Sunday, August 25, 2002 -- 08:24 a.m.

It's mea culpa time. Checking back through my blog archives I've noticed more than a handful of entries that read pretty poorly or expressed opinions in a hamfisted way. Please accept my apologies for the following stupidity (and the lack of direct links):
5-14-02: Please love my blog. I get these moments of angst once in a while but I have since learned to either (a) cultivate them into an article about something instead of just moping in a general sense or (b) not post at all. I do head in the right direction for acknowledging some of the problems with the way I express my musical tastes, but I also manage to whine about ILM rather vocally.
5-15-02: Keith Harris is a meanypants. I actually got an e-mail from him yesterday clarifying what he meant exactly by those statements I found offensive, and in retrospect I think what happened is the part in my brain that controls reading comprehension immediately shut off when I read his cracks about Beck. I don't particularly feel like going back and reading the article again just in case, but I don't think Keith was being the antagonistic snot-nose I thought he was being.
7-10-02: NATE SMASH VILLAGE VOICE! I still think all of these articles are pretty stupid but I feel guilty about not going more in depth as to why I thought they were (and in the case of Christgau, it's probably just that he has a different opinion on the N*E*R*D album, which I can't really go after actually).
7-18-02: The Jaguaro thing. Why in the hell should I have even cared about this article? Yeah, it got linked everywhere and was up for discussion on many a website, but it's so poorly-written and reasoned that it probably wasn't worth the effort. Especially when the effort is one-line defenses that sound like something a high school sophomore would write. I think this is also one of the reasons I have a rep on ILM for being "Nate, the guy who questions your mental health if you do not like an album".
7-29-02: My REAL year-end write-up won't be this lame, I swear to God. "These Welsh kids are on a huge dose of Goofathol and thank God for that." Now I'm fairly straight-edge in regards to consumption of narcotics but seriously: was I high when I wrote that? Possibly on crack? Really, really BAD crack?

-Nate

Saturday, August 24, 2002 -- 06:25 p.m.

I'm not embarrassed to walk in the local record store and snag a copy of Thriller because of some uneasy pop guilt -- hell, I was an impressionable kid in '82/'83 and I thought then and think now that "Beat It" and "Billie Jean" and the title track are all unimpeachable classics. No, the reason I am embarrassed to buy a copy of Thriller is neatly outlined here. I know Jacko deconstruction is old hat (and also pretty depressing) but this page does a good job of it. It also throws around a couple potential urban legends I haven't heard about -- like the fact that he had permanent facial hair electrolysis in 1987 which led him to... well... this: "Rumor has it he transplanted some pubic hair to his jaw to try to make a Goatee in an attempt to butch up , but the thought is too repulsive to dwell on." Be forewarned: the last two pictures are, whether real or fake, extremely fucking horrendous.

-Nate

Tuesday, August 20, 2002 -- 08:18 p.m.

The Clash are great. Fugazi are boring.

I'm not at liberty to say why. Or maybe I am but I don't feel like it. Maybe I assume it should be immediately obvious to even the most simple-minded individual. Why? Because it's a concrete fact. Clash=great, Fugazi=boring, end of discussion.

Think about that for a while. How did you react to those statements? Did you nod in agreement or roll your eyes or rush to your blog to post about how you are going to kick my ass for such blasphemy? Did you agree with both statements? Just the former? Just the latter? Neither? And in doing so, did you decide to appraise my musical taste, knowledge and mindset? Did you just up and say "this imbecile has no idea what real music is"?

That's what I've been contemplating lately re: music criticism and dialogue. I've wondered about why there's such a thing as a critical consensus and a canon, about why writers feel the way they do about music and choose to express it in such authoritative terms -- "Best Rock and Roll Band In America"; "The Future of Rock"; "[Band name] has come to save rock"; even "best album of the year" seems sort of meaningless to me. Should I believe Greil Marcus when anoints some record or another as a work of greatness when he curtly dismissed Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (a record I admire, if not love) as a shoddy attempt at remaking Revolver? Should you give half a damn what I have to say after I called the band that changed your life "boring"?

No. But Greil and I and thousands upon thousands say it anyway because, and this is pure theory on my part, we don't really know or care who our audience is. There's different levels of commitment to this whole Pop Music Fandom thing and once you get past a certain level into one of the higher echelons most of it seems to be fairly solipsistic. "Here is the music I listened to today. Here is my opinion. Here are a stray fact or two, a comparison, an analogy and my final conclusion. I suppose you could call this opinion though I really think it should merely be inferred." Oh sure, I could go into great lengths as to why I thought the hypothetical Clash are great and why the hypothetical Fugazi are boring, but no amount of flowery prose or steely-gazed deconstruction are likely to sway you from your opinion. Even when a writer I like and agree with at least 75% of the time lets slip with a backhand or a curt dismissal of a song or an album or a band I've invested a lot of emotion in my distrust kicks in right away. Ben Hamper's Rivethead is one of the best works of non-fiction I've ever read and the story of his life on the assembly line is engaging as hell but that doesn't mean his dislike of Bruce Springsteen makes me want to toss out my E Street Shuffle LP.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that it seems like a somewhat depressing exercise to exhibit one's musical tastes as a guide or an arbiter of anything whatsoever. I'm not an authority on pop music, even if I listen to it as often as possible during my waking life. I throw things at you and try to figure out what readers catch, what they drop, what they throw back (whether towards my hands or directly at my groin). Really, my taste shouldn't really count for that much. What should count is the potential for you to find something, anything that you like. Somewhere there is probably some reader who has stumbled across this blog and snorted in derision at some of the things I say, but then they run across some mention of a band somewhere that seems intriguing and somehow this asshole writer who has just shat on Ian MacKaye and placed some poser white-reggae punklets on a pedestal has by sheer luck managed to turn them on to their new favorite band.

Sorry if that sounded maudlin, but identity crises tend to do that sometimes.

-Nate

Saturday, August 17, 2002 -- 09:25 p.m.

Your host:

(Yes, I realize my vandyke needs some maintenance and I have a weird rash on my neck. Eh, I've been uglier.)

-Nate

Thursday, August 15, 2002 -- 08:33 p.m.

I promised a "part two" to my Beck concert review but to be honest there wasn't much of note else that happened (other than great performances, at least). He pulled out a couple solo piano covers, including a semi-comedic (and non-falsetto) cover of Prince's "Raspberry Beret" rewritten in the first verse to be about Barney and a faithful, nicely-warbled version of the Velvet Underground's "Sunday Morning". He also performed a cover of the old folk standard "The Banks of the Ohio", which was followed up by a comment about how most people don't realize how grisly some of these old folk songs could be. He also did a couple short encores, closed with "Cold Brains" (which does hold up without all the studio psychedelia that sparkled it up all pretty on Mutations) and left everyone more or less happy. Oh, and I got a t-shirt. The end.

-Nate

Wednesday, August 14, 2002 -- 09:45 p.m.

Yeah, another few days with no update. Monday my excuse involved busting my ass to finish my Southsidecallbox articles at the last moment, but Tuesday I wasted two hours watching the laughable Rock Star on HBO (a movie that supposedly took place in the mid '80s yet felt nothing like the mid '80s), and today I just sat around doing not all that much. Working full-time doesn't seem to put much of a crimp in my freelancing but when it comes to just sitting down and spilling out words about music just for the hell of it I'm just too tired. Add in the fact that there hasn't been an album I've been really excited about since The Private Press dropped a few months ago and maybe the malaise has deeper roots than I tho--

No, to hell with this. You know what? I owe you people a Beck concert review.

First off, the setlist. Notice the attached Star Tribune review which mistakenly refers to Beck's last name as "Henson". Jeezis.

So he came on about twenty minutes late and blamed the airport and/or transportation, mentioning that "never before has anyone paid so much attention to my shoes" (or something to that effect). A bit of small talk and then he opens with "Pay No Mind", which got a huge round of applause and a brief attempted sing-along. Beck fucked with some of the lyrics -- "a giant dildo crushing the sun" became "a ghetto blaster blastin' the sun", and he omitted the last verse to go on a bit of a monologue about how he went to various protests in the early-mid '90s to perform ("there wasn't a lot to protest," he claimed), and how the cops would chase him and his harmonica headgear would keep bouncing up and hitting him in the face, so he'd have to do subsequent protest appearances wearing a catcher's mask. Immediately he shoots above Henry Rollins on my list of Rock Stars Who Could Do Good at Standup Comedy.

A few other songs were performed and well-received -- "Lazy Flies" was brief but fun; "Lost Cause" was one of the new songs people seemed to like (even if it still doesn't make much of an impression on me coming through computer speakers); a wonderfully-sung cover of "Devil Got My Woman" was preceeded by a brief, amusing story of how a California kid in the mid '80s discovered the blues (answer: A Michelob commercial); "Jack-ass" managed to shimmer even without the Them piano sample. It all seemed to blur together nicely in a warm haze of muggy August folk-blues, and between the amusing stage patter and the soulfully earnest musical performances I was getting to see firsthand how versatile of a performer Beck was.

Then he brought out the electronic toy beatbox guitar.

If you want to get into some big shit about postmodern irony and the folly of mock-authencity and the belittling of Real Music(tm) brought on by this bizarre little impromptu Piece For Toys'R'Us Merchandise in D Minor then you go right ahead. Me, I saw this skinny mop-head traipsing around with this absurd piece of equipment improvising a bit of found-object weirdo-funk with a plastic Flying V that barked "One man band!" in a "street" voice and I laughed. I couldn't help it. It could have been a comedy interlude or a smart, funny little commentary on the way that music is repackaged and plasticized and marketed to small children. Either way, the contrast between this bit and the next performance was startling.

Next thing that happens is this: Beck adjusts the mic stand so it's down at its lowest point, crouches next to a recorder in a somewhat introverted-looking pose, and proceeds to churn out a stark, haunting rendition of "Nobody's Fault But My Own" -- probably the most beautiful song he's ever written -- and holds the entire audience completely rapt. It's an astounding transformation, from rock'n'roll prop comic to a left-field auteur, and it's at about this time that I'm trying to recall any musician -- or actor, or writer, or anyone in a performance media -- who could succeed on both levels like Beck just did. Wes Anderson, maybe.

Part two tomorrowish.

-Nate