Wednesday, May 22, 2002 -- 12:11 a.m.

Holy shit.

EDIT/UPDATE: Yes, I know it's a coincidence. It's still kinda weird. Thanx to J. Blount for this link to Snopes which made me laugh out loud repeatedly thanks to that picture a little ways down the page of the Canadian (?) currency.

-Nate

Tuesday, May 21, 2002 -- 10:29 p.m.

QCPM '78 tomorrow. Tonight, amuse yourself with this, because it is hilarious dammit. ("Hilarious" meaning somewhat morbid and very very bitter and possibly evil, but again, not in an Obnoxious Teenage Meatmen Fanboy way.)

-Nate

Tuesday, May 21, 2002 -- 12:57 p.m.

QCPM '78 is going to show up either later today or sometime tomorrow, depending on how long it takes me to find something insightful and interesting to say about Foxy's "Get Off". I've got the SNL "Bensonhurst Dating Game" reference down and that's about it, so it might be a while. Meanwhile, you might wanna check out this interview with a band called the Dirtbombs which is either offensive or funny or both, and not in a lame-ass South-Park-and-cheeba Newgrounds sorta way either.

(Matos: yeah, I misheard. Damn coffee grinder. Thank you for the "Not Mike" update.)

-Nate

Monday, May 20, 2002 -- 04:21 p.m.

Just heard the new Prodigy single thanks to the Magic of Audiogalaxy. It's either called "Baby's Got A Temper" or "Firestarter '02 (Still Da Bitch U Hated)". Nice to know that the Breeders are still getting royalties for the "S.O.S." sample, but that's probably the only bright side to it. Couldn't Liam have remade "Climbatize" instead?

-Nate

Monday, May 20, 2002 -- 08:47 a.m.

While I'm at it, here's a list of weird/disconcerting song titles for some of Beck's rare/live/b-side performances, from a web page devoted to finding as many of his songs as possible and transcribing the lyrics.
"Deep Fried Love"
"Diamond Bollocks"
"Headgear Jockstrap"
"Last Night I Traded My Soul's Innermost For Some Pickled Fish"
"Megaboob"
"New Age Blow Job"*
"She Fucked Me Up The Ass"*
"Slimy Power Chick"
"Today Has Been A Fucked Up Day"

*I swear to God this is not a transparent attempt to get more site hits.

-Nate

Monday, May 20, 2002 -- 08:28 a.m.

Verdict on the aforementioned Beck song: definitely Mutations-esque, and makes "Nobody's Fault But My Own" sound like "Hollywood Freaks". Sounds really sort of non-descript and semi-acoustic, though it'll probably sound different in the studio. The end of the MP3 has Beck cracking wise about the Grammys, which were to be held a couple days after this performance; he jokes that "we'll be down there to pick up our award for Best Female R&B Vocal" and then ruminates on what skimpy revealing outfit he'll wear. It's sort of disturbing.

-Nate

Monday, May 20, 2002 -- 08:09 a.m.

Happy Birthday to Me: Beck's new as-yet untitled album looks to be released around September 24, four days after I turn 25. Looks to be all Godrich-produced (the Beck album, not my birthday); the Automator tracks will probably be saved for another album so it won't be as musically schizo. (Yeah, I know: Beck, musically schizo? NO!) While I'm starting to maybe perhaps see through the Godrich-is-the-best-producer-in-the-world hype, Mutations did have some of Beck's best material, so hey. Beck also performed a couple new songs at a Recording Artists Coalition benefit earlier this year, "Lost Cause" and "Evil Things". With titles like that I can only assume they are not about robot sex. "Evil Things" is already on Audiogalaxy (performed with... uh-oh, Eddie Vedder- verdict later, after the download completes), though the only "Lost Cause" I could find involving a Beck was Jeff performing with Stevie Ray Vaughan.

I just checked out my archives and one of the links looks screwed up. That's because I didn't realize there was a character limit for link text and I tried writing a mini-synopsis of that week's themes there. BLARGH.

-Nate

Sunday, May 19, 2002 -- 11:11 a.m.

Two more things before I get to finishing my 1978 article:
-ILM: "What would an insufferable music snob's 12 CDs be?" Old, long thread that's good for a larf. Surprisingly, I am the first to mention Fugazi (and I just posted today).
-Feedback from the notorious mark s., quoted verbatim: "jared lanier has always been a complete retard, nate". But... but he invented Virtual Reality, d00d!

-Nate

Sunday, May 19, 2002 -- 12:28 a.m.

Before I go to bed: maybe I should update my 75 Albums I Need Immediately, replacing Supreme Clientele with something by Kraftwerk. I looked over a copy of The Man Machine and it had a few songs I recognized (I HEART "SPACELAB"), so how's about that one, then. Of course, this change will probably not be reflected in the actual list below, but let's pretend it is, ja?

-Nate

Saturday, May 18, 2002 -- 11:45 p.m.

Three things:
-Blazing Arrow is not as disappointing as previously alluded to here- it grew on me, I guess. Parts of it that seemed corny in a bad way now seem corny in an enjoyable Three Feet High and Rising sorta way and "Make You Feel That Way" is both lyrically dexterous and musically gorgeous, and thus the best thing Gift of Gab and Chief XCel have ever done.
-Moby was just on SNL wearing an "I HEART EMINEM" shirt and hugging a plush alien he called "Mister Spacedude". I don't care if his new album is supposed to be ass- HE RULES. (Even if his performance of "South Side" (EDIT: previously referred to as "West Side"- wow, Play had such an impact on me, heh) right now sounds pretty crap.)
-j.b.r. takes apart Jaron's arglebargle pretty damned deftly. READ IT NOW

-Nate

Saturday, May 18, 2002 -- 10:31 p.m.

Back from Walgreens with 12 individually-contained units of toxic caffeine-and-sugar bombs. Time to wrap my head around that Jaron Lanier piece, which I have decided is crazy wrong.

"Why can’t kids make up their own styles of music these days? They seem to be stuck listening to their parents’ music for the first time since electrification."

OH THE HORROR. I'm 24. My "parents' music" includes John Coltrane, Bruce Springsteen, Bob Marley, Curtis Mayfield, Patti Smith and Black Sabbath. The day I reject it and music they inspire for being held to standards created twenty-five-plus years ago is the day I get a lobotomy, grow a soul patch and start collecting Creed CDs. The antiquated notion that we should all stick to the pop ideals of our own generation and leave the previous ones for the ol' folks' home should die and die immediately; the ideas and impetus behind rock and roll/pop culture (and subsequent offspring) are always going to be there. It's more likely that they will be transformed or adapted than completely supplanted.

"I’m not complaining about how crummy the new pop music is. If only! I’m complaining that there is no new pop music to complain about... Yes there are new bands, but they almost always sound just like old bands- really old bands. "Mainstream" (white) kids are listening to the youth music of the baby boomers, which at this point is often the music their grandparents listened to. They accept either the originals or pale contemporary copies. Black or "urban" music hasn’t been stuck in freeze frame for as long, but it’s still stuck."

I should point out that this guy is 41. Maybe he's one of those wacky Ted Rall-type "DESTROY ALL BOOMERS" reactionaries or something, but still: Old-ass Beatles or Marvin Gaye or Miles Davis songs are still Beatles and Marvin Gaye and Miles Davis songs. People still listen to music written in the 18th century, so the fact that teenagers like the Rolling Stones and/or bands that sound like the Rolling Stones doesn't really frighten me all that much, sorry. The Strokes aren't going to save rock and roll, but they've got even less chance of destroying it.

"Think about Aretha and then think about what was happening ten years before her. It was a different universe. The very idea of what music was for had shifted. Think about the Beatles and think about what was around ten years before them. We are not seeing motion today, just churn."

OK, what was the 1990 equivalent of Kid A? The mid '80s answer to Entroducing? People still thought N.W.A. were astounding in 1991; what would they think of Eminem or Cannibal Ox? So Pink sounds kinda like Madonna; so the Hives have a resemblance to the Kinks. Guess what? The blues did not evaporate when Buddy Holly showed up. Folk did not wither up and die when Dylan went electric. Even disco, the single most-maligned genre ever, managed to keep its head above water well into the 1980s. The further along in the history of pop we go, the more things accumulate, and the fact that we do get a lot of music that draws on these ever-increasing influences only serves to expand our options. If you don't like garage rock or nu-metal or alt-country or jam bands or skatepunk you still have something you'll listen to and like.

Now we get to Lanier's six theories as to why he thinks music is stagnant:

"1) The first is that kids who grow up with digital technology instinctively seek to remix established cultural fragments as their method of experience and enjoyment. Pop semiotics is their natural language. After all, the last genuinely new styles (such as hip hop) were based on remixing... One sad problem might be that we’ve discovered that the language of re-use just doesn’t communicate well enough. It’s one thing to artfully remix some old R&B artist, but something very different to just rehash old music. Somehow the former seems to degrade into the latter too easily and quickly, so that you miss the smart stuff if you blink."

Funny thing: before everyone and their dog could get ahold of a sampler- even before there was such a term as "remix"- bands were already doing this. Listen to Exile on Main Street. Nothing on that album was new, forward-thinking or futuristic when it was released. Cynics and other assorted schmucks could probably call it "derivative". But (a) this is an album released 30 years ago, so digital technology is unnecessary for "remixing" established cultural fragments, and (b) it stands on its own as an individual work of music easily identifiable with its own trappings. This still counts in sampling, and those who do it in a way that utterly transcends their source are the ones that manage to get the love- listen to "The Number Song" and hear what DJ Shadow does to "Orion" (a song by Metallica, ferchrissakes), or take an hour or so to study what the Avalanches do to everything they touch on Since I Left You and tell me that it's "rehashing". You can't miss that brilliance even if your eyes are stapled shut.Oh, and do ask the Neptunes or Timbaland just how necessary sampling is to create pop music nowadays.

"2) The second theory is that the music industry is powerful enough to determine what happens and it is devoid of imagination, courage, faith, or vitality. It is populated by frustrated boomer executives who wanted to be rock stars in their youths and failed. They put their own neurotic superstitions ahead even of their greed, but they’re too powerful to realize that they’re doing it, because competition can’t get in the cracks to wake them up. They have shut down the evolution of popular music. Musicians believe this one. All of us have heard brilliant demos from kids who ought to be the new superstars but were shut out of the labels because some stiff idiot with power “couldn’t see how to market them”."

The music industry has stunk since at least the 1970s. The music industry saw punk as a fad, but punk survived (and continues to) without it. And when major labels shrugged at rap in the early '80s, an entirely new series of labels had to establish themselves and soon found themselves with huge blockbuster albums. When the next big thing crops up only to be ignored by the majors, there'll be a modern-day answer to the likes of Def Jam or Tommy Boy to pick up on it and get it to the people. Somehow this little album called White Blood Cells made it into the pages of USA Today and Rolling Stone despite the fact it was on a label so indie and out-of-the-mainstream that it named itself Sympathy For The Record Industry. Same with Sleater-Kinney- called "America's Greatest Rock Band" in Time- recording for a label called Kill Rock Stars. Think about that.

"3) Another possibility is that we don’t trust our own authenticity any more. We’re trapped in bourgeois banality. Maybe when you get up to the tippy top, vertigo-inducing, highest altitudes of Maslow’s old hierarchy, it’s mostly the quest for authenticity from a distant external source that drives people to listen to music... Maybe some vague, almost mythic interval from the 1960s into part of the 1970s was the last time well-off people in industrialized countries felt authentic. It feels plausible, but I don’t buy it entirely. If this theory were right, then you would expect to see not just good music, but shocking new styles of music arise from more recent shocking new anxieties and possibilities, just as they did in the 1960s, and in each decade before."

I think drugs might have something to do with it. But that's just me.

"The last new styles (like hip hop) were responses to digital technology, the degeneration of the urban experience, and many other things, but by now hip hop is, dare I say it, getting more than a little old."

Then find yourself some damn Anticon compilation to listen to. Jeezis.

"Outside of hip hop, digital music usually comes off as sterile and bland. Listen to a lot of what comes out of the university “computer music” world or new age ambient music and you’ll hear what I mean. Digital production usually has an overly regular beat because it comes out of a looper or a sequencer. And because it uses samples, you hear identical microstructure in sound again and again, making it seem as if the world were not alive while the music was playing."

I am wondering if this man has ever danced in his life.

"But hip hop pierced through this problem in a shocking way. It turns out these same deficits can be turned around and used to express anger with incredible intensity. A sample played again and again expresses stuckness and frustration, as does the regular beat."

And what of those hip-hop records and singles that don't express frustration and anger? What about the ones that express joy, gleeful braggadoccio, camaraderie, introspection, lust and fun? What about- and let's just keep it to rap's first decade- "The Body Rock"; "Planet Rock"; "Five Minutes of Funk"; "It's Yours"; "The Show"; "Nobody Beats the Biz"; "Push It"; "Shadrach"; "Me Myself and I"; "Humpty Dance"; "Bonita Applebum"? What about turntablism and instrumental hip-hop? Can Lanier be any more simplistic and wrongheaded here?

"Where are the new musical styles that respond to aids, biotechnology, globalization, or terrorism? The pop musical responses to 9/11 were a resurgence of the song “America the Beautiful” and a particularly lame Paul McCartney single."

Why do we have to create an entirely new musical style to address new issues? The same style of music that addressed the Great Depression also addressed the fear of nuclear war. The same style of music that addressed poverty and crime in 1960s Jamaica continued to address poverty and crime in 1980s Britain. Does the fact that it belongs to a "tired" genre like rap make "Makeshift Patriot", Sage Francis' 9/11 response, any less potent?

"4) Another potential culprit is the anemic and mean-spirited culture of the “high arts” educational and other institutions. Most young people from industrialized countries interested in music have at least a brush with a music department at a university or, outside of the United States, with a public arts funding agency. The elitism, nepotism, back stabbing, and ass kissing that saturate such institutions are highly traditional and seem to have served past musical epochs reasonably well. What is new in the last fifty years or so is the aversion to joy, the arms race of cynicism."

I can't really speak much on this, having little to no experience in this sort of area, but I'm willing to hear from people that have to get their opinion on this statement.

"5) Then there are the systemic economic arguments. Here’s a simple example of one of these: Once you have the possibility of making a lot of money from something, you have to become more conservative about taking risks because more is at stake. Now suppose that the thing you sell is only very subjectively distinguishable from its competition. You’re better off trying to squeeze out your competition (at least from the attention of the audience, if not from actual access) than you are tinkering with the product. After all, there’ll always be an audience for any barely adequate music or other entertainment, as long as you can get it noticed above the noise... According to this dismal economic mindset, our problem doesn’t have anything to do with the individuals who happen to have power in the music business right now; Anyone would be drawn into the same bad behavior in the same positions. Thus the music industry pushes clichés and kills alternatives because of market pressure, and the only way to fix it is to change the way music markets work, or the very relationship of music to capitalism. And those are very very hard things to change, not only because the current system is entrenched, but because an alternative system would be untested and might turn out to be worse."

I hate to respond to such a long statement with such a glib one-liner, but: how is this a new thing?

"6) And yet another possibility: This state of affairs isn’t unusual. It’s the normal coming of age of a culture. We denizens of postmodernity now have a canon just as every culture before us has had. There’s nothing new or unusual about that. It took us a few centuries to get here and now we’ve arrived. We don’t need no new culture."

Maybe. Hell, it doesn't seem to be worth working yourself into a lather over, then. Personally, I'd worry a lot more about the need to create a new culture when the current one starts to really, really suck. I've bought enough new albums I like to assume we're still a ways off from that point.

-Nate

Saturday, May 18, 2002 -- 08:30 p.m.

This guy thinks music is stagnant and he's got some theories why. Seems halfway between erudite and completely wrongheaded. Not sure which of those it really is yet, though. I'd elaborate but I gotta run to Walgreen's for some Pepsi and maybe some nachos or somethin'.

-Nate

Saturday, May 18, 2002 -- 06:43 p.m.

The 75 Albums I Need Immediately is down to 74 now that I got a used copy of Ghostface Killah's Supreme Clientele. Verdict after listening to the first 6 tracks: nice as hell, best intro skit ever, and when he just goes off Ghost's abstract enough to put Anticon heads to shame. Gotta take car-geek umbrage at "Ghost Deini"'s reference to a "booger-green '68 Pacer", though, since those didn't come around 'til '75.

-Nate

Friday, May 17, 2002 -- 01:04 p.m.

Retroactive correction: That Pink song I mentioned before during my foray into Topfortyland is not called "My Own Worst Enemy" but is actually called "Don't Let Me Get Me". I found this out while going to Audiogalaxy to download looking for information on "Get the Party Started" which I like 'cos it's whockachicka funky. That is all.

-Nate

Friday, May 17, 2002 -- 12:29 p.m.

75 Albums I Need Immediately
In the extremely unlikely event I am alloted a thousand-dollar CD-purchasing budget, this is my shopping list of albums that I inexplicably do not have and must get within the next couple years.

Aphex Twin, Selected Ambient Works 85-92
Bad Brains, I Against I
Big Star, #1 Record
Bjork, Post
Blondie, Parallel Lines
Blur, The Great Escape
Brand Nubian, One For All
James Brown, Star Time
Built to Spill, Perfect From Now On
Can, Tago Mago
Captain Beefheart, Trout Mask Replica
Johnny Cash, Live at San Quentin
Cheap Trick, Live at Budokan
Clinic, Internal Wrangler
Common, Resurrection
Elvis Costello, My Aim Is True
The Cure, Faith
The Damned, Damned Damned Damned
Dead Boys, Young, Loud and Snotty
The Delfonics
Dismemberment Plan, Change
Ian Dury and the Blockheads, New Boots and Panties
Missy Elliott, Miss E... So Addictive
EPMD, Strictly Business
The Fall, This Nation's Saving Grace
Flaming Lips, The Soft Bulletin
Gang of Four, Entertainment!
Gang Starr, Step In The Arena
Marvin Gaye, Whats' Going On
Ghostface Killah, Supreme Clientele
Al Green, Let's Stay Together
Isley Brothers, 3 + 3
Joy Division, Unknown Pleasures
J-Zone, Pimps Don't Pay Taxes
Magazine, The Correct Use of Soap
Magnetic Fields, 69 Love Songs
Meat Beat Manifesto, Satyricon
Mekons, Fear and Whiskey
The Meters
Charles Mingus, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady
Minutemen, Double Nickels on the Dime
Mission of Burma, Signals, Calls and Marches
Moby, Everything is Wrong
Thelonious Monk, Thelonious In Action
Morphine, Cure For Pain
Van Morrison, Astral Weeks
My Bloody Valentine, Loveless
Neu!
New Order, Substance
Gary Numan, The Pleasure Principle
Parliament, Funkentelechy vs. the Placebo Syndrome
Pavement, Slanted and Enchanted
Iggy Pop, The Idiot
Prefuse 73, Vocal Studies + Uprock Narratives
Public Enemy, It Takes A Nation Of Millions To Hold Us Back
Pulp, This Is Hardcore
R.E.M., Murmur
Redman, Whut? Thee Album
Lou Reed, Transformer
Archie Shepp, Mama Too Tight
The Skatalites, Foundation Ska
Sleater-Kinney, The Hot Rock
The Stone Roses
Suicide Commandos Make A Record
Talking Heads, More Songs About Buildings And Food
Tom Waits, Swordfishtrombones
Ultramagnetic MCs, Critical Beatdown
v/a, American Pop: An Audio History
v/a, Harlem World: The Sound of Big Apple Rappin'
v/a, Tougher Than Tough: The Story of Jamaican Music
Van Halen
Weezer, Pinkerton
Wire, Pink Flag
Stevie Wonder, Innervisions
Wu-Tang Clan, Enter the Wu-Tang (36 Chambers)

-Nate

Friday, May 17, 2002 -- 10:37 a.m.

75 Albums That Changed Everything For Me
Some of these albums are classic. Some of them are mediocre. Some of them are by bands that've done better. All of them shaped my musical taste. This might help explain some things. (Sorry if it looks like the kind of albums Spin would pick.)

Air, Premieres Symptomes
Avalanches, Since I Left You
John Barry, Goldfinger
Basement Jaxx, Rooty
Beach Boys, Pet Sounds
Beastie Boys, Ill Communication
Beatles, Revolver
Beck, Mellow Gold
Boogie Down Productions, Edutainment
David Bowie, Heroes
Broadcast, The Noise Made By People
Buzzcocks, Singles Going Steady
Cannibal Ox, The Cold Vein
Chemical Brothers, Dig Your Own Hole
The Clash, London Calling
John Coltrane, Giant Steps
Company Flow, Funcrusher Plus
Daft Punk, Discovery
Miles Davis, Kind of Blue
De La Soul Is Dead
Dead Kennedys, Plastic Surgery Disasters
DJ Shadow, Entroducing
The Doors, Strange Days
The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
Elastica
Eric B. and Rakim, Follow the Leader
Fatboy Slim, Better Living Through Chemistry
Funkadelic, Free Your Mind and Your Ass Will Follow
Girls Against Boys, Cruise Yourself
Grandaddy, The Sophtware Slump
Hawkwind, Space Ritual Alive In Liverpool and London
Isaac Hayes, Hot Buttered Soul
Richard Hell and the Voidoids, Blank Generation
The Jimi Hendrix Experience, Electric Ladyland
The Jam, Sound Affects
Lifter Puller, Half Dead and Dynamite
Bob Marley and the Wailers, Exodus
Massive Attack, Mezzanine
Curtis Mayfield, Superfly
The Modern Lovers
Mos Def & Talib Kweli Are Black Star
Nirvana, Nevermind
Orbital, In Sides
ost, Repo Man
ost, The Harder They Come
Outkast, Stankonia
Pink Floyd, Dark Side of the Moon
Portishead
Prodigy, Fat Of The Land
Radio Birdman, The Essential 1974-1978
Radiohead, OK Computer
Ramones
The Replacements, Hootenanny
The Rolling Stones, Let It Bleed
RUN-D.M.C., Raising Hell
Never Mind the Bollocks, Here's the Sex Pistols
Sly and the Family Stone, Stand!
Patti Smith Group, Horses
Sonic Youth, Dirty
Soundgarden, Superunknown
The Specials
Bruce Springsteen, Darkness on the Edge of Town
The Stooges
Supergrass
Peter Thomas Sound Orchestra, Futuremuzik
A Tribe Called Quest, The Low End Theory
v/a, Harthouse: The Point of No Return Chapter 1
v/a, Ninja Cuts: Funkungfusion
Velvet Underground, Loaded
White Stripes, White Blood Cells
The Who, Who's Next
Wilco, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Yo La Tengo, And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out
Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention, Freak Out!

-Nate