but it's not really singles pop. I suppose I'm shallow in this way, but with singles, I crave immediacy, something that captures some indefinable thing about the moment (though it also has to be a moment that ultimately transcends the moment--hence my "LDN" problem). "The Boom Boom Bap" is a lovely song, but as with the album, it sounds more like something suspended in time--it could have been made in 1983 or 1997. It doesn't really have anything in particular to do with now, and that's definitely to its advantage--but it also makes it feel not quite right on this list. (In the end, of course, my ears, and not some creaky reasoning will be the ultimate judge.)

Last year I was the only person in the entire Western world to vote for Junior Senior's "Take My Time" (my #1). I may be headed down the same road with what could easily be this year's top choice for me--Natasha Bedingfield. A kinda corny song which unexpectedly transports me every time it comes on. I haven't seen anyone else mention it anywhere (and yet, I think it's an actual hit, no?).

mysterious critical image #3

2006-08-29T07:25:00.000-04:00

madonna for:

2006-08-29T07:18:00.000-04:00

wal-mart?

ads: exiles on main st

2006-08-28T18:02:00.000-04:00

8-track art: riot

2006-08-28T17:49:00.000-04:00

Surprisingly--given the overall high level of quality control and packaging detail of most 8-track tapes--the manufacturers didn't even try to get the song order right on this (is there another song from the album that sounds less like an album opener than "Just Like a Baby"?), and of course they had to split "Thank You For Talkin' to Me Africa" into two sections--never mind that it's the last song on the vinyl version and would presumably have fit quite easily on to the fourth track. (Speaking of which, can someone explain again why they're not called "4-tracks"?) Oh well, they did manage to cram in the title track, that's one thing they got right.

ads: record peddler

2006-08-28T07:44:00.000-04:00

Phil closes the circle on his "Records" feature with snapshots of his favourite old vinyl haunts--less than half of which are still there, unsurprisingly (having been overrun by perfume vendors and submarine sandwich outlets). Record Peddler came up a few times in Phil's feature, and it was central to my shopping life as well, particularly in the late '70s/early '80s, back when I was saving virtually every penny I could for quarterly Via Rail commutes to Toronto to purchase things that no store in London would carry. I have a much worse memory than Phil when it comes to pinpointing which records I bought where, but I do know that I always came away from Peddler (particularly when it was on Queen East and felt like an alternate reality) with something unusual, exotic, ridiculous (I got burned often in my new wave phase-- anything that looked the part interested me for a while), and very often completely unknown. For some reason, I always associate Record Peddler with my first Joy Division purchase, the 12" of "Atmosphere," an encounter for which I was not even remotely prepared...so low-end and eerie and warped-sounding, I was actually convinced at first that there was a problem with the pressing.

Here's a couple Record Peddler ads from the era in which it was more or less punk Mecca. (I nabbed these from the long-defunct underground 'zine, Shades.)

joe carducci interview

2006-08-27T17:28:00.000-04:00

Silent Invisible Conversation (a.k.a. Andrew Katsikas) presents...

"Rock and the Pop Naroctic: My words with Mr. Carducci."

sample: "Well, I knew musicians like Joe Baiza of Saccharine Trust and Greg Ginn of Black Flag as not having a record collection to speak of. Joe Baiza had about a dozen records. He had a couple Hendrix records, and I don’t even know what else. Probably a Dylan record. Almost nothing. And partly it’s because a musician’s personality is the opposite of anal. A record collector is a different kind of a person..."

the wedding diaries #9

2006-08-27T14:46:00.000-04:00

July 8

This wedding happened on the Saturday right after the previous one I wrote about, which happened on a Friday. This also happened to be the weekend right after we moved. So, needless to say, I was completely exhausted. And I did one thing I don't think I've ever done before: I totally forgot to bring the bride and groom's request list to the gig with me (when I got home later on, the printout was sitting right there on my desk). Anyway, here's their list, sent a week or so prior to the wedding, and clearly not studied hard enough in advance by yours truly. (I note in parentheses whether I played them or not.)

First Dance: Louis Armstrong – What a wonderful world
Entrance of Wedding Party: War – Low Rider
(obviously, I played both of these)

"Assorted fast songs"

Chuck Berry - Johnny Be Good (no)

Neil Diamond - Sweet Caroline (yes)

Rolling Stones - Start Me up/Satisfaction (no--hardly ever play these songs btw, which rather limits my options insofar as playing the Stones goes; I often play "Let's Spend the Night Together," but it's pretty hit and miss in terms of filling up a dancefloor--only people with fond memories of their hippy days seem to respond to that one, and yet, I think it's their greatest dance song, which is why I push it) [later: important clarification: make that my "favourite of their dancier songs from the '60s"]

Bon Jovi - Living on a Prayer (yes) / Shot through the heart (aka "You Give Love a Bad Name" - no - I'm strictly a one-song-Jovi man.)

AC/DC - You shook me all night long (can't remember - think I might've played "Back in Black," actually)

Sweet child of mine - GNR (yes, and did a great mix I was really proud of...and now I can't remember at all what it was!)

Otis Day - Shout (no)

Bryan Adams - Summer of 69 (no)

Def Leppard - Pour some sugar on me (no)

Brown Eyed Girl (no)

Twist and Shout (no)

Tom Petty - Life is a Highway (aka, Tom Cochrane - no)

La Bamba (no)

Like a prayer (no)

Beach Boys - Good Vibrations (no)

You’ve lost that loving feeling (no)

That’ll be the day (no)

Little Richard - Tutti Fruiti (no) (I really find it hard to fit in '50s and '60s stuff, to be honest. There are some weddings where I don't play any, except some Motown early on. I'd say 90% of my playlist for weddings is music made after 1975--from early disco onwards)

Michael Jackson - Billy Jean (cousin of "Billie Jean"? no)

Bee Gees - Staying alive (think so, probably)

Sweet Home Alabama (think so)

I will survive (no)

Dancing Queen (yes)

Boy George - Karmakamelian (uh, no)

"Slow Songs"

Take My Breath Away (no - don't think I've played this in 20 years, since I worked in a top 40 night club)

You are so beautiful (no)

Unchained melody (no)

More than words (yes - bride and groom made point that evening of requesting it for the last song)

When a man loves a woman (no)

Etta James - At last (don't recall - tend to throw it on as an early night slow dance)

"Dance"

El Simbolo - 1,2,3 (uno dos, tres) (am I clueless? I don't even know what this is?!)

Max-a-million - Hey fatboy (yes)

Maximillion - Sexual Healing (no, but probably Marvin's) (interesting the second guessing in regards to spelling the artist's name correctly...)

Crooklyn Clan - Be Faithful (no - don't know this either)

Notorious BIG - Hipnotize (no - cool spelling, though)

More and More - Captain Hollywood (no)

I like to move it - Real 2 Real (yes - to a team of un-shirted rugby players)

Saturday Night - Whigfield (no, damn)

I’m gonna get you - Bizzare inc (no)

Rythym of the Night - Corona (no)

This is your night - Amber (no)

Still Not a plyer - Big Pum (no)

I’m too sexy - Right said fred (yes)

Boom Boom - Vengaboys (no)

Good vibrations - Marky mark (no - not the first wedding in which I haven't played either the Beach Boys's "Good Vibrations" or Marky Mark's "Good Vibrations," but pretty sure the first wedding in which I've been asked to play both!)

Gonna Make you sweat - C & c music factory (no)

Believe - Cher (no)

Move this - Technotronic (no)

Groove is in the heart (yes)

Let your back bone slide (no)

Let me clear my throat (no)

One more time - Daft punk (yes)

Shaggy - Wasn’t Me (no)

KOS - Crab Bucket (no)

Wow--if the job I did at this wedding was rated based on how many requests I fulfilled, I'd score exceptionally low. And I was pissed for most of the night that I didn't bring their list with me, because I knew it contained a lot of '90s dance pop tunes ("Dance Mix 94 wasn't such a bad album after all," the groom noted in the e-mail this list was attached to), but I just could not recall which specific ones, and my brain was basically non-functional. I did, certainly, get other tracks of this type in--Euro crossover stuff from the '90s...and now, I can't even remotely recall what they were ("Cotton Eyed Joe" was huge, though that's not unique).

Weirdly enough, this was, hands down, the best wedding I did all summer (all year, in fact). There wasn't a single moment where the dancefloor wasn't filled, the people were completely friendly and into it (and yeah, exceptionally plastered), and I was going into all sorts of different things towards the end (this is why I need to write songs down--I couldn't even tell you just how different I mean), and I played almost an hour late, and received a very generous tip (as I did the night before...my planets were aligned, I suppose). Maybe it makes sense that the best gigs are the hardest to remember. I'm always on a high driving home from a really good wedding, but the details are usually already lost to me by the time I haul myself out of bed the following day.

7" art: vom

2006-08-26T11:17:00.000-04:00

ad: hear muffs

2006-08-26T03:45:00.000-04:00

personals: 1976?

2006-08-26T02:59:00.000-04:00

Hard time dating this one precisely, but mid-70s for sure.

personals: 1982

2006-08-26T02:57:00.000-04:00

CHRW, campus radio station in London, last yr of high school. (Bad lighting--I'm not that pale.)

personals: 1970

2006-08-26T02:20:00.000-04:00

29 people, 1 of whom is me (top, right hand corner), six of whom I remember their full names, five of whom I remember their first names, a dozen of whom I recognize their faces, the rest of whom I draw a complete blank on (oh, and three of whom I had crushes on--one being the teacher--and one of whom spent grade seven and eight terrorizing the life out of me).

weekend 10 (aug. 25 edition)

2006-08-24T20:00:00.000-04:00

Blindfold version of the Weekend 10: I put my i-tunes on party shuffle, but skipped past any songs I was too familiar with. Here's ten I barely know at all (with one sort-of exception: Goldfrapp), listened to once through and rated.

1. "Living Sound, Patent Pending Music For Sound-Joined Rooms Series" (Maryanne Amacher) - This one's from Ohm: The Early Gurus of Electronic Music. I have piles of weird, early electronic tunes on my harddrive, I get some odd pleasure out of all (or anyway most) of them and it's one style of music I actually enjoy forcing on myself now and again. What to say about this, though? A single, insistent note (a "noise" that just happens to have formed a note), sounding like it's traveling through a metallic, underground tunnel, while packs of rats, straight out of electroshock therapy, go scurrying by. All of that in just seven minutes and four seconds. (7.5)

2. "Lee Remick" (Go-Betweens) - Kind of weak--kind of cutesy, to be honest. I feel like I'm supposed to be charmed by the slight dodgyness of this--guys with their hearts in the right places and all that--but it's just not working on me. I love Lee Remick, too--as Prince would say, she's got that look (unless I'm confusing her with someone else, I'm terrible with actors). (6.0)

3. "Let it Die" (Feist) - Hard to pick up a melody on this, it's more about atmosphere and voice. The little production embellishments (a sublime echo on "fade away," the jazz carnival band that marches by at the end) are lovely, and in a weird way this reminds me a little bit of Johnny Ace's similarly funereal "Pledging My Love." (7.5)

4. "Heartache Avenue" (Maisonettes) - Post-innocence girl group record with underlying '80s synth buzz...wait, there's a GUY on lead vocals, what's going on? Singer's voice is functional, nothing spectacular, a less excitable, less wailing-it-out Frankie Avalon. I think I prefer the girl in the background who echoes his words in the chorus. At one point in my life I would've been blown away by this, but I just don't have the patience now. It's almost sickeningly '80s , though I can't tell if it's from the '80s or trying to cop to that vibe (my guess is the latter). Less dodgy than the Go-Betweens, but a different kind of cutesy. (5.0)

5. "Untitled" (Fiery Furnaces) - I like the cheap mechanical beat and the organ sound at the start, and there's something fuzzy on the tape heads (no idea if this was recorded on tape), which I bet is intentional. But wait, there's more--more organs, I mean. Good bass line--you can sing "Rescue Me" over top of that. And come to think of it, this is kind of girl-groupish as well, and it's way better than the Maisonettes track because they just kind of sneak in the girl group references (the fact that there's actually a girl singing on this has no bearing at all on it sounding more girl group-like, though). Can't decide if I like the big cheesy organ that comes in around 2:00. (They do stuff like that a lot: "listen to our big cheesy organ.") Oh, and now there's some nice synthesizers adding background melodies. And now it's gone. They love to show off their vintage keyboards, these two. (8.0)

6. "I Love Rock and Roll" (Arrows) - More bar-room bluesy than Jett's stadium-ized version, and more corny, naturally (the "Mmmm" that comes out of the singer's voice following the line, "knew she must have been about seventeen" must have taken at least 23 takes to get just right), but they don't skimp on their beat, and the drums--this really comes out in the parts where there aren't any guitars covering them up--have a brilliantly hollowed-out yet warm sound, and this is--well, it's just okay ultimately. Actually, I'm skipping through it to get it over with. Who are these guys? Were they new wave? And was this song well known before Jett took it over? (5.5)

7. "Rock On" (Def Leppard) - Lodged in between this and the Arrows was Van Halen's "Eruption," which I'm too familiar with to include here, but that's some kind of threesome. My dog Truffaut, currently in the other room, started barking when this first came on (he does that to funny sounds sometimes). I don't mind this version of the song, even though it's a cover of a song that I don't think anyone should really try and cover again (too singular, too perfect as is, you can't really "outweird" it and what's the point of going in the other direction?). This has gotta be their most electronic sounding song--it only turns into rock and roll towards the end. It would've been much more effective, though, if they didn't tack on that powerful ending. If they just kept the whole thing at an even keel, and went for hypnotic repetition type of groove rather than adding a climax this would be a 7.0, but as is it's a mere... (6.5?)

8. "Visions of Johanna" (Marianne Faithful) - Not cheating or anything--just a lot of cover versions in my shuffle tonight. Marianne Faithful has the kind of voice which, if you like it (I do), you can like almost anything that comes out of it. She vacillates in her enunciation here between prim and not-prim (whatever the opposite of prim would be), which sort of works with the song in that it is both incredibly majestic and kind of unhinged. This version's excellent, in a way, but despite what I just said about her voice I didn't find the part where her conscience explodes nearly convincing enough. (7.0)

9. "Ooh La La" (Goldfrapp) - It's that neo-girl-glam sound I love, even when the tunes don't always stand up to the schaffel beats ("Some Girls" by Rachel Stevens is probably my favourite of the bunch). "Spirit in the Sky" is clearly the inspiration here. This song doesn't really go anywhere (such an odd cliché, that--where's a song supposed to "go"?), it's like you're in a dark nightclub and can't find the exit, or the bathroom. (7.0)

10. "Oh Baby" (Fletcher Henderson) - Old jazz. Really old jazz. The production is so distant, it sounds like it's coming out of a single box (rather than a room), and I can't tell if there's a drummer on board or not. Don't think so, though there's clearly a beat, but I think the beat is provided by the bass line (which in itself might actually be provided by...a trombone?). Ah--just heard some cymbals. That was quick. The drums are gone again. I guess the mics were placed too far from the poor fellow in the back, or maybe they only used one mic, so the horn guys naturally got all the attention (there are also brief bits of piano, but that is otherwise drowned out as well). Actual breakbeat at 2:28: it lasts about two seconds and is brilliant. (no rating - sorry, that's like rating someone's grandparents)

the wedding diaries #8

2006-08-22T20:58:00.000-04:00

July 7

Tried writing about this wedding last night, but really had nothing much to go on--ditto with the next couple gigs. So I thought I'd just post some request lists instead. Call it a pre-request list, actually--these are the songs the couple asked for in advance, verbatim from their e-mail (with me trying to remember in parentheses whether I actually played them or not).

early tunes (likely 9 to 10:30ish):

elton john - tiny dancer (yes - during dinner)
waterboys - fishermans blues (yes - ditto)
bloc party - this modern love (no - don't own it)
counting crows - anna begins (think so...during dinner)
ambulance ltd - antedote (no - don't own it)
one elvis song (my dad is a big fan) (hopefully--can't recall)
death cab - soul meets body (yes, and I think I really like this. wasn't familiar with it before)
fleetwood mac - landslide (yes - dinner - original version)
cure - just like heaven (don't think so, though not because I wouldn't have liked to)
stars - your ex-lover is dead (inspired title, but, um, no)
van morrison - moondance or something (god, hopefully not, but probably so--I don't recall)
space between - dmb (no)
couple of early stones songs (don't recall--definitely not more than one)

later tunes (11pm onwards):

cult - she sells sanctuary (I think so - I hate it but whatever)
new order - blue monday (pretty sure)
neil diamond - sweet caroline (god, probably)
u2 - with or without you (no)
franz - take me out (think so--prefer "Do You" however)
michael jackson (old school) (probably "Don't Stop..." - I avoid "Billie Jean" at all costs)
something by chemical brothers (nah)
white stripes - seven nation army (yes - 'twas huge)
timo maas - to get down (nah)
modest mouse - float on (think so - don't care for it myself)
gorillaz - dare (yes)
cindy lauper - time after time (yes)
stokes - first album (last night) (forget, but don't think so)

weekly sidebar update

2006-08-22T20:34:00.000-04:00

Last week, I claimed that I "loathed" the Timberlake single and placed it in the bottom tier (1.0-3.0), but actually, my resistance to it is breaking down. There's something there that's pretty good, even intriguing (I never didn't like the beat). Anyway, I've moved it up to the next tier, and for the moment at least I'll defer to Alfred's and Thomas's better judgment (both of whom apparently like it more than I ever will, but I've at least outgrown my "loathing" of it).

My loathing stays--and then some--however, for the Aguilera track, a vocally cluttered, inelegant sledgehammer of a pop song (not a space of territory left uninhabited) that just sounds like a huge pile-on of corny soul clichés (let's have a vote: "do your thang, honey" vs. "you got soul, you got class" as the more stinging example of a cheese grater rubbing across the edges of your brain?). And yet--the song is getting raves from each and every corner of the known critical universe. I've not yet read a single disparaging word about it. What gives? What on earth am I not getting here? (I even prefer "Beautiful" to this. Aguilera's "Beautiful," I mean, but Blunt's as well, whose "Beautiful" I prefer to Aguilera's, though I bemoan the bastardization of the language in both cases.)

I'll leave the Rihanna ballad where it is for now, but I should listen to it some more. It struck me as terrible, but I tend to be harder on ballads these days, at least in part because I wish there were actually more good ones (this has been hands-down the worst decade ever for slow jams; no one out there, R. Kelly excepted, even seems interested in doing anything with the format) (I sound really old now, don't I?).

I noticed I had the Mary J. Blige record in two categories (1.0-3.0 and 3.5-5.5), not on purpose, of course (though I have gone back and forth on it). Giving it the benefit of the doubt for now, but I really don't care for it, especially the vocals.

Beyoncé moves up the ladder from 3.5-5.5 to 6.0-7.0 (it may climb further still). I actually liked it a lot at first, got tired of it, but heard it blasting out of a car the other day, and--well, I'm easily persuaded by mag wheels and giant sub-woofers, what can I say?

My next set of moves, I think, will be to whittle down the 7.5-8.0 pile. Not likely any upwards moves, but a few downwards ones, for sure. At a quick glance, the future doesn't look so bright anymore for Kelis, Sonic Youth, T.I., and the Veronicas.

the wedding diaries #7

2006-08-21T18:48:00.000-04:00

This feature kind of fell off the map--my last entry was posted in May--not because I haven't had any gigs or because I haven't had anything to say about my gigs but because I had too many other things going on to write coherently about any of them, and generally speaking, if I don't get my thoughts down right away (if not when I get home then at least the next morning), my recollections start to fade pretty quickly and life just sort of moves on. I did at least take notes on some of them, so I'll see if I can get us up to speed here over a series of posts.

June 10: This was a house wedding I did, on the cheap, for a friend of a friend, in a garage (very well decorated--really not that different from some small halls I've played at, just a lot more cramped, with a room capacity of about 25). A very informal night--many of the people were around my age, most of them were from a music scene in the mid-to-late '80s that I was peripherally connected to (the local Toronto punk-indie scene; I was only a part of it in the sense that I was writing for Nerve magazine, but not at all in the sense of following any of the local bands. The truth is, I couldn't get into most of the well-known local acts from that era. Mostly I just left those shows bored, and not long after I gave up on live shows almost entirely, a practise which more or less continues to this day.). Anyway, I recall the music from this wedding as having a Part 1 and a Part 2. Part 1 was a lot of pre-disco disco, or soul-merging-into-disco disco. In other words, lots of early-mid 70s black pop in the 100 BPM range--in some ways, my favourite disco tempo (even though when I hear stuff in that range now--new stuff, I mean--I almost never think of it as "disco"; I usually think of it as r&b). Trying to think of the songs: "Mr. Big Stuff," "Shame, Shame, Shame," a couple Jackson 5 tunes, "One Bad Apple," "Express Yourself," "Jive Talkin'," "Get Dancin'," a few others I can't recall. I remember latching on to the tempo and trying to stay there, intermittently breaking into something completely different, just because it seemed like the thing to do. It went over well, and there was always at least a few people dancing. (At one point I overheard someone say, "Where does he find this stuff?" I'm not sure if they were snickering or paying a compliment--maybe both--but it's not a comment that makes me unhappy.)

Part 2 was the punk portion of the night: Buzzcocks, Iggy, Modern Lovers, Clash, Replacements ("Waitress in the Sky"--good wedding dance song!), Ramones, can't remember what else. All good--all great, actually, at this point the dancefloor was packed--until someone spilled a glass of wine in my mixer, which forced me to stop the music for a few minutes (fear of electrocution) and which, though it didn't ruin the rest of the evening, kind of ruined my own mood (though it was really the person's reaction to spilling the wine that angered me: "Can you start that same song over again?") (it was "Lust For Life," I think). I'm pretty sure that's why I didn't want to write about this one the next morning. To be honest, I was seething, which is too bad, because otherwise I had a blast. I think I was pretty crabby to the newlyweds at the end of the night, and I definitely regretted that. (As it turns out, all was well with the mixer; I took it in for repair, no problems with it, and no service charge.)

'zine archives #1: PRM

2006-08-17T22:20:00.000-04:00

I'm pretty sure Phonograph Record Magazine (or PRM) was mentioned at least a couple times in different rockcritics.com interviews, but beyond that, I don't know anything about it. Didn't even know it existed until, several years back, when I stumbled upon these two issues in a used bookstore for something like $6 apiece, which seemed like a steal (almost like discovering an unknown Elvis Sun session). The mag was edited by Greg Shaw (not sure how long it lasted), and featured the bylines of some of the Creem crowd (Bangs, Saunders, Ed Ward, et al.), though it was actually published in L.A. (I think someone in one of the rockcritics interviews--or maybe it was something published about Shaw after his death--mentioned that there was a big push--a lot of money--behind PRM; it might even have been affiliated with one label in particular?) The format is a half-fold newsprint, like early Rolling Stone, and both these issues are 32 pages.

A few visual highlights...

For all the stateside hype over Slade, I'm not sure how many newsstand 'zines actually featured them on the cover. Creem and Rolling Stone didn't, though I'm pretty sure Circus (and maybe Hit Parader) did. Dandy cover, this, I would almost consider framing it.

Lively letters sections in both issues, though very insider-ish. In the same issue there are letters as well from Ed Ward and Mark (Paperback Writer) Shipper, who also wrote for these guys. More on the infamous Lady Bangla-Boom below...

Two great photos of Meltzer, accompanying a review (by one Bobby Abrams...who he?) of his great '72 "post-rock" tome, Gulcher. I'll have to re-read the review to see if there's anything actually quoteworthy. (Why do I have a hard time imagining Meltzer and Marsh clowning around as such?)

Some interesting/bizarre industry-hyped artist ads in these issues. Has anyone heard of this fellow?

Another great cover shot. Less than a year later, and already a 20 cent newsstand increase (damn you, Nixon!). Note how they're billing themselves as "America's Only Rock Magazine."

Fogerty & Frith--good company to be in. (Clearly, Lady Bangla-Boom is some kind of in-house joke--a pseudonym for editor Shaw, perhaps?)

The remarkable thing about this isn't the ad, it's the fact that critic (and PRM contributor) Ken Barnes's phone number is written right over it in blue pen! Weird--I mean, how'd it end up in my hands? Scribbled on the side: "John Lennon. J. Geils. Paul McCartney." (I photoshopped over part of Barnes's number, just in case he's still there...not looking to ignite a Tommy Tutone situation here or anything.)

Wow--have never heard of this guy either. This is actually just a crop from a full-page ad. Clearly not to be read while under the influence.

If anyone remembers reading, or writing for, this mag, I'd love to hear from you. Was it a big deal at the time? How long did it last? Could you buy it at your local variety store? What on earth happened to it?

notes on the 2006 fluctuating progress report

2006-08-16T10:05:00.000-04:00

One thing I did occasionally tinker with here in the last month, in between unpacking boxes and rearranging furniture, was my "2006 Fluctuating Progress Report" in the sidebar (with ultra-sophisticated colour coding, based on a close reading of Joel Whitburn's astrological chart--his moon is currently in Venus, in case you're interested). I made a vow to myself in January to try and keep a leg up on the hits this year. Every December, I play a catch-up game to hear what I've missed in the preceding months (not that I could even begin to catch a fraction of what actually charted or created a "buzz"), and the last couple years I've felt particularly lost at sea when it came time to do a year-ender. I'm glad I imposed this on myself; it's made the year more fun for me, and there's a lot of good stuff out there. A lot of terrible stuff as well. A brief rundown of the categories/ratings:

8.5-10.0
Self-explanatory, I hope. The songs which have stood up to repeated (and repeated) personal rotations, tracks which I'm never not in the mood for. The likelihood that any of them won't make the final Top 10 is slim, though maybe that's being pessimistic about what lies ahead in the next few months. (And yeah, at this point, two Hot Chip songs are qualifying; oddly enough, I didn't care for anything else off the album.)

7.5-8.0
A numerically tiny category, specifically designed to denote those songs that are, as of right now, close contenders for a top slot, though something holds me back on them. If it was December now, this would be the group I'd be relistening to constantly--it's all very good stuff, but some of it is potentially great, and that's really the point.

6.0-7.0
I like everyone of these. Not inconceivable that one of them could jump to the top group, though at this point it's a stretch.

3.5-5.5
Minor irritants, kind of a blah sub-section, though I was briefly seduced by everyone of them. (Actually, what am I saying, I was never anything close to "seduced" by "The Clock," it's really more like a 2.5. There you go, we're fluctuating in real time!)

1.0-3.0
Major irritants, pretty much hated them from the get-go (and have given all of them more than adequate airings to arrive at that decision). This being pop music, however--and weddings being weddings (see below)--it's not entirely inconceivable that I could have my head turned around on one or two of them, but I doubt it. I mean, it's possible that the Aguilera and the Timberlake songs could at least save some face with a strong showing in the next category, though I'm definitely not pushing it with "SexyBack," which I just loathe.

9.0-10.0 WPS
The "matters not what I think" column. Songs that I'm entirely grateful for if only because they've made playing weddings a little more enjoyable than they otherwise would've been (any chance to play anything new, I run with it, trust me). Obviously, if something in this group ends up being a personal fave, it'll move into the 8.5-10.0 category (or maybe it'll end up in both). At this point, nothing actually qualifies. I'm really tired of "Crazy" (7.5 right now), "Promiscuous" has grown on me (love the chorus, a bit iffy on the rest of it--also 7.5), still draw a bit of a blank on "SOS" (6.5--and really, it's been more than 20 years since I've wanted to listen to "Tainted Love" anyway).

Pending Decision
This week's homework.

mysterious critical image #2

2006-08-16T02:25:00.000-04:00

mysterious critical image #1

2006-08-16T01:52:00.000-04:00

essential ballad #47

2006-08-15T23:37:00.000-04:00

(So it continues...What the hell else can one do?)

47. "Small Talk" (Claudine Longet) (limited time: mp3)

I remember in the mid-seventies, flipping through some weekly or monthly magazine (I think it might have been Weekend, a supplement to the Saturday Toronto Star), and coming across a picture of a woman, apparently famous, though unknown to me at the time, wearing dark sunglasses and being escorted by men who looked scarily "official" and her hanging her head down in shame and carrying an impossible blankness of expression--a way of hiding some personal, unfathomable horror (did she do something bad? was something bad done to her or to someone she cared about? did someone die?). I have this vague feeling that the woman in the picture was flowery French pop chanteuse, Claudine Longet, who made headlines in 1976 following the shooting of her lover, Vladmir "Spider" Sabich (for which she served a brief sentence in jail). On top of the weird (to a kid) context of murder/skiing/and a guy named "Spider," it especially freaked me out at the time when I learned that Longet was Andy Williams's former wife. How could anyone associated with Andy Williams (Andy Williams? the Andy Williams that my dad owned an album by?) ever be implicated in anything even remotely terrifying?

Though the photo and the back-story spooked me at the time, I hadn't in fact thought again about Claudine Longet (an almost ridiculously sensual name) until a couple years ago when I came across "Small Talk" through an mp3 download somewhere. The sound of the song couldn't have less to do with the events as described above--or rather, with the emotions as triggered by the memory of those events. It's easy enough, however, to reconcile it with Andy Williams: he produced it, and sings backup vocals on it, and it's the most willowy pop thing imaginable. Small talk, of course, implies shallowness, but it's the fleetingness of the sound here--and the fleetingness of the encounter--that lends the record its charm. The song itself doesn't ask you to get to know it, it merely wants to shoot (no pun intended) the breeze for a couple of minutes. (And who wouldn't want to shoot the breeze for a couple minutes with a French babe who rolls her tongue so coyly on the word "strangers"?) I get the feeling that a lot of what now falls under the retroactively convenient moniker "Sunshine Pop" is trifling, if not merely embarrassing. To its credit, "Small Talk" is far more trifling than the average pop trifle, nothing more than summer's first glint.

Further reading: Cuddle up with an entire site devoted to Claudine ("Pop culture remembers Claudine Longet for just two achievements: her co-starring role in the 1968 Peter Sellers vehicle The Party, and her starring role in the 1976 shooting of skier Spider Sabich.").

end, end of blank space

2006-08-15T20:08:00.000-04:00

Been a busy month around here, hope to resume blogging activity soon. Thinking of a different focus entirely, but will keep you posted.

paul nelson tributes (and reprints)

2006-07-07T07:19:00.000-04:00

> > > Friday, July 14 < < <

Paul Nelson, 70; Former Critic for Rolling Stone.

LA Times obit, by Claire Noland.

Two quotes:

1) "Nelson was found dead July 4 at his New York City apartment. The cause of death was heart disease, according to the New York City medical examiner's office."
2) "'In a sense, Paul preceded all of us,' Christgau, the longtime Village Voice rock critic, told The Times. 'Little Sandy Review was a serious literary magazine about folk music."

Also, Susan Johnson sent me a correction printed in the New York Times yesterday, which I couldn't find in their online edition:

"An obituary on Monday about Paul Nelson, a pioneering rock critic, misstated the cause of death in some copies. While his friend Steven Feltes initially said he had apparently died of starvation, he said later that a cause had not been determined. The New York City medical examiner’s office said yesterday that the cause was heart disease. The obituary also misstated the date of Mr. Nelson’s collaboration with Lester Bangs on a biography of Rod Stewart. The book was published in 1981, not 1988."

I think that's about a wrap on this post. Thanks to everyone (I haven't been naming names, and I apologize) for keeping me updated with links, thoughts, pieces of the puzzle. The full-on tribute at rockcritics will happen sometime in the next few weeks.

> > > Thursday, July 13 < < <

Some further musings...

Kevin Avery at Lost in the Grooves: "I make lists. Before I moved to New York at the end of last year, I crafted a personal and professional to-do list. One item appeared near the top of both lists: reach out to critic Paul Nelson and let him know how much his work had meant to me. His writings, mostly for Rolling Stone and mostly about music (though occasionally movies and books, about which he was equally qualified to write), helped form what still stand today as my tastes in music, literature, and film. He not only made me want to be a critic, which I did for ten years, he made me want to write about music in a bigger context than just something that plays in the background or fills up the space between commercials on radio..." [note: apologies to Kevin--I originally attributed this to the wrong writer.]

Barbara Flaska (at Flaskaland): "...over the past few days, I've been reading here and there about Paul Nelson's long tenure writing for Rolling Stone magazine, and him splitting a hamburger (maybe cutting it right down the middle, I thought) to share with fellow writer Dave Marsh in the old days, and how he might have really gone off to pasture and work for meager wages at a video store in Greenwich Village..."

Michael Gray (author of The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia): "A quiet salute to two writers, one who has just died and one who hasn't. Paul Nelson, co-founder with Jon Pankake of Little Sandy Review back when Dylan was scuffling around in the Twin Cities of Minneapolis-St.Paul, was found dead on July 5, according to the New York Times. There's a respectful entry on him in The Bob Dylan Encyclopedia; sadly, it needs updating now. But the birthdate it gives for him, January 21, 1936, is correct--so he reached the age of 70, not 69 as all the obits seem to have said. One more No Direction Home interviewee gone..."

> > > Wednesday, July 12 < < <

Pete Scholtes has put together a superb, loving tribute at City Pages, including recollections by Dave Marsh, Greil Marcus, and Tony Glover. A more than worthy tribute, the sort I honestly didn't expect to see in an actual paper-based publication. Bravo.

"The man who emerges in the following obituaries by Tony Glover, Dave Marsh, and Greil Marcus is a hermetic perfectionist. He hadn't written for years—when eMusic editor Michael Azerrad tried to assign him something about bluegrass recently, Nelson demurred, saying he loved the music too much to do it justice. Nelson spent much of his later life working at Evergreen Video in Greenwich Village. Friends say he was suffering from memory problems. He apparently died of starvation."

Paul Nelson...The native of Warren, Minn., wrote for Rolling Stone and was a talent scout for Mercury Records. By Jon Bream at the Star-Tribune: "Bob Dylan and the New York Dolls are rarely mentioned in the same sentence, but they need to be when surveying the career of Paul Nelson, an influential Minnesota-bred music critic and talent scout."

Warren Leming Remembers Paul Nelson at Wilderness Road: "He knew everybody, and loved New York's haunts, music dives, scenes, and scuttle butt. He paid a price for his integrity: he lived the last ten years of his life cut off from mainstream criticism--i.e. as the mags, and rags went corporate and pandering became a way of life--he found his stock had fallen with the trendies who often come to edit and deform what they themselves cannot describe."

Thread on I Love Music.

> > > Monday, July 10 < < <

Jon Pareles pays tribute in the New York Times: "Bobby Zimmerman, a songwriter from Hibbing, Minn., who was working at local coffeehouses, sought out Mr. Nelson after seeing the magazine. 'He had a whole lot of records which probably couldn't be found anywhere else in the Midwest,' Bob Dylan, formerly Mr. Zimmerman, said in the 2005 documentary No Direction Home. At one point, when he knew Mr. Nelson was out of town for the weekend, Mr. Dylan dropped by his house and, he said, 'helped myself to a bunch more records.' About 25 disappeared from Mr. Nelson's collection, providing songs for Mr. Dylan's early repertory."

Billy Altman writes:
In a genre of writing that almost by definition hinges on ego, Paul Nelson always strived to convey to his fellow listeners WHAT he heard in music, not simply what HE heard. It seems to me it was precisely that sense of mission, and that difference in purpose, that set him apart from most of his colleagues--that, of course, and the fact that his intrinsic body of musical/cultural knowledge and scholarship was truly in a league of its own.

Concerning that knowledge and scholarship, while I'm sure that every coming obituary and tribute will prominently mention Paul's signing of the Dolls during his brief period as a Mercury A&R man, as well as his '70s/'80s tenure at Rolling Stone, it should not be forgotten that Paul's work as a writer--both stylistically and aesthetically--predated pop music criticism as we've come to know it.

There were no "rock critics" in 1965 when Paul, already an established and respected journalist/commentator on the folk scene, wrote an impassioned defense of Dylan's move to electric music in the pages of Sing Out!--the magazine of record of the folk movement for which he was then serving as managing editor. And then he promptly quit the magazine, on principle; he simply could not reconcile working for supposed "liberal-minded" music lovers who he saw closing those very minds to new sounds and ideas.

His exit from Sing Out!--like Dylan, he moved to rock and, like Dylan, rock was by far better with him in it--was an early example of Paul's moral compass--as prominent in his work (and, I should add, as accurate) as any critic I've ever known. Which, I guess, is one of the reasons why he and Lester Bangs (and Robert Palmer) always were so close to each other, even though their three personality types and writing profiles could not have been more different. They all deeply cared about music, and wanted to share what they believed great music, regardless of its source, could do for the human brain, soul and gut.

I'm guessing that wherever they've now convened, the volume on the stereo has just gone up--and so has the level of the discussion.

Bud Scoppa writes:

"Requiem For a Rock Critic" (orig. published in Hits, reprinted here with Bud's permission)

I found out Thursday that my old friend and mentor Paul Nelson-the best rock critic I've ever read, bar none-died last week in his Upper West Side apartment. This is hitting me hard, despite (or more likely because of) the fact that I hadn't seen him in 18 years and spoke with him just once since then, in 2003-a call in which he sounded exactly the same as 30 years earlier, despite the things he was telling me. A notorious night owl, he'd return to his apartment after a shift at a nearby video store and work until dawn on a screenplay, in longhand (odd for this perfectionist typist), which he had no intention of showing to anyone, he said. He also told me the only artist he had any remaining interest in listening to was bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley, indicating that this onetime founder/editor of the prototypical folkzine The Little Sandy Review, the first to call attention to fellow Minnesotan Bobby Zimmerman, had come full circle. What a shame, I thought, that he was receding into a private world when he still had so much to say.

Along with legitimizing me as a rockcrit and label geek by taking me under his wing, getting me in Stone and hooking me up with a gig at Mercury Records, where I worked alongside him, Paul also showed me how to look and listen more deeply than I ever had before, and how to articulate what I found there. It wasn't just records; he also introduced me to filmmakers from Truffaut and Godard to Don Siegel and Clint Eastwood, film critic Andrew Sarris and novelists like his beloved Raymond Chandler. Paul spoke as eloquently as he wrote, in a manner fellow veteran Dave McGee described earlier today in his own remembrance as "logical, impassioned, understated, and exuding great dignity, poise and class."

Paul had a form of aesthetic X-ray vision that enabled him to unfailingly penetrate to the heart of the matter, his embrace of Dylan plugging in at Newport merely being the most famous example. (By sheer coincidence, I watched that segment of No Direction Home just last night and said to Peggy, "What a smart guy he was," my use of past tense simply reflecting the sense that he'd stopped using his rarefied gift prematurely.) I remember going to the Mercer Arts Center with Paul in early '72 to see the New York Dolls for the first time. Thinking they were a cartoon band of non-players, I bailed after the first set, then got a call from him after the second gently but strongly suggesting I give them another chance. He was right, of course. He signed the band and together we worked with them, my initiation into "artist relations."

It was most likely for Paul's sake that Rod Stewart told me in his midtown hotel room that he aspired to emulate the career of Dylan, selling a few hundred-thousand copies of each album to a loyal following. Then there was an unforgettable weekend in Boston capped by a Faces show at the Boston Gardens we watched from behind the speaker stacks. Paul loved Rod, and Jackson Browne, and he tried really hard to sign a young Bruce Springsteen, which now prompts me to wonder, for the very first time, what if he had?

For a while I was a junior version of Paul-every day we'd walk down Sixth Ave. to 46th St. in our Frye boots, go into La Strada, order the veal picante and two Cokes each from Pepe the waiter and smoke Sherman's browns on the walk back to 110 W. 57th St. The version of me that I eventually came up with wouldn't have been possible without the shaping of my sensibility Paul so generously performed. I'll always treasure his love and insight.

Online reprint of Nelson and Lester Bangs discussing the Stones (from Psychotic Reactions).

Nelson's RS review of Never Mind the Bollocks: "Johnny Rotten may be confused, but he's got a right to be. He's flipped the love-hate coin so often that now it's flipping him. Overpowered by his own psychic dynamite, he stands in front of the mirror, 'in love with myself, my beautiful self,' and the result is 'No Feelings.' You say, 'Holidays in the Sun,' and he says, 'I wanna go to the new Belsen.' On 'Bodies,' he doesn't know whether he's against an abortion ('screaming bloody fucking mess') or whether he is one. Rotten seems to stroll right through the ego and into the id, and then kick the hell out of it. Talk to him about relationships and you get nowhere: 'See my face, not a trace, no reality.'"

Nelson's review of The River.

Musician Elliott Murphy has posted some thoughts about Paul on his website: "He also came to many of my shows at Tramps in the 80's. It was a time when Bruce Springsteen was exploding and I was going through a rough patch. As he was leaving Tramps one night he turned to me and said 'It could have gone either way.' I'm not sure if he was right but his sentiment was always sincere and the serioiusness in which he treated my work has served as my artistic compass to this day. We use to eat burgers together at Jackson Hole in New York City and I bought his collection of F. Scott Fitzgerald first editions when he needed cash. I spoke to him by telephone a few years ago and he told me he was working on a screenplay for a detective movie. I always wanted to see him again sometime..."

Ron Oberman Remembers Paul Nelson, at Wilderness Road: "It was in 1969, I believe, that the Mercury New York publicist decided to leave. I had to find another person to fill the job. After much thought, I decided that Paul Nelson could make a great publicist. In my own mind, I knew it was a bit of an odd choice. Paul was very low key and reserved, and was not a salesman. But, he did have much credibility as a music writer and critic, and I felt that would go a long way in his dealings with other music writers.

"I offered Paul the job. His big concern was that he would have to push acts that he didn't believe in. I told him that would not be the case. I assured him that he would only have to work on acts that he cared about, and that were more 'press oriented.' He accepted the job and wound up doing wonderful work as head of the New York publicity department."

Kate C at Red Peonies: "But, unlike many a NYC video story, [Evergreen] never snear when you rent a Hollywood blockbuster or a whole season of a t.v. show. Among the young friendly hipsters, there was an older, craggy man, kind of grumpy but always helpful. Once, I overheard one of the other clerks telling a customer the older man was a once-famous rock critic named Paul Nelson who was instrumental in Bob Dylan's early career. Sure enough, when Martin Scorsese's Dylan documentary came out last fall, there was the man from the video store being interviewed..."

> > > Friday, July 7 < < <

Remembering Paul Nelson by Ken Tucker: "...he was a remarkable writer; his prose had a quality of lucid calm with an undercurrent of deep passion. You never read even the smallest capsule record review by Paul without knowing immediately that he had listened to that music over and over..."

Paul Nelson Has Left The Building at Tom Lunt's Geezers United: "A tragic loss made even more tragic by the inclusion of these words: 'behind the counter of Evergreen Video on Carmine Street, where he worked for years.'"

Nelson's review of The Basement Tapes (RS)

Review of Some Girls (RS)

paul nelson r.i.p.

2006-07-06T20:54:00.000-04:00

I woke up this morning to the terrible news that former rock critic Paul Nelson died last week in his apartment in Manhattan (I don't have any further details at the moment). I was unable to post a notice here earlier and have just walked back in the door to a flood of e-mails regarding this (none of which I've had a chance to read--and I appreciate everyone e-mailing with the news). Unfortunately, my web access is extremely limited right now, and will be for at least a few more days, but I'll try my best to post more about this as information comes in.

Paul Nelson was the first rock critic Steven Ward ever interviewed for rockcritics.com. I still think it's one of the greatest interviews on the site.

Paul Nelson (1936-2006): "Contributor and editor wrote influential pieces on Warren Zevon, Jackson Browne, signed the New York Dolls" (Rolling Stone obit. They also reprint some key Nelson pieces from the seventies, including his review of The Ramones).

Loners and Other Strangers: reprint of a great Leonard Cohen review from 1975

later

2006-06-28T23:20:00.000-04:00

Time now for me to make do like Roy Wood & Bev Bevan.

Back in a wk or so.

rockcritics interview: jon wiederhorn

2006-06-28T12:11:00.000-04:00

I'll need to update the site index still, but Steven Ward has a new interview up at rockcritics:

To Hell and Back: The Music Writer and the Damage Done - An Interview with Jon Wiederhorn.

"I enjoy interviews because it provides an opportunity to get inside the heads of artists I admire. I'm not interested in meeting them as a fan, I'm far more fascinated with finding out why they make the kind of music they make, what has happened in their lives that has inspired them to create, and how their lifestyle affects their music. I'm also interested in the kind of lifestyle they lead as a result of being a musician."

movies ad infinitum

2006-06-27T21:14:00.000-04:00

Keep your eye on Slate's "Summer Movies" feature, which kicks off grandly with "The Movie I've Seen the Most: Films that Spike Lee, Peter Farrelly, Paul Schrader (and others) watch obsessively."

The Movie I've Watched the Most? Almost certainly Taxi Driver, though I'm pretty sure I can cap the number of viewings at a dozen (only half of which were on the big screen), and truthfully, I'm not anxious to sit through it again for a long time. (The last time I saw it in the theater was with a friend who'd never seen it before. I'd built it up impossibly for him, to the point where he could practically quote half of the movie before even seeing it. For some reason, it mostly communicated to us that night as a comedy. I decided then and there I'd leave it alone for a few years.)

Runners-up would be The Wizard of Oz and Bonnie & Clyde, both by dint of the fact that as a kid I saw them a bunch of times on TV (Bonnie & Clyde reached my generation not as a landmark in American cinema, but as a wild "movie of the week" romp you hoped your parents would let you stay up to watch). Casablanca (early college yrs), The Godfather(s), and the other key Scorsese flicks probably trail closely behind, at around a half a dozen viewings apiece. (I watched lots of Chaplin as a kid, too, but I strangely don't recall many details about them.)

critiquing the critique with j.d. considine

2006-06-27T20:00:00.000-04:00

Over at Resonance, J.D. Considine has an interesting response to Randall Roberts's EMP paper, "Dave Marsh-ing My Mellow: The Rolling Stone Record Guide and the Creation of the Canon" (which I linked to a few wks back).

The point of J.D.'s I most agree with:

"Such sloppiness is repeated when Roberts turns his attention to the guide’s coverage of hip-hop. He writes, 'By 1982, the Sugarhill Gang, Grandmaster Flash, the Tom Tom Club, Fab Five Freddy, Kurtis Blow and Trouble Funk had released 12-inches, but the Guide ignored them.' Well, no. First off, the book states in the introduction that it chose not to review singles (which is what 12-inches were). Secondly, although Kurtis Blow’s singles may have been ignored, his two albums weren’t. They are reviewed by Dave Marsh, on page 47."

I remember thinking while reading the EMP piece that the author was being way too loose with the facts; aside from what J.D. wrote, it could be noted that the album era for rap really didn't get underway until the mid-80s at the very earliest. As that edition of the guide was being compiled, I bet there was next to nothing to draw upon (though sure, it'd be nice if they had reviewed 12" singles).

That said, I still think Roberts's paper is quite hilarious--and the graphics and their titles just don't quit--and I also like his thoughtful response to J.D. in the comments box. Check it out...

u don't no jack

2006-06-27T16:06:00.000-04:00

Jack Is the Decider: How a radio format is a lot like our president. By Greg Milner in Slate.

Spot-on, I think.

Sample: "Why does Jack brag about not listening to listeners? For the same reason that Andrew Card once proudly said that the president thinks of the United States as a nation of 10-year-olds and himself as the father. Jack sells radio the same way Bush sells politics. Jack is the Decider. Just let Jack take care of everything--really, it'll be cool. Moreover, the way Jack successfully conflates what 'we' (Infinity Broadcasting) want with what 'you' (listeners) want requires the same attitude that has allowed Bush's handlers to package his obstinacy as moral clarity. Jack/George programs/governs from his gut; he doesn't care about requests/polls. You may question Jack's decision to spin Glenn Frey's 'The Heat Is On'—considering he can play whatever he wants--but you've got to admire how he does so without apology."

essential ballads #44-46 (tuesday edition)

2006-06-27T16:02:00.000-04:00

44. "Tuesday Afternoon" (Moody Blues)
45. "Ruby Tuesday" (Rolling Stones)
46. "Tuesday's Gone" (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

Tuesday is always the most depressing day of the week: Monday is kind of a grotesque shock to the system, but it tends to go by in a caffeinated blur and things rarely get out of hand on a Monday because everyone's still in their own stupor; Wednesday's fairly neutral, but you know that once lunch rolls around you're more than halfway to that irresolute worker's paradise known as the weekend; Thursday has always been the greatest day of the week because it's the most anticipatory day of the week and the quality control on network television is always a bit higher on a Thursday night; Friday can, in fact, be quite brutal (tick-tock tick-tock), but if you stayed up extra late the night before junking out on too much quality network television because you were under the mistaken impression that Thursday was when the weekend really started it'll all go by in an even more impossibly caffeinated blur than Monday (and best of all, you don't have to tuck in your shirt on Friday--that is, so long as you paid upfront for the privilege to not tuck in your shirt). But Tuesday? Tuesday just blows. Everyone's in a mean mood on Tuesday, the subway's always slower on Tuesday, you awake every Tuesday morning to the painful reality that Monday was not but a dream.

arif mardin r.i.p.

2006-06-27T07:26:00.000-04:00

He deserves tribute for, among much else, steering one of the most startling transformations in pop history.

Here's a fairly comprehensive list of the man's credits (half of which looks like my regular DJ set list).

New York Times obit.

Hear Arif Mardin talk about his four-decade career on NPR.

essential ballads #40-43

2006-06-26T13:48:00.000-04:00

"We photographers deal in things which are continually vanishing, and when they have vanished there is no contrivance on earth that can make them come back again. We cannot develop and print a memory."
--Henri Cartier-Bresson

For lack of a catchier title, call this sub-genre "Early Seventies Post-Beatle Wistfulness":

40. "Some Sing, Some Dance" (Pagliaro)
41. "Can't Get It Out of My Head" (ELO)
42. "Day After Day" (Badfinger)
43. "Photograph" (Ringo Starr)

So sad about the demise of the Fab Four, perhaps no one moreso than Ringo. "Photograph" kind of stretches my definition of "ballad"--musically, it's fairly sprightly--but it simply has to be in here. "And I realize you're not coming back anymore" is a perfect encapsulation of the theme for this bunch. "My Sweet Lord" was briefly a consideration; it's thought of as a kind of goofy song, I suppose, but it has that sound, a sort of vast emptiness shaded at the edges with some weepy steel guitar. Still, "Day After Day"--produced by George, not incidentally--more than suffices and has nothing to do, far as I can tell, with Krishna or Jesus. Can't think of a Lennon or McCartney solo ballad from the era that really fits--the two of them were off in their own worlds at that point Not Being Beatles, which kind of defeats the whole purpose, at least as far as this list is concerned.

quotable criticism #10

2006-06-26T13:37:00.000-04:00

"Electronic transmission has already inspired a new concept of multiple-authorship responsibility in which the specific functions of the composer, the performer, and, indeed, the consumer overlap. We need only think for a moment of the manner in which the formerly separate roles of composer and performer are now automatically combined in electronic tape construction, or to give an example more topical than potential, the way in which the home listener is now able to exercise limited technical and, for that matter, critical judgments, courtesy of the modestly resourceful controls of his hi-fi. It will not, it seems to me, be very much longer before a more self-assertive streak is detected in the listener's participation, before, to give but one example, 'do-it-yourself' tape editing is the prerogative of every reasonably conscientious consumer of recorded music (the Hausmusik activity of the future, perhaps!)."
--Glenn Gould envisions punk rock and house music in "Strauss and the Electronic Future" (1964)

weekend 9 (june 25 edition)

2006-06-25T23:31:00.000-04:00

Nine tunes (mostly new) I've enjoyed recently

1. "Lloyd, I'm Ready to be Heartbroken" (Camera Obscura) - Right now, this week, and next week, it's sounding like single of the year: anti-MTV '80s swoon pop (which would've been huge on MTV) with a Velvets-like rhythmic propulsion triggering a plea to bring on the heartache because, hey, there's always a Lloyd Cole record you can lose yourself in after the guy ditches you.

2. "Rain Dance" (Herbie Hancock)

3. "Journey in Satchidananda" (Alice Coltrane)
(#2 and #3 are great finds via an excellent free jazz primer over at marathonpacks.)

4. "Turquoise Boy" (Sonic Youth)

5. "I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor" (Sugababes)

6. "Teach Me Sweetheart" (Fiery Furnaces)

7. "Benton Harbour Blues Again" (Fiery Furnaces) - The melody is the only reason they get away with this.

8. "Days" (Television) - Live version performed at the Phoenix a couple wks back...a droney, sprawling version of their prettiest ballad.

9. "The Warning" (Hot Chip)

essential ballads # 37-39

2006-06-23T19:39:00.000-04:00

Digital Love (pt. 1)

37. "Nite and Day" (Al B. Sure)
38. "Should I Say Yes" (Nu Shooz)
39. "When We Kiss" (Bardeux)

No need to repeat what I wrote about these three a couple yrs back at Stypod. I'll only add, in hindsight, that I don't know why I was afraid to just admit that, push comes to shove, the Nu Shooz song is my favourite single of all-time. I think I held back because it seemed like the sort of pronouncement that I should give more thought to ("but what if you change your mind next week?"). No need to hide anymore--I've given it as much thought as needed (and I've known the truth for years anyway).

"should i say yes"
(with a slight & yet delicious topping of distortion in the mix--at least on my spkrs)

"nite and day"

(I'd be incredibly grateful to all of humanity if some budding You-Tuber could get on the Bardeux...c'mon, quick!)

essential ballads #28-36

2006-06-23T00:53:00.000-04:00

Ambient-Pop edition.

28. "Everything Merges With the Night" (Eno)
29. "Moments in Love" (Art of Noise)
30. "Beautiful Ones" (Prince)
31. "Love Comes Quickly" (Pet Shop Boys)
32. "Unravel" (Bjork)
33. "Ce Matin La" (Air)
34. "Etoh" (Avalanches)
35. "Chiminea" (DJ Koze)
36. "Midnight in a Perfect World" (DJ Shadow)

I've reposted this three times already--I keep thinking of stuff to add, though I'm sure there are way more than what I'm aware of or remembering right now. I'm not really sure the aesthetic is all that clear-cut, though--in fact, I'm looking at this now, and thinking this is really two completely separate lists, but oh well. #29-#31 comprises one set of songs: synthetic breathalyzer dream-pop (repetitive, hypnotic). #28 and #32-36 are airy/earthy ambient pop tracks (actually, the Bjork almost falls into both categories--and just as equally doesn't really fit into either). More than half of these are instrumentals, and gorgeous beyond words.

essential ballads #24-27

2006-06-23T00:16:00.000-04:00

24. "Valley of the Dolls" (Dionne Warwick)
25. "Hello Stranger" (Barbara Lewis)
26. "One Less Bell to Answer" (Fifth Dimension)
27. "The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face" (Roberta Flack)

Soulful meditations that aren't really "soul music," per se. Put another way, I'd be more comfortable placing a Carpenters track in this group than I would an Aretha track (both of whom will show up elsewhere regardless)... I like what Phil Dellio (who has hugely influenced the way I hear this stuff) recently wrote about the Barbara Lewis track: "'Hello Stranger' is like the anti-'Walk on By': Warwick is all about shutting out and shutting down, whereas Lewis transforms a few lines of simple small talk into the warmest, most sexual renewal of friendship imaginable."

essential ballads #18-23

2006-06-23T00:02:00.000-04:00

18. "Sunday Morning" (Velvet Underground)
19. "She Is Mine" (Psychedelic Furs)
20. "Just Like Honey" (Jesus & Mary Chain)
21. "Kotton Krown" (Sonic Youth)
22. "Sometimes" (My Bloody Valentine)
23. "Stay With Me" (Spiritualized)

The Dark Sunglasses contingent. A tribute, in a way, to a Boy Named Lou... I had a handful of Spiritualized tracks to choose from, and I'm really only familiar with three of their albums (that's a pretty good ratio). They write--or, perhaps to be more specific, they produce--terrific ballads. Everytime they kick up the pace, however, they lose me. Their blues-psychedelia shtick gets corny real fast... I recently took the latest RS Album Guide out of the library, and noticed that Rob Sheffield calls "Kotton Krown" Sonic Youth's greatest song. I might agree; I definitely think it's their prettiest, though they're not a band short on pretty (interestingly enough, ballads--or let's say, quiet, pretty tunes--have maybe even become their forte). From what I know of their work (and I'd say I'm familiar with about half of their regular releases), I believe this is the only time Kim & Thurston have dueted on a song. Too bad: I'd love to hear them take on "Deep Purple" or "Tighter, Tighter" or something.

essential ballads #9-17

2006-06-22T12:01:00.000-04:00

Blue-Eyed Boy-Toys edition

9. "Win" (David Bowie)
10. "If You Leave Me Now" (Chicago)
11. "How Deep is Your Love" (Bee Gees)
12. "I Can't Tell You Why" (Eagles)
13. "One on One" (Hall & Oates)
14. "Tempted" (Squeeze)
15. "Holding Back the Years" (Simply Red)
16. "A Little Knowledge" (Scritti Politti)
17. "Father Figure" (George Michael)

Overt attempts not merely at soufulness but at a slick-verging-on-sappy sort of soulfulness. Slump-shouldered wimps aping not the harsh vocal tics of Otis Redding or James Brown but the fragile, yearning grievances of the Stylistics and the Spinners. (In some ways, thanks to Paul Carrack's deep range, "Tempted" is something of the odd man out here, but it's not completely illogical, and I can't think of anywhere else to place it)... Before you cringe at the inclusion of the Chicago track, imagine Al Green singing the exact same song. Not working? Try renting Three Kings or season six (?) of Sex & the City; maybe that'll turn your head around, the way it did mine.

I'm probably going to break my one-song-per-artist rule throughout this feature, but only when it comes to artists with songs that fit well into disparate genres. This will not help with Al Green, who I consider the greatest balladeer of all-time, because all of his great tunes would end up in the same sub-genre. It will, on the other hand, help the Bee Gees, whose pre- and post-disco music is diverse enough that it doesn't feel at all like a stretch to sneak a couple choices in to different lists. Bowie will also show up again. Which is funny, in a way, because he's hardly my idea of a great ballad singer. In fact, he actually possesses a terrible voice for that sort of thing, and he's rarely convincing at it. In "Win," his voice cracks all over the place, and you can hear him reaching, desperately (yeah, yeah, we're supposed to be impressed because he was taking lots of coke, whatever). Maybe it's precisely his non-convincingness--his unashamed awkwardness--that makes it work for me. Hard to say. (A lot of it just has to do with "Win"'s arrangement--all those swirling saxophones and strings, the background voices melting all around him.) I figure it's the sort of track which, if you're a fan, would make you swoon, but if you're not would just make you cringe. And fair enough.

essential ballads #8

2006-06-22T07:05:00.000-04:00

8. "No Promise Have I Made" (Hüsker Dü)

Thought of this one this morning, it should also be in the Power Ballad category. Better than, and probably modelled on, Journey--in fact, the only self-conscious (outside of hair metal) attempt at power balladry I can think of that's any good.

recent bookmarks

2006-06-21T23:17:00.000-04:00

Falling way behind in my reading, but here's a few things I've bookmarked lately:

Alfred Soto in Stylus reviews Frank Kogan's Real Punks

blog alert 1 (Jonathan Valania): Hear No Evil: Fiddlin' While Rome Burns. Music. Culture. Media. Politics. All The Usual Suspects Will Be Rounded Up.

blog alert 2 (Denise Sullivan): Them Changes: Author and journalist Denise Sullivan writes and sometimes rants about the music, the mayhem and the occasional moments of tranquility she enjoys while attempting to navigate her inevitable passage through mid life.

Article: Why Blog Post Frequency Does Not Matter Anymore, by Eric Kintz (Marketing Profs)

blog alert 3: fangirl

More and more, I'm finding, the one-stop-shop for up-to-the-minute music critic-related news is the Music Press Report (which I've linked to before, but a quick reminder never hurts)

office song

2006-06-21T23:11:00.000-04:00

This short-lived joke is funny for a few seconds, at least if you do what I do everyday.

essential ballads #1-7 (power ballads)

2006-06-21T21:08:00.000-04:00

Lighters aflame--we'll kick this feature off with power ballads.

Power ballads, according to this wikipedia definiton, "often explored sentimental themes such as yearning and need, love and loss. Their usually confessional nature differed from metal's more lyrical themes of hedonism, violence, or the occult. The term is partly a misnomer, as they are not so much ballads as love songs. In the years when record companies first considered the marketability of power ballads, they perhaps calculated that power ballad was more accessible and appealing than metal love song."

The truth is, I'm fairly lukewarm on power balladry myself--in fact, surprisingly so. I thought I would've come up with more than seven essentials (there are also some borderline songs, not to mention some which could be labelled "power ballads" but which for whatever reason I've chosen to place elsewhere), but despite consulting list after list after list, adding anything beyond what I have below is pushing it, at least in regards to what I'm familiar with (and it's not like I was paying close attention to the stuff in its prime anyway). So let's go to the list:

1. "Dream On" (Aerosmith)
2. "Love Hurts" (Nazareth)
3. "A Man I'll Never Be" (Boston)
4. "These Dreams" (Heart)
5. "Yesterdays" (Guns 'N Roses)
6. "Hysteria" (Def Leppard)
7. "Everything I Do (I Do It For You)" (Bryan Adams)

Clearly, it's not the power that matters here--it's the quality of the gloop.

You'd probably assume that, as a wedding DJ, I play these at gigs all the time. In fact, unless they're requested (and aside from "Hysteria," they never are), I steer well clear of them, esp. the '80s/'90s ones. Not because I don't love everyone of these songs, but because you can't play them without most people assuming that you're making some kind of joke, and seeing that sort of response--the finger-down-the-throat routine as the lovely piano bit in the Adams track wafts out of the speakers--always puts me in a defensive/pissy mood. So I just don't bother. (I've noticed that this is very much a characteristic of 30 and 40-something 'rock' crowds--a natural propensity to balk at the ballads they were copping feels to on the dancefloor in high school 20 years ago. On the other hand, if I'm playing to a 30s/40s crowd more attuned to hip-hop and r&b--I don't want to turn this into a black/white split, because that's not entirely true--they love hearing '80s slow jams: Ready for the World, Force M.D.s--I've had great responses to those in the last year. There just doesn't seem to be the same display of collective, or individual, embarrassment, at least not that I can detect. I don't know what else to say about this cultural difference, other than that, at least in my limited experience it's absolutely real, and I'm kind of curious about it.)

#1 - 3 are not specifically of the Power Ballad era, but they laid the groundwork for the sound as well as anything else I can think of. A certain amount of overt, churchy/glittery commercialism is important to the sound--keyboards are key--which is one reason why Led Zeppelin and Lynyrd Skynyrd don't really strike me as power balladeers (and Skynyrd for sure are going to show up somewhere else, maybe Zeppelin too). A power ballad purist would balk at the Aerosmith choice, given that the band have spent the entire second phase of their career basically honing in (atrociously, in my opinion) on the classic power ballad formula--that is, when they aren't doing incredibly corny blues retreads--but "Dream On" has an intensity--a scariness--that aligns it more, in my mind, with "Backstabbers" or "Nights in White Satin." To a ten year old, "Dream On" was the sound of a summer day breaking in half.

"Yesterdays" stretches the PB definition somewhat: it's a ballad, certainly, and I think it's completely gorgeous, but it's maybe a bit too rollicking for the PB sub-genre. It doesn't slow-build into an epic the way "November Rain" (which is ridiculous in a pretty un-fun way) does. "Patience" is great as well, and were I not following the one-song-per-artist rule, I'd lump it into another set, though where exactly, I'm not sure... There are other hard rock ballads on my master list, but they hew even less to the PB formula than "Yesterdays," so we'll get to them elsewhere, and there are other non-hard rock ballads coming up as well which do share certain formal affinities with Def Leppard, Bon Jovi, et al., but I don't want to get too clever here with the sub-genres. I mean, apparently "Nothing Compares 2U" is a power ballad, but I think it goes without saying that "hair" is pretty vital when it comes to this stuff, and if Bryan Adams is stretching it in that regard, Sinead's not even in the ballpark.

Marginal Pleasures

"Sail Away" (Styx) (only for its use in Virgin Suicides, really, plus its use at my wedding, both of which involved a hell of a lot of balloons)

"Total Eclipse of the Heart" (Bonnie Tyler) (written by Jim Steinman, who's maybe made a better living off the stuff than anyone...a well-constructed track, for sheer music-conveying-lyrics type of intelligence not dissimilar to "Windmills of Your Mind")

"Sister Christian" (Night Ranger) (mainly for its use in Boogie Nights)

"Every Rose Has Its Thorn" (Poison) (always struck me more as "country" than "power ballad"--they're in Steve Earle territory here, basically)

The only unfamiliar songs I listened to for this--partly because I've been curious about them for ages--were White Lion's "When the Children Cry" and Skid Row's "18 and Life." They're both okay, but I think I maybe needed to be there.

All suggestions will be gratefully considered.

psa: interviews archives

2006-06-21T07:19:00.000-04:00

"Interviews Archive is a library which collects & stores audio interviews as a resource for researchers, academics, broadcasting, publishing or for private use. The material is transferred from it's original source (cassette/mini disc/reel to reel) onto CDR for purchase via this website."

(Check it out...includes a 90 minute interview from 1980 with Lester Bangs--haven't heard it, but the mp3 sample is great.)

essential ballads: intro

2006-06-20T22:39:00.000-04:00

Over the last few weeks I've been compiling a list of what I consider the essential (i.e., my personal favourite) ballads, but rather than post one huge list and be done with it, I thought it'd be more fun (not to mention more manageable) to make it a recurring feature of sorts--at least until I've run out of essentials (highly possible, given that, in my view, essential new ballads are virtually nonexistent these days--I'd almost go so far as pronouncing the ballad format effectively dead). I'll number each song I list just to see how far I get, and as usual when I compile any sort of music list, I stick to the one-song-per-artist rule (and also as usual, I break the rule when it comes to solo artists vs. groups--i.e., Bryan Ferry/Roxy Music will each likely get one separate pick). (I'm working on a formula as well to prove that there are really two "Al Greens" out there, one of whom is a person, one of whom is a group.)

I should state right up front that I mean "ballads" here in the modern/pop sense of the word, and not "ballads" in the more traditional story-based sense (i.e., this-here's-a-tale-about-a-man-who-killed-his-wife-1,000-years-ago). Ballads, by my definition, generally contain one or more of the following characteristics:

1) They are slow in tempo.
2) They are often about love or about seduction.
3) They often sound wistful, if not downright mournful (often due to lack of love or failed attempts at seduction).
4) They are baldly (and boldly) sentimental, and sometimes downright sappy.
5) They generally speaking (and this, along with #1, is maybe the most important rule of all) have some element of "pretty" in them. I don't know how to explain "pretty" as a musical term, to be honest, but I certainly know it when I hear it, and maybe I'll have some definition worked out as I make my way through this.
6) They would not sound inappropriate if I threw them on at a wedding (except for those that are, well, inappropriate...i.e., I've no immediate plans to play "Kotton Krown" at a reception).

It was actually while updating my wedding song lists recently that this idea first popped in my head. I'm always on the lookout for different ballads to play at receptions--too often, I have a lazy tendency to reach for the standards, and I get irritated at myself everytime I do so (even in cases where I happen to still personally love the songs).

On that note, I'd love to hear your suggestions as I go along--what I've missed, what are some of your favourite ballads, general thoughts on the concept, etc. I'm going to try and group most of the ballads into sub-genres, and I'd particularly love to know what tracks I've missed that would fit into those sub-genres.

I'll start listing some in the next post (or the one after that).

25 more great (or at least interesting at one point in time) music books...back from hiatus

2006-06-19T12:23:00.000-04:00

Okay, well, when I announced a hiatus a couple wks ago, it really did seem like I would be out of commission for a month. We still haven't moved, and I suspect the longer hiatus is still to come (I'll likely be without any web access for a few days in July)...but there's a 'meantime' in this story, and the meantime is now, so, uh, here I am (I've actually been antsy to get back at it, which I think is a good sign). And anyway, I couldn't resist responding to the latest list everyone seems to be talking about ("everyone" meaning 8 or 9 bored bloggers and chat room dwellers): Yes, folks, it's the Observer's 50 Greatest Music Books Ever.

In response, I offer up 25 other good (mostly better) ones. To really do this list properly, I'd need to be moved in to my new place and actually have access to my book collection (which I haven't had now for almost a year--and yes, it's killing me). On the other hand, I think this works better: if I have to think that hard about a title, it probably doesn't deserve to be here. (And when I do finally unpack my stuff, maybe I'll do a followup: 25 other Other Books of Which I Have Only Read the Acknowledgments Page To Once Again Discover That I Am Not In Fact Acknowledged.)

Three things: 1) There's nothing remotely 'definitive' or all-inclusive about this list; 2) these are just in order of me thinking about them, more or less; and 3) there is nothing too current in here (only going with stuff I've lived with for a while).

1. Stranded (ed. Greil Marcus): I won't include any of Marcus's solo efforts, because it's really his discography herein that I keep coming back to--it's the centerpiece of the book for me, and the catchiest series of riffs in all of rock writing.

2. Paperback Writer (Mark Shipper): The truth is, I bet it wouldn't hold up as well as I remember it--jokes this uproariously funny rarely do--but it was so hilarious at the time, I think I read the whole thing in a day. And then re-read all the best parts the day after that. A voice that has disappeared entirely from music criticism, and I don't necessarily mean Shipper's.

3. The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock & Roll (2nd edition, ed. Jim Miller): If I had to point to the book that first made it all gel for me--that turned me into a fan of writing--this is the one. Was a time when I could've sat down and transcribed three or four of these pieces in their entirety from memory (Smucker on disco, for instance), but I made the monumental decision to close it indefinitely about seven years ago (and have only sneaked a peak on two or three occasions since).

4. 1988: The New Wave Punk Rock Explosion (Caroline Coon): Growing up in the wrong London on the wrong side of the ocean, this visually arresting collection--full of provocative, outrageous quotes--provided the inner life to my soundtrack, circa 1979.

5. Rock & the Pop Narcotic (Joe Carducci) & 6. Like Punk Never Happened (Dave Rimner): The great '80s arm wrestle: Frankie Goes to Hollywood vs. Mudhoney (no hair pulling allowed).

7. Rock From the Beginning (Nik Cohn): Rock Dreams on the Observer's list is an inspired choice, which leaves a more obvious Cohn pick for me. The last time I flipped through this, it didn't pull me in the way I assumed it would, but once upon a time it was like ingesting speed.

8. The Noise: Notes From a Rock 'n' Roll Era (Robert Duncan): The "era" being the '70s. I'm pretty sure Marsh trashed this book somewhere, and maybe it drifts a little far for what Duncan is capable of, but some of the stuff on Mott the Hoople and the Mary Tyler Moore Show is memorable. (And how come Duncan is the only '70s Creem guy--Marsh and Bangs excepted--who made it between covers?)

9. The Rolling Stone Record Guide (1st Edition, ed. Marsh): A.k.a. Chairman Marsh's "Little Red Record Guide." Literally have not opened this in eons--can't even remember if I still own it (I think I may have lost it in a move or something). All I remember is Marsh comparing Kate Bush to Patti Smith crossed with a Hoover vacuum cleaner.

10. The Accidental Evolution of Rock 'n' Roll (Chuck Eddy): I prefer the writing--the voice--in Stairway, but there is no finer index in town, and it's inspired more than one mixed CD-R.

11. The Heart of Rock & Soul (Dave Marsh): He kills '60s soul music dead (and he had the gall to complain about The Big Chill effect!), but he's excellent with the stuff on the margins, maybe because the entire concept of there even being a margin makes absolute sense here.

12. Christgau's Record Guide ('70s & '80s editions): A and A-, respectively.

13. Gulcher (Richard Meltzer): I love Aesthetics of Rock to (and in all of its) pieces--and no, I don't entirely "get" it, either--but Gulcher is more fun to just pick up, and the essay on the cabbie who transports Art Garfunkel across town is a scream. Also essential Meltzer reading: A Whore Just Like the Rest and L.A. is the Capital of Kansas. (That was some kind of mistake ordering his chap-book on golf, however.)

14. Who's Your Fave Rave? (Randi Reisfeld, Danny Fields): Not really the sort of book you read from cover to cover--it's mostly reprints from the original 16 Magazine--but it's the bubblegum book I need to own. Bubblegum with love and without apology.

15. Pet Shop Boys, Literally (Chris Heath) & 16. Hammer of the Gods (Stephen Davis): Which side of the tour bus are you on?

17. Dylan (Anthony Scaduto): I'm sure there are other worthy pop star bios I'm just not thinking of right now, but it's not really my favourite sub-genre. This was a shock when I first read it, though, especially all that business about young Bob messing around with his own identity to the point where you weren't even sure if he knew who he was (it helped that I was also a total Chaplin freak as a kid).

18. Disco Fever (Kitty Hanson): Not a serious critical study, but a more than decent right-time right-place glimpse into the scene (part of it is a "how to"--how to dance disco, how to dress disco, how to speak disco, etc.), and some of the photo captions are--perhaps unintentionally-- hysterical.

19. Tell Me Why (Tim Riley): For all the zillion Beatle books that have been published, I think only three have mattered to me: Paperback Writer, the Ian MacDonald title chosen by the Observer, and this, a U.S. counterpart to the MacDonald book--a song-by-song rundown that is slightly more musicological (though not dauntingly so) and far less politicized. A remarkaby clearheaded listen to their records, basically.

20. Glenn Gould: Music and Mind (Geoffrey Payzant): I read a library copy years ago, and I can't even say for sure I read it from top to bottom, but it left enough of an impression to include it here. Gould is an infinitely fascinating thinker (and funny guy, to boot), and Payzant does something that would be hard, if not impossible, to pull off with a pop artist: the focus of his biography is to examine Gould's ideas.

21. Country (John Morthland): This is really cheating on my part. I've never owned this, and I haven't read more than 80 pages of it, I'm sure. But what I did read 15 years ago I enjoyed a lot--and anyway, it's country music, a little cheating can be a good thing, no?

22. Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow: Girl Groups from the '50s On (Charlotte Greig): What a genre book should be: informative, smart, funny, full of cool pics.

23. Pop Will Eat Itself (Jeremy J. Beadle): Presumably named after, though not, thankfully, about that horrible late '80s band. A breezy, smart (if somewhat personality-free) overview of UK sampling culture, circa M/A/R/R/S and beyond. A sober companion piece to the KLF Manual, which is a complete hoot (not included here, as I'm not convinced it's an actual "book").

24. The Rap Attack: African Jive to New York Hip Hop (David Toop): My very first downloading project--man, have I really been stealing other people's hard labour for six years now?!--was to find all the rare, early tracks from this (splendid) discography. I think I hit about a 95% success ratio. The only half-good book on hip-hop I've read (I'm still working on Jeff Chang's recent tome). I admit I haven't tried with all that many, though I have thrown at least three or four against the wall after a couple chapters.

25. The Billboard Book of Number One Hits (Fred Bronson): The Top 40 Hits collection is my most-flipped-through book of all-time, I suspect, and the knowledge within is bottomless [this is where I would cite some arcane fact about some song that went to #37 in 1962 if I had the book right beside me]. I'll go with the Number One collection for the stories, and for the folks at Billboard continuing to insist that there is a story, even though I'm not convinced that there still is (does anyone out there still care about what's #1 this week? is there even such a thing anymore?).

in a while, crocodile

2006-06-12T06:55:00.000-04:00

Because of an upcoming move and a number of other things going on, I'll be away from this blog for a few wks, at least--probably until mid-July. Enjoy your spring/summer, and I'll be back soon with something or other.

books i wish someone would write (because i never will) #1

2006-06-07T08:01:00.000-04:00

Turn the Beat Around:
The Story of Pop Music's
Most Distinctive and Most
Copied Drum Patterns

Okay, someone could surely come up with a better title, but anyway, I got to thinking about this when I put together that Bo Diddley comp, and what I envision is a story about a dozen (if one can come up with a dozen--I'm not sure I could) beats which have been xeroxed and mutated like crazy. Each chapter would trace the beat from its earliest known version, then critically follow the beat around, to its most popular usages and its most obscure (and/or bizarre) traces, and...well, perhaps there would actually a story inside all of that, perhaps not. (I'm pretty sure there would be--if nothing else, it'd be a really neat book of lists.)

These are some of the beats I can imagine being discussed:

Bo Diddley beat

"Be My Baby" beat

"Funky Drummer"

the Soul II Soul beat

Gary Glitter/burundi beats

Diwali rhythm (there'd in fact need to be an entire section on the most predominant dancehall "riddims," something I'm immeasurably ignorant about)

The Sandy Nelson/"You Can't Hurry Love"/"Lust For Life" beat (I confuse these beats--this might actually be two chapters)

Any other obvious ones? Is there already a book like this and I just don't know about it? (David Toop?) Anyone wanna write this book, at least so I can read it?

quotable criticism #9

2006-06-06T23:09:00.000-04:00

"Dial twiddling is in its limited way an interpretive act. Forty years ago the listener had the option of flicking a switch inscribed 'on' and 'off' and, with an up-to-date machine, perhaps modulating the volume just a bit. Today, the variety of controls made available to him requires analytical judgment. And these controls are but primitive, regulatory devices compared to those participational possibilities which the listener will enjoy once curret labratory technique have been appropriated by home playback devices."
--Glenn Gould, "The Prospects of Recording," 1966

[visit The Boombox Museum]

quotable criticism #8

2006-06-06T23:01:00.000-04:00

"Without preamble, the three-piece band cuts loose. In the spotlight, the lanky singer flails furious rhythms on his guitar, every now and then breaking a string. In a pivoting stance, his hips swing sensuously from side to side and his entire body takes on a frantic quiver, as if he had swallowed a jackhammer.
--TIME magazine review of Elvis Presley, May 1956

cdr: bo's big bad beat

2006-06-06T09:45:00.000-04:00

I'm part of an informal CD trading club, and for the latest get-together I made a compilation of Bo Diddley beats, a tribute to the Bomp-Bomp-Bomp Ba-Bomp-Bomp. It goes a little something like this...

1. Bo Diddley (Bo Diddley)
2. Willie & the Hand Jive (Johnny Otis)
3. Not Fade Away (Buddy Holly)
4. Mona (I Need You Baby) (Rolling Stones)
5. Panic in Detroit (David Bowie)
6. Lovers’ Walk (Elvis Costello & the Attractions)
7. Pulse Beat (Buzzcocks)
8. Rosalyn (Pretty Things)
9. Bird Diddley Beat (Trashmen)
10. Bo Diddley (Link Wray)
11. Hare Krsna (Hüsker Dü)
12. Chevrolet (Lonnie & Ed Young)
13. She’s the One (Bruce Springsteen)
14. Candy (interlude)
15. 1969 (the Stooges)
16. Cherokee Dance (Bob Landers with Willie Joe & his Unitar)
17. Hey! Mark Riley (the Fall)
18. Diddley Shmiddley (Klezperanto)
19. Get Your Faith On (2 Many DJs)
20. Hey! Bo Diddley (Alex de Grassi)
21. Hey Gyp (Dig the Slowness) (Donovan)
22. (Marie’s the Name of) His Latest Flame (Elvis Presley)
23. I’m Sorry I Love You (Magnetic Fields)
24. I Want Candy (Strangeloves)
25. Dot/Eyes (Tortoise)
26. Hey Bo Diddley (Elizabeth Mitchell)

This is actually a revamp--an extended mix--of a cassette compilation my friend Chris made for me back in the '80s (the end result of a phone conversation in which we started talking about the Diddley beat, and how many cool records it had shown up on). This is about double the length of Chris's comp, though of course, I had the benefit of 20 extra years to think about it (not that I've actually spent 20 years thinking about it; more like a couple weeks), and oodles more technology to assist me (downloading, Google, and ILM, specifically).

The thing is, like most compilations that adhere to a strict theme, it was more fun putting this together--compiling all the tracks and making the final decisions (I've enough backups for a whole other CD, not that I will ever bother)--than it is to actually listen to it, at least repeatedly. Not that I'm unhappy with the final result. A couple tracks excepted (the weak Buzzcocks tune, and that George Michael-Missy Elliott mashup, which, granted, isn't long enough to worry about) I think the selection is fine, and it even has what we DJs refer to as "flow"--some of my mini-sets actually sort of work (i.e., #5-8 is the new wave/glam version of the beat, #9-11 is the psychotic subset, #16-21 explores some of the further-out reaches, etc.). I included a few cover versions of the song "Bo Diddley" (a.k.a. "Hey Bo Diddley," "Hey! Bo Diddley," and "Hey! You Haven't By Any Chance Seen Bo Diddley, Have You?") but those are limited to songs that do something interesting and different with the beat (#20, for instance, is a pretty, almost new-agey acoustic guitar version). Still, as I said--the value of making such a comp is more in the making than in the eating...it's like following a trail which you're not exactly sure where it will lead, or if in fact it will lead anywhere.

I haven't looked up the dates for all of these, but I'm pretty sure that the only recent things here--from this decade--are: #26 (I would never have guessed that it's from a kids album--it's one of my favourite versions of the song, actually), #25 (worth inclusion if for no other reason than that it's quite unusual), and #19 (which doesn't really count--I should've just gone with "Faith"). No hip-hop, you'll notice. I've seen on more than one site Bo Diddley referred to as having had some sort of "influence" on hip-hop, but aside from maybe his hat and/or his attitude (two things which count for a lot, don't get me wrong) I just don't hear it. Anyway, I don't know of a single hip-hop song that employs the Bomp-Bomp-Bomp Ba-Bomp-Bomp, but I'd love to hear one.

(I'd be happy to trade this comp for a comp of your own or something else of similar value. It set me back around 79 cents Cdn. E-mail me if you're interested.)

hotter than heck in movie critic-ville

2006-06-06T00:11:00.000-04:00

Yet more heated-up movie critic discussions (I admit defeat: it's impossible to keep up with all this).

Criticism's status quo getting thumbs down, by Anne Thompson (Hollywood Reporter). (Thanks to Don for the heads up.)

How to Write About Film...Clive James reviews American Movie Critics (the Lopate-edited anthology) in the New York Times.

James's piece seems to have the pro-theorists up in arms... See: Videoarcadia, Sugarhigh!, Film & Culture.

more on manny farber

2006-06-05T21:01:00.000-04:00

You can’t very well look a man in the eye on a daily basis when you’re stealing from him. By Duncan Shepherd in the San Diego Reader.

Discovered via...

Girish, who delves into Farber's Termite Art vs. White Elephant Art.

movie critic sticks to day job

2006-06-05T20:23:00.000-04:00

Movie Reviewing: Job? Career? Calling?

Steven Ward forwarded this along--from the blog, 2 Blowhards, a piece about opting out of being a professional movie critic, written by someone who apparently had a legitimate shot at the big-time (so to speak). This is better written than most pieces of this ilk (and in music criticism, anyway, it is indeed an ilk), though he loses me when he proposes a split between "critics" and "civilians" (a.k.a., the have to/want to struggle). Or maybe he doesn't lose me so much as handily provide the answer to his own dilemma.

quotable criticism #7

2006-06-04T22:46:00.000-04:00

"When I was a kid, Smokey's voice called to me as an exemplar of smooth cool, a surface unrippled even though heartbreak lurked just beneath. It took me years to understand that the really dangerous aspect of what Smokey (and the singers like him) were selling was the romantic stuff, not because it represents an inadequate dream (it may represent the only adequate one, since it posits grace and gentlenss and giving and love transcending lust as the greatest of all human and sexual virtues) but because it proffers an impossible reality."
--Dave Marsh, review of "Cruisin'" in The Heart of Rock & Soul

weekend 10 (june 3 edition)

2006-06-03T11:37:00.000-04:00

1. Tim Lawrence, Love Saves the Day - My interest flagged somewhat in the middle of the book, the more it delved into the minutiae of various DJ activities (who gigged at which club, who replaced which other DJ, etc.). At times, the book almost seems a bit too insider-ish, if not too democratic--insistent on giving so many obscure players and venues their due. Also, because Lawrence explicates so well on various producers and subgenres of disco (his treatment of Euro, f'rinstance, is fantastic), it makes me wish he had gone a little further in that direction instead. But those are mere quibbles, and the truth is, I learned a lot from this book, and mostly had a great time reading it and digging up tracks from the exhaustive disocgraphy. The 'disco sucks' moment is handled very well: Lawrence delves into its racist and homophobic underpinnings, while giving Steve Dahl, the Comiskey Kid, more than adequate airtime to explain himself (does he cut his own throat, you ask? pretty much). Most importantly, Lawrence doesn't draw any obvious sort of conclusions on that strange, complex moment, and much of the anti-disco vitriol he quotes comes not from racist rock jocks but from directly within the ranks--i.e., from various disco DJs of the era. (On the other hand, there's Frankie Knuckles, who memorably notes that he thought the whole Dahl episode was "hilarious.") Truthfully, though, it's Lawrence's coverage of the first couple years of the seventies I found to be the most moving. Here, the roots and the rise of the as-yet-unnamed genre--in parallel to the emergence of gay culture--reads like a rejoinder to virtually every other serious history of '70s pop music I've read: it's uplifing, idealistic, it feels like a whole world is opening up. That's not to say that, in Love Saves the Day, the '60s never happened, but rather, that the '70s did.

2. "Exuma The Obeah Man" (Exuma) - One of the stranger discoveries found through Lawrence's discography. From 1969, a stomping, wide-open afro-beat/novelty number--five Richie Havens records playing at once, and a precursor to what the Stones aimed for (and didn't quite hit--at least not as crazily) on "Sweet Black Angel."

3. "Don't Stand an Outside Chance" (the Turtles) in the Tarantino-directed episode of CSI, which recently played in re-runs. As unnerving as "Stuck in the Middle With You" was in Reservoir Dogs.

4./5. "Boom Boom Bap" & "Petrococadollar" (Scritti Politti) - Two sensuous ballads from the upcoming White Bread, Black Beer. Green doesn't merely hold his own against his earlier self (the correctly polite thing to say about most aging vocalists); I swear he's never actually sounded better.

6. Art School Confidential (dir. Terry Zwigoff) - Great--until it steps outside of the classroom, at which point you can hear the director gritting his teeth in the service of delivering a story.

7. Rolling Stone 1000th issue. I've seen this described as the "much-ballyhooed" thousandth issue, but ten minutes on Google turns up no ballyhoo whatsoever. Where has all the hatred gone?

8. Random Transit Track of the Week: "Praying for Time" (George Michael) - This sounds so pornographic--he should've called it "Love to Feed You, Baby."

9. Some great saxophone-drowning-in-echo meltdown I heard last night at some guy's house on some album by some seventies prog-rock outfit called The Audience. It seemed to last a couple minutes and was a phenomenal, beautiful accident...anyone know what it is?

10. Desmond Dekker - "Israelites" is the one most people remember (I've even played it at weddings to a lively--and surprised--response), but, perhaps because it first hit me through The Harder They Come, the one that really bowls me over is "007 (Shanty Town)." So many years after first encountering it, it still sounds spacey, unreal, weirdly distant. R.I.P.
(I wrote the above before coming across Pete Scholtes's perfect description of "Shantytown" as: "otherworldly and indecipherable." His tribute page, by the way, is excellent--by far the best I've seen.)

manny farber (art in america)

2006-06-03T10:37:00.000-04:00

Farber on Farber: In his more than 50 years as a film critic and painter, Manny Farber has brought an essentially autobiographical sensibility to bear on a wide range of visual idioms, from process-driven abstractions to rebuslike figurative studies. Here, he tells the story straight.

un-quotable criticism of the week

2006-06-02T08:47:00.000-04:00

(Both from Josh Tyrangiel's Dixie Chicks cover story in Time.)

"Country music has never been particularly classy, which is one of its principal charms. Less charming is its defensiveness about its station. Unlike rock fans, most of whom are attracted to the music's integration of styles, some country fans--particularly those who call up radio stations in a lather--take it upon themselves to patrol a wall of genre purity."
(Yes, classy rock fans certainly don't do this at all!)

"Still, as the President's support has eroded and growing numbers of Americans (presumably some country-music fans among them) have come to disapprove of both his performance and the decision to go to war..."
(I dunno, a country music fan disapproving of the President? That's a pretty bold presumption...)

friday food part 5: new home for 'music press report'

2006-06-02T07:46:00.000-04:00

Via Flaskaland: Live, online, it's the new incarnation of the Music Press Report. News and views on all the music critics that are print to fit.

friday food part 4: stylus finds an ear

2006-06-02T07:39:00.000-04:00

Meanwhile, over at Stylus, Teresa Nieman and Josh Timmerman do a second take and exchange thoughts on Blue Velvet. (It's not my favourite Lynch film by a long stretch, and I've always felt a pang of guilt about being somewhat less than enamoured by its--inarguable--ability to shock. Mind you, it's been at least ten years since I've seen it.)

friday food part 3: big screen candy

2006-06-02T07:37:00.000-04:00

Cinemarati wisely reviews movie trailers. (Cinemarati reviews movie trailers wisely? Wisely, Cinemarati reviews movie trailers?) I think you know what I'm saying...

friday food part 2: movie critics with issues

2006-06-02T07:32:00.000-04:00

Can't claim to have kept up with all of this, but two very interesting movie critic-related discussions have been taking place over at davekehr.com:

1) Grumpy Old Farts vs. Whiny Young Whelps;
2) Another One Bites the Dust (previously linked here...about the NY Daily News's dismmissal of movie critic Jami Bernard).

Haven't seen this much fun in a music blog comments box for God knows how long.

friday food part 1: white dudes with guitars

2006-06-02T07:18:00.000-04:00

In "bunch of crazy white people...," Anthony Miccio runs through "Every Billboard Modern Rock Chart #1 through 2005, listed in order of preference" (he's currently closing in on the Top 50). Though our ears occasionally seem like they're from different galaxies, I have nodded vigorously at a few of his aphorisms/one-liners (i.e., "When someone waters down another artist's innovations we get to have our cake and eat it too"), and was more than a little gratified to see the Cranberries "Salvation" in the Top 100--a great, much disparaged hard rock single that I remember being somewhat alone at the time in liking (I think in Radio On I gave it an 8.5).

quotable criticism #6

2006-06-01T07:24:00.000-04:00

"Some people believe that by 2001 rock will be entirely machine-made. Machines will be programmed so that combinations of different sounds will be left to chance. At-home listeners will have controls that will make it possible for them to 'produce' a record—speed it up, slow it down, make it louder and softer, and separate the tracks, adding, subtracting, overdubbing—to create their own version of a hit. There will be no live performances, no stages. Music will be heard with a small circle of friends, not a group of strangers."
--Lillian Roxon, 1969

quotable criticism #5

2006-05-31T19:25:00.000-04:00

"...rock has dealt with legitimacy and illegitimacy in a manner which frequently annihilates the distinction. Often something is capable of being observed as both at home in a rock context and utterly alien. When Elvis Presley followed his early hard core rock hits with a ballad, 'Love Me Tender,' the music of which had been taken from Stephen Foster, several questions arose. Could Elvis now be considered a popular musician in the 'adult,' Muzak-oriented sense? Was rock 'n' roll, not yet too many years old as an identifiable movement, on the verge of fusion with this popular mainstream? Or was Elvis about to lose his designation as a rock 'n' roll singer by flaunting 'legitimate' popular music?"
--Richard Meltzer, The Aesthetics of Rock, 1970

dirt, disaster, dna

2006-05-31T18:02:00.000-04:00

Three unrelated links I bookmarked a week ago but haven't gotten around to doing anything with just yet. Don't worry, they won't bite.

Dirt

Disaster

DNA

quotable criticism #4

2006-05-31T07:24:00.000-04:00

"She has that same sense of the power of the sentence sitting by itself and the power of the next sentence. There's no accident that she writes movies and lives with film because her work, like Hemingways, is montage. That is, there's an assumption that the reader's going to pay enough attention to each sentence so they'll feel the next sentence come into place. It's very much like cuts in a film. Sentences don't have to exist entirely by themselves; they exist by their relation to the next sentence and the echo of the sentence that just passed."
--Norman Mailer talking to Barry Leeds about Joan Didion, 1987

true confessions

2006-05-30T22:25:00.000-04:00

"When the Levee Breaks" is plodding. Though I always, until this evening, kept this scandalous thought in the back of my mind, hidden even from my own self-derision, it has always been one of my very least favourite Zeppelin songs, the sound of Bonham's drums excepted. (6.0/10)

There are thus far only two "rock" songs in 2006 that I have even a stitch of feeling for, and they are both what was once referred to as power ballads (and I think both may have been released in 2005): Daniel Powter's "Bad Day" and James Blunt's "Beautiful." In the last few weeks, three people have tried to turn me on to other recent non-r&b/non-pop/non-hip-hop tracks, but I'm a hopeless cause.

Apparently, when it comes to new rock tracks, I only like stuff that reminds me of Oasis.

When it comes to music released in the current decade, my tastes are so far from "eclectic" as to be almost laughable. And yet, I still lie to strangers when they ask me what kind of music I like: "Oh, you know, I like a bit of everything." Not even remotely true. (I'm even lying about being asked such things by strangers.)

The idea of a new Brian Eno record in 2006 is far less interesting in fact than a new Paul Simon record in 2006 (which, in itself, is pretty far from "interesting").

Outkast have exactly one great song, and yes, you know the one.

Mashups ruled--four years ago, for about fourteen seconds.

I can no longer call myself "skinny." This fact somewhat depresses me.

I haven't a clue what's happening in my own city, music-wise. In all my years of living in Toronto and writing about music, I've never had a clue about this. I have hardly ever "supported" local music.

Local music generally only interests me after the rest of the world has already jumped on the bandwagon.

I think about music far more often than I listen to it. I sometimes go two, three weeks where I hardly listen to anything. I have no immediate desire to increase this.

Often when I speak to people other than my closest friends, I find myself precisely imitating my closest friends.

Sometimes I download absurdly over-the-top synthesizer albums (by Tomita, Synergy, Jean Michel Jarre, et al.) and edit the songs into 45-second ditties. I listen to these in transit.

I own an i-pod and go through phases with it in regards to personal use, but I long ago replaced the white headphones because I don't want anyone to actually know that I own an i-pod.

I love organizing my i-tunes. Sometimes I get so into organizing it, that I stop playing the songs from it because they're distracting me from the organization. I have a personal i-tunes "style guide"--nothing makes it to my i-pod until it meets the requirements of my style guide.

last picture show

2006-05-30T22:10:00.000-04:00

More on Toronto's rep cinema closures...

Death Of A Cinema: "I've lived within a 5-minute walk of The Revue for seven years, and it's been like my living room. I've often popped in to see whatever film was playing just because I needed to zone out of the real world for a while. A lot of people feel weird going to a film by themselves, but not at The Revue, where sometimes a quarter of the people at any given film went stag. Or they just happened to meet up with a neighbour at the movie house."
(Derek Raymaker, Born With a Tail)

It's a wrap for reps...Wanted: white knight to save historic movie houses from condo development.
(Jenny Yuen, Now)

Cinema in Toronto: Three Rep Theatres to Close: "May I suggest that, if you live in downtown Toronto, you make a trek to one of these fleeting oases before they cease operations. Buy cheap popcorn, put up with dilapidated seats and sticky floors, and enjoy films as they were meant (or hoped) to be seen."
(Imaginary Magnitude)

Heaven Knows I'm Miserable Now (That They're Closing the Royal)
(Torontoist)

A notice from Midori, the Manager of the Revue: "The Revue was built in 1911 and in its 95 years has never ceased operations as an independent cinema. This makes the Revue the oldest movie house in Ontario and one of the oldest in Canada. The Kingsway was built in 1939 and the beautiful art deco building now known as the Royal was rescued from demolition in 1997 when it was set to become a parking lot. With these closures, the fabric of their neighbourhoods will be altered, where history is lost along with these business anchors."

quotable criticism #3

2006-05-30T17:31:00.000-04:00

"The cover of the June 8-14 TV Guide is a Dali masterpiece. It manifests in detail the tactile quality of the TV image. The extension of the central nervous system via electricity is environmentally indicated in the upper right corner by a segment of brain tissue. The two thumbs with the TV images on the nails are carefully separated to indicate the 'gap' or interval constituted by touch. The age of tactility via television and radio is one of innumerable interfaces or 'gaps' that replace the old connections, legal, literate and visual."
--Marshall McLuhan, letter to Pierre Trudeau, June 1968

from polka to crunk

2006-05-28T14:33:00.000-04:00

"On the eve of [the 2006 Sony Ericsson Stylus] DJ awards, Canada's top guns spin some tips to help you match cool sounds to a hot occasion." (Luke Fox, Toronto Star)

Sample:

DJ Spincycle's first wedding gig, a favour for a friend, was a complete flop. "I had no idea of anything about weddings. I was playing Big Pun, Biggie Smalls, Fugees. And there was a bunch of old people there, and they wanted polka. I had no polka. And they were storming out, like, `You suck! You're the worst DJ ever,'" laughs Spincycle, aka Ryan Cornelius, who acquired his DJ handle during a $6/hour towel-boy job at an Edmonton YMCA.

That, of course, was before he founded the city's Urban Substance Sound Crew, started the Spincycle DJ Academy and was named Warner Music's street marketing rep. On the rare occasion he's asked to spin a wedding, Cycle now brings a wide selection of records from polka to dance hits. "Start slow," he advises. "Play music for the older people because they're going to leave by 10:30, 11. And then get crunk for the younger people."

quotable criticism #2

2006-05-28T12:07:00.000-04:00

"The Beatles are not manufactured goods, but they, too, fall into this category. Other models come and go, but the Beatles are beyond fashion or gimmickry. Nobody now supposes that they will simply fade away. Already their music is performed by colleagues as varied as Ella Fitzgerald, Peter Nero and Arthur Fiedler. No history of the 1960s will be complete without a Beatle footnote."
--James Morris, "The Monarchs of the Beatle Empire," 1966

better than carrying 14-lbs of pages around with you

2006-05-28T11:59:00.000-04:00

It's hard to imagine Andy Warhol not approving of this. (Set for completion in Febuary, 2016.)

end, end of small cinemas

2006-05-28T10:21:00.000-04:00

For movie lovers, the party is over: Last small cinemas are shutting down.
(Philip Marchand, Toronto Star)

"The Revue on Roncesvalles Ave., the Royal on College St., the Kingsway and the Paradise, both on Bloor St. W., are all closing. The Fox...will almost certainly follow soon.

"'These are difficult times for the movie business and even more so for the repertoire cinemas,' Fox owner Jerry Szczur said in a news release this week. He told the Toronto Star, 'It hasn't been the same for awhile. I guess 2002 wasn't bad, but it's been downhill for the last three years.'"

He's talking bottom line there, but the truth is, in terms of content, the repertory movie scene in Toronto went downhill well before 2003. But then, I guess that depends on what your idea of a repertory movie house should be. My idea of what it can and should be dates back to the mid '80s, when I moved to Toronto, and was thrilled to discover a whole chain of movie houses that would regularly show not just non-blockbuster fare but older movies (one such rep cinema in Toronto was entirely devoted to movies from the '30s and '40s), foreign classics, and what I guess would be referred to as "cult" cinema (from Eraserhead to Russ Meyer). I viewed many of my favourite '60s and '70s movies on the big screen, not during the '70s (as a kid I was mostly just lapping up the same junk as everyone else), but in the mid-to-late '80s in Toronto's rep chain--many of the great Scorseses, Coppolas, Altmans, etc.

At some point, and I'm not sure exactly when (it was likely a gradual slide), the rep chain in Toronto switched to a "second run" format--still-current movies that were no longer in the first-run theatres, the primary advantage being of course that they were cheap. (Some of the films currently playing in the reps: V for Vendetta, Caché, Shaggy Dog, Tristram Shandy, et al.) I'm pretty sure that even by the time I arrived back in Toronto in 1993, after a few years living in Vancouver, the format change had already started, but maybe it was a bit later than that. Occasionally, there are still surprises (I notice that Eraserhead is actually playing in town now). (And Toronto's Cinematheque is still a local treasure, even if the programming is a bit hit and miss for my admittedly not-that-far-out taste.)

Still, for all the decline in programming quality, it'll be a shame to see those places close, though I say this as someone who has frequented them less and less myself over the years. Is there a sight in a city more tangled in wistful emotions than a run down closed movie theatre?

it's just that demon guide, has got you in its sway

2006-05-27T20:50:00.000-04:00

I enjoyed this piece. Hope the "high-tech PowerPoint" version eventually makes it online.

Dave Marsh-Ing My Mellow: The Rolling Stone Record Guide and the Creation Of The Canon. (Randall Roberts's EMP paper. Read more by Randall Roberts here.)

Sample:

As we arrive at this historic 27th anniversary of the first book’s publication, perhaps its time to revisit The Rolling Stone Record Guide. We’re all grown up now, and some of us have reached different conclusions. I could describe these differences in great detail. I could nitpick. I could quibble with Dave Marsh’s bullshit dismissal of X as 'directionless and abrasively unemotional.' I could giggle knowingly at now-New York Times film critic Stephen Holden’s fond affection for the Doobie Brothers. I could guffaw at the naiveté of judging the Vapors to be three times greater than Devo.

But I’m more interested in looking at the raw data. And there is a lot of it.

Said "raw data" includes a pie chart outlining the "Ethnicity of the Rolling Stone Record Guide," "Battle of the Heavy Metal Titans," and "Kraftwerk vs. .38 Special vs. Little Feat."

screeners #1: meen streats

2006-05-27T10:40:00.000-04:00

"Lord, I'm not worthy to eat your flesh, not worthy to drink your blood..." [mp3]

"You don't fuck around with the infinite, there's no way you do that..." [mp3]

"It's all bullshit except the pain, right? The pain of hell..." [mp3]

"He's just gonna give me another ten 'Hail Mary's, and another ten 'Our Fathers'..." [mp3]

"Pain in hell has two sides, the kind you can touch with your hand..." [mp3]

"You don't make up for your sins in church. You do it in the streets..." [mp3]

"Well, we play by your rules, don't we? Well--don't we?" [mp3]