Q/A Session
Less than a week in operation, I've been getting some brilliant commentaries. I'd like to address them properly in the Question/Answer format.
Q: radiobutt used to be the best site. this site is lame.
A: Dear k, I'm aware I'm alienating 70-90% of the former RBM readership. As long as they're people like you I'm ok with that.
Q: yeah radiobutt used to be cool.. this is stupid
A: Dear y, thank you for your constructive criticism.
Q: this site should be renamed radioasshole
A: That sounds very catchy, actually.
Q: Do not let yourself fall into the cliche of the crusty old fart clinging to old retro records making statements like ‘modern music is shite’. If you feel that modern music is shite then you are listening to the wrong stuff…or you just plainly feel irrelevant to what you are hearing.
D: Since this comment is not actually retarded I'd like to address it more seriously. Dear anon, I don't think I can 'fall into an old fart cliche' because It's very likely we were born +/- 5 years within the same time period. Which means we grew up around more or less the same music. In the course of running RBM for almost four years I've had a pleasure of running through my ears more 'modern' music than any normal person would. So I think you should spare me the 'wrong stuff' part. Of course not all the "modern music is shite"*, that'd be a pretty idiotic generalization. Just for you anon, I'll run the next post about a 'modern' album I really like. Relax, and don't take the new RBM as an assault on your personal lifestyle (though it probably is).
Allright. That's it for this week. Keep your scorn coming and remember, there is a Scorn/Submit button at the top of the page if you think your message is too strongly worded for the public eyes. Your message would be duly taken into consideration, printed out, and disposed of in an eco-friendly way.
The Velvet Underground
I guess it's time. The Velvet Underground, one of the greatest rock bands of all time, did so much for the music asking for so little. Frankly, Richman (of the former The Modern Lovers) said it all. On 1992 I, Jonathan he captured the essence and the novelty of VUG with striking detail. Let's hear the praise for The Velvet Underground from a musician and a devoted fan, then.
They were wild like the USA, a mystery band in a New York way. Rock and roll, but not like the rest, and to me America at it's best. How in the world were they making that sound? Velvet Underground. A spooky tone on a Fender bass, played less notes and left more space. Stayed kind of still, looked kinda shy, kinda far away, kinda dignified. How in the world were they making that sound? Velvet Underground.
Now you can look at that band and wonder where all that sound was coming from with just 4 people there. Twangy sounds of the cheapest types, sounds as stark as black and white stripes, bold and brash, sharp and rude, like the heats turned off and you're low on food. How in the world were they making that sound? Velvet Underground. Like this...
Wild wild parties when they start to unwind. A close encounter of the thirdest kind. On the bandstand playing, everybody's saying: "How in the world were they making that sound?" Velvet Underground. Well you could look at that band and at first sight say that certain rules about modern music wouldn't apply tonight. Twangy sounds of the cheapest kind, like "Guitar sale $29.99," bold and brash, stark and still, like the heats turned off and you can't pay the bill. How in the world were they making that sound? Velvet Underground.
Both guitars got the fuzz tone on, the drummer's standing upright pounding along. A howl, a tone, a feedback whine. Biker boys meet the college kind. How in the world were they making that sound? Velvet Underground.
Wild wild parties when they start to unwind, a close encounter of the thirdest kind. On the bandstand grooving, everybody moving. How in the world are they making that sound? Velvet Underground.
As my economics professor used to say, "If you don't know where to start, start from the very beginning." Self-titled The Velvet Underground & Nico was released in 1967 to much critical acclaim, little revenue and having spanned a million new bands impressed by how much one can do musically with a few cheap instruments. Lou Reed, John Cale, Nico, and Andy Warhol's cover art (in the early edition the banana could be peeled revealing flesh-colored fruit underneath) - the album couldn't help becoming a classic. 'I'm Waiting for the Man' is a song about a guy waiting for his drug dealer. To buy some $26 worth of heroin it is.
Short attention span
You don't see something as an issue until it's in the media. And I guess it becomes a real issue when pop media starts joking about it. Maybe it's naive and I haven't lived long enough but I was really surprised to see the shortening attention span being mentioned on HBO's Mr. Show back in 1997:
(Put on that John Cale track at the bottom of the post now)
For me twitter is the royal epitomization of our ever shortening attention spans. Disclaimer: I like twitter, but let's take it for what it is. In the ancient times of telegraphy, beepers and then SMS-ing the length of a message was defined primarily by technical constraints. Today we've got ourselves email with virtually unlimited storage capacity, Skype, huge hard drives and broadband. In such environment twitter's 160-characters limitation is a completely voluntary imposition for which it seems to be greatly loved.
My friend who's a journalist was telling me the other day about people stalking him on twitter. He said he was fine with engaging in 160-characters discourse as long as they don't ask him for his Skype name. He didn't want to exchange the information taking up more than one SMS. Striking, I thought. Is twitter a blessing for people who have little time or little to say? Probably both, but I'd pick the former.
Our shortening attention spans are not syndromes but symptoms. It's a fact demonstrated by many species including humans and peacocks that when there's no threat from the outside animals of the same species compete between themselves which might lead to evolutionary dead-ends. In peacocks' case it's their enormous tails that obstruct their mobility but help secure females. In our case it's the ever fastening pace of life brought about economic competition. We live ever faster, getting ulcers and nervous breakdowns for no apparent reason. We have very little time for anything let alone entertainment. That's where I start talking about music.
It's probably a very rational choice to listen to the bad music. With little time to spare there's none to engage with a song and let it grow on you. More than ever we want an immediate hook, get our fix and go do something more productive. No wonder classical music died long time ago and minimalism peaked at 60-70's. Yet who would disagree that engaging with good music pays off in the long run. It's like buying cheap sneakers every 3 months or wearing a better brand for a few years. A matter of taste really.
So here, try it on, 'Amsterdam' from John Cale's Vintage Violence released in 1970. John Cale is one of the most successful Velvet Underground spin-offs and a cult figure on his own. 'Amsterdam' is a slow-paced and rather simple song that has an enormous potential of growing on you after a few spins. The lyrics being meaningful and coherent as it is are rumored to allude to Cale's exile from The Velvet Underground bringing some additional depth to the song.
Discovery (Channel)
Discovery Channel is redundant and uninformative. But who said the TV should inform? I used to love the channel so very much, but now I see that Discovery is full of it as well. They've got this formula, be it a series about building or fishing: people are doing their thing, the time starts to press, everybody gets nervous, everybody tries hard (an occasional "fuck" gets blipped to spice things up) and finally overcomes the obstacle. There's five minutes tops of any useful information.
But I've got the give the Discovery a credit for one thing: they pick some kick ass tunes for their promos. A year ago or so I remember watching a full-of-drama commercial about "Events that shook the world" and hearing the beautifully doomy
Too late to beg you or cancel it
Though I know it must be the killing time
Unwillingly mine
It turned out to be 'The Killing Moon' by Echo & the Bunnymen. It also turned out to be one of my favorite songs ever.Besides the haunting lyrics and the post-punk drama there was something different about 'The Killing Moon'. I've struggled until I saw a piece at AMG that made sense: "the band made an atypical move in the arrangement of this song by modulating upward for the chorus; historically, the upward modulation is used to signify happiness or the release of tension, and its use in the midst of the minor-key melancholy of the verse melody makes a huge dynamic shift in the song." Impressive. Reminds me of Man Bites Dog where you kinda like the quirky serial killer until you see his brutality in action. Disturbing for the sake of art so to speak.
Sprawl II, Chassagne, Blondie
When Funeral came out I really thought Arcade Fire should have left singing to Win. I made peace with Regine Chassagne on Neon Bible mostly because 'No Cars Go' went somewhere 'Haiti' never attempted to. And now The Suburbs. This record is not shite (r), but right now, 20-30 spins after, it feels the songs already start fading, all except 'Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)'. Arguably the best track on the album, Sprawl II benefits from Chassagne finally letting her voice loose. It doesn't sound whiny or soupy or flat anymore. In the post-Newsom era it sounds, um, "interesting", and "lively", and "immediate".
And every other review of The Suburbs compares 'Sprawl II' to Blondie's 'Heart of Glass'. Maybe they are right but that's just annoying to see Blondie mentioned so often and is not really something I want to dig deep into. So instead I went to Google Images to get pictures of Chassagne and Harry (Blondie) so I could make a joke about their similar scull structures making their voices sound similarly (and making their band members play similar bubbly riffs). What struck is not even that their scull shapes are different, but the general quality of those pictures. Chassagne is often with Win or other AF people in the picture, or with an instrument, often shot from terrible angles. Harry, by contrast, gets close airbrushed shots and is so rarely by the mike you aren't sure she even sings. ... There isn't a clear cut punchline at the end of this paragraph. Only that Harry looks somewhat better than Chassagne, but Chassagne is a somewhat better musician than Harry. And vice versa.
Arcade Fire - Sprawl II (Mountains Beyond Mountains)
Television
Television sound so cozy it's hard to take them seriously. And that's what happened in 1977 upon the release of Marquee Moon, the band's first album. Having emerged in the midst of the New York's punk scene, they got some spins in the UK with the single 'Prove It' and failed to get any substantial traction in the US.
All that to an overwhelming critical acclaim, as usual. They somewhat failed commercially not for coziness reasons, however. Back in the 70's Television were still a bit too left-field: ditching bluesy progressions prevailing in the American punk of their predecessors and opting out completely to the raw garage sound, Television created a new dimension of what would later fork from punk into the new wave. It wasn't the brainy Velvet Underground anymore, yet it wasn't the straightforward punk of The Ramones either. Television kept the guitars raw, but added sparseness and the progressive element uncommon to the 70's punk scene. The lyrics didn't help them blend-in either. Check out a piece from their 10+ minute epic 'Marquee Moon':
Well a Cadillac
it pulled out of the graveyard.
Pulled up to me
all they said "get in".
Then the Cadillac
it puttered back into the graveyard.
And me, I got out again.
Today Television do sound cozy and sometimes even too poppy. But that's because we've all heard it many times before. Before from the bands that came after. And there's a bitter joke somewhere here. Television spun or influenced bands as various as Fugazi, U2, Yah Yeah Yeahs and The Killers among many others.
Modern music is shite
Modern music is not just derivative. We are supposed to live in a post-modernist world (and some are even pushing for the brave new post-post-modernist world - but that's just a load of reactionist crap and a whole different story) and derivative doesn't seem to mean getting inspired and adding something of one's own. It looks like all we got is a pastiche, a hodgepodge of borrowed ideas that are supposed to mold into something new. But they usually don't. They're only good for people that don't know better and that's a huge market. To know better it's fun too look back once in a while.
The Modern Lovers
What an incredibly cheesy name for a band. And yet they managed to make some first-class rock history. Founded in 1970 by Jonathan Richman, The Modern Lovers is now considered a highly influential proto-punk outfit. What's proto-punk? Well, it's when you are doing punk rock but you don't know about it because it doesn't yet exist. What's punk rock? Well, it's a fast, energetic, three cord tune with politically-charged anti-establishment lyrics. What's lyrics? Well, here's an example by Sex Pistols, the toughest motherfuckers punk rock has ever seen:
God save the queen
The fascist regime
They made you a moron
A potential H bomb
God save the queen
She ain't no human being
And there's no future
In England's dreaming
Back to The Modern Lovers, though. Richman, today a cult persona himself, have become infatuated by The Velvet Underground while still in high school. Back in 70's, when rock was hard and complicated, VUG came as a breath of fresh (and commercially unsuccessful) air: cheap guitars, simple tunes, provocative lyrics. After school Richman left for New York and, working odd jobs and sleeping on VUG manager's couch, had a chance to get personally acquainted with the band. Having returned to Boston, Richman, as many other people inspired by VUG, started a band.
The Modern Lovers in it's original lineup had had a short run of four years having disbanded in 1974. "Posthumously" they have released a self-titled LP in 1976. It was produced by John Cale (of VUG, formerly) and contained a load of kick-ass tunes including "Roadrunner" and "Pablo Picasso", which were later covered by many artists and on multiple occasions.
"Pablo Picasso" is the greatest song you'll hear this year. It's is like Joe Pesci chewing on a toothpick: cool, cocky, and utterly funny. In his nasal and all jerky voice, Richman tells the story of Pablo Picasso, who, unlike you, have never been called an asshole trying to pick up a girl. Not in New York at least.
Well the girls would turn the color
Of the avocado when he would drive
Down their street in his El Dorado
He could walk down your street
And girls could not resist his stare
Pablo Picasso never got called an asshole
If something like The Modern Lovers existed today, it wouldn't be called proto-punk. It wouldn't be called punk either. Richman and Co. have crafted a really futuristic sound, predicting the new wave and indie of the 80's well ahead. That's some "ahead of the curve" performance.