Choosing To Remain Uncool

I've decided to come to terms with the fact that what I do will almost never be considered cool, and what is considered cool is far too methodically contrived for me to ever aspire to.

I'm reading a record review, published yesterday, that makes me sick to my stomach over both the album reviewed and the reviewer's so-called "style". I'm sure the album would be acceptable on its own merits, "acceptable" being key here, but I'll be damned if I just get angry when I re-read the article.

The record in question is one that I will not name, but I will say that it's by an artist that in certain limited circles, is critically lauded, and put out one so-called landmark album at the turn of the decade. The new record apparently shows his newfound love of black metal (no it's not Sonic Youth, they've been teasing us with that one for decades), and as this artist is neither a black metal artist, or, for that matter, very prolific, it's being taken as a big deal.

Big fucking deal, guys. For all the claims that this new album shows the influence of Xasthur and Leviathan, it doesn't really sound like it, and while every review I've read in advance of this album mentions that fact, it's completely out of the way by the third or fourth paragraph. Maybe due to the fact that despite the artist saying that, there is NO INDICATION WHATSOEVER on the record of any black metal influence. If a few moments of moody, runbling, dark sound is black metal, I've heard somebody fart a Burzum album on the subway.

The rest of the review spends time talking saying things like the following:

The story, then, emerges from the way these songs alternatingly devour or are born from the smoldering ashes of one another, clear skies giving way to ferocious muddle, which in turn begets light and insight anew. The lyrics, appropriately, deal in fundamental dualities. "My Heart Is Not at Peace" and "Summons" each posit wind as both "destroyer" and "revealer," "Ancient Questions" pits doubt against a sense of purpose, and closer "Stone's Ode" is divided into two distinct movements, one assured and awash in the clarity of day, one less so and detailing the onset (literal and metaphorical, one assumes) of night.

Which states, in a very elaborate fashion, nothing at all. Or at least that the author finally got his degree in comparative literature. What I glean from that Faulkner-esque bluster is that there are two different kinds of songs and sounds on the record, which are different. Maybe all the flailing adjectives were being used to cover up the fact that there's not much to the record?

I've heard the record. It's alright. It's not offensively irritating, like some other rather well-hyped records this year. But it's BORING. Painfully so, in my opinion. Hey, this artist is selling more records than I ever will, and his fanbase adores him, I've talked to him on the phone and he's totally a nice guy, and if this is what he loves doing, more power to him and him alone. But if this is part of what defines "cool", count me the fuck out. Not all music has to be rock and roll, but does everything "cool" these days have to be creaking wooden guitars and theremins? Can we please have some rock back now? That Dead Weather album was pretty good, but a man cannot live on it alone.

So that's my new location. Me, standing over here, not sulking in the center, angry at why people think certain things are "cool", but giving the finger to them while I crank up my Wire records* in my headphones. It's all a self-feeding cycle of bullshit music and hipper-than-thou hyping, so can't we please put them all on an island, let them have the big indie rock orgy, and then cut the radio lines to the island, letting it go on and on forever?

*[Although I haven't always liked Wire, their critical cache has remained constant over the years, so naturally, I only listen to them because it's hip. No wait, that's all those other fuckers that do that. I like Wire 'cause they're good.]

Noise Annoys: The Best Of 2009, Continued

3. The Big Pink - "A Brief History Of Love"
"Velvet" was my favorite new song of the year. I heard it, I loved it, I raved about it to anyone that would listen. Huge and intimate at the same time, bombastic and dreamy, it was like if My Bloody Valentine wrote anthems, or Coldplay with a lesson in Jesus and Mary Chain, but not garbage. The follow-up, "Dominos", was far more arena-chant (one friend called it Happy Mondays-esque) than I expected, but even after one listen I couldn't get it out of my head. The full-length doesn't have the concentrated perfection of "Velvet", but it's an astoundingly large-sounding record that never loses faith in it's big-beat shoegaze testifying.

2. Metric - "Fantasies"
An unexpected entry, as Metric has never really thrilled me in the past, although I've certainly not had anything bad to say about them. This one is a modern pop platter - emphasis on the modern - that sounds to me like if all the teen-poppers actually rocked. Catchy like the plague, intricate production, melodies that sigh and wail, with a sheen of glistening, icy, mirror-ball synths. It's the soundtrack to the party that everyone was invited to but nobody showed up at, so you just dance anyway. And extra credit to them for finally asking, on the album's highlight, "Who would you rather be? The Beatles or the Rolling Stones?"

1. A Place To Bury Strangers - "Exploding Head"
Noise Noise Noise. Sure they may be knocking off their noise-gaze forebears, but they're doing it better and with more style and consistency than anyone else. Their live show is stroke-inducingly strobe-a-rific, and the buzzing sighed vocals, white noise avalanche of guitars, and thundering robotic rhythm section are maybe one of the best things going these days. While the re-recording of "Everything Always Goes Wrong" is, in this writer's opinion, inferior to its earlier EP incarnation, the album version still annihilates any competition.

Guerrilla Warfare: Appropriation In A Post-Contextual World

The first time I heard M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes", I was really put off by the fact that the basis for the song was "Straight To Hell" by the Clash. Not that it was sampled, not that there was a reference, but if you removed the Clash from that song, there'd be very little left other than the vocal melody and some sound effects. The person who played it for me had never heard the original, and was a little defensive about it, ultimately claiming that it didn't matter, and the M.I.A. track was so brilliant.

It ain't bad, it was one of my favorite songs of last summer's hit parade, but it's existience brings up a lot of questions that I'm not sure of my feelings on. It would be easy to take the "old man" standpoint and grouse about the kids and their thievery, but I'm not so certain.

My first concern was that it would kill the power of the original. Now, I don't know if anything can do that, in this particular case. If it were something like "Footloose", maybe it would be a different story, but the original "Straight To Hell" was a wildly impressionistic view of the effects of the Vietnam war and culturual imperialism that was spreading faster and faster in a pre-Internet age. As a product of the British punk and post-punk culture, M.I.A. certainly understood this when she used the song, in my opinion, turning the sample into a soundtrack for the lyrics to be set to... her tales of young thugs, when set to the backing that has a pre-existing context of the poor and destroyed villages of Vietnam, conjures up images of herself as a third-world outlaw, swaggering Robin Hood-like through the slums, a self made queenpin of the ghetto, like Ivan in The Harder They Come. It's a starkly vivid image - for someone who knows the context of the original. Since I've known that Clash song for ages, I find myself wondering if people who DON'T know "Straight To Hell" would have the same response to it. In essence, does this song suffer for the fact that a large portion of it's intended audience doesn't get the message?

The flipside to this is the question of whether or not there is any potential loss of impact and meaning in the original song. The Clash will always be important to me, but by their very nature I don't hold their music sacred. Their records, I feel, will stand up to anything, so I don't need to champion them. However, is there a chance that if "Straight To Hell" is heard in a movie or on TV (because let's forget the radio), will it then be seen by post-M.I.A. listeners as "that song she sampled"? Sure, the song is powerful, but it has to be LISTENED to to retain that power. If it's summarily dismissed before it's even listened to, how can it retain the same impact?

Of course, this is all just a microcosm of the post-modern sample effect. Not that I hold too many sacred cows, but isn't there a danger that if everything is just a sound to be sampled, will there be any meaning left to anything when the dust settles? I've often claimed that by trendspotting and jumping from whatever is trendy to the next big thing, hipsters tend to hold everything at arm's length and never connect to anything. I firmly believe that the marketplace for creativity will ultimately prevail, but if there's no context for anything, how can anything have any emotional impact? If Puff Daddy sampling the Police didn't call to mind the melancholy of the original song, wouldn't his tribute to Biggie have just been augmented by a weird guitar line?

In my view, the point of sampling is to recontextualize a moment, which means placing the original moment, meaning and all, into another context, thereby transforming the new work's sentiment based around the original's subtext. Without that grounding, or something like it, everything becomes meaningless, just so much sound to be manipulated coldly, never intending to allow the context of the original moment through, merely creating an infinte digital cache of notes to be rearranged ad nauseum.

Is everything just sound? Does the concept of "purpose" have any place in the Digital Age? I don't know. I'm too old. But I think there is a major shift happening, when teen-idol pop stars can create "new" songs simply by putting a new melody and lyrics over a Beatles backing track. M.I.A. was most certainly aware of what she was doing, and while I guess she hit a nerve with my love of the Clash, she did a good job by using the original song's original meaning to enhance her new concept. It's just a shame that some of her audience isn't as well-informed as she is - they're only getting half the picture.

Pass The Coke, I Think I'm New Wave...

Shake is back. Kinda. We've re-arranged the lineup, so Shannon is no longer drummin', but playing her gorgeous baritone guitar in a bass-like fashion. Since her crazy Captain Beefheart sense of rhythm is no longer the driving force in the band (any band with that kind of drummer just has to accept that their drummer is, in fact, leading the band), the songs that we're coming up with are far more conventionally structured.

Maybe it's due to the fact that we're not playing with a drummer yet (know anyone?), maybe it's due to Shannon's relative inexperience on the bass, or maybe it's the fact that in the past 13 years of playing in bands, I've sorta gotten the "loudfastrules thrashthrashthrash" drive (largely) out of my system, but the music we're playing, while certainly punk rock, is nowhere near radical hardcore or anything. I have a feeling that with a drummer, we could gain some kick, but right now, our aggresssion level is set around, say Generation X. Certainly not easy listening, but SS Decontrol it ain't.

What I'm finding myself surprised by, although I shouldn't, is that we're starting to sound like that strange subset of bands labelled *gasp*... "new wave".

The problem is that I hate New Wave. The capitalization is important. I generally hold at arms' length the quirky, off-kilter, synth-driven form of pop music that immediately followed the initial punk explosion. It's usually all surface and sunglasses, and even though there are some great singles from that style in that era, if you throw enough shit at a wall, something is bound to sound like a good B-52's song, right?.

That's not the style I'm talking about really. I tend to follow the Keith Morris view that there is no such style as new wave in regard to punk, only a term used to describe the same music that is somehow less offensive in polite company. "Oh no, I don't like that disgusting punk rock, I like new wave music...". Didn't Seymour Stein invent the term so that people would still distribute Sire Records without the "punk rock" stigma attached to the Ramones and the Dead Boys? While this view is true, and as a punk rock sort of person, I agree... historically, there was a period immediately following the punk ground zero of about 1976 that lent itself to a stripped-down, pissed-off sound that was a little more literate, and maybe just a little more mannered than, say, The Germs. I'm thinking more of things like The Jam, Elvis Costello's "This Year's Model", the harder moments of the first Pretenders album, Blondie's "X Offender", etc. Things that aren't "punk" in the retroactively accurate sense of the term, but certainly aren't the quirky pop of XTC and Squeeze or the synth-driven sounds of the early MTV era.

Not that one man and a blog can make any difference in this matter, but can someone please help me defind this music? "Hard New Wave" sounds like a mid-80s gay porno, and to call it post-punk, while absolutely true, gives it a certain grey pallor that my mind usually reserves for bands from Manchester. Unfair, but that's the way my mind works. Talking Heads, while wonderful, were always too quirky, and rarely approached the straightforward "rock" sound that we're talking about here. R.E.M. was too folky and distantly collegiate, and Devo too contrived. Perfect example? "No Action" by Elvis Costello. Fast (but not too fast), simple, pissed off, well-put (so many turns of phrase!), and, if memory serves, all over in under 2 mintues. Now THAT'S what I'm talking about. Under two minutes?!?! I do, however, intend to stay away from any Cars comparisons, mainly becuase they're sacred in my adopted hometown of Boston. But if you dropped the synths from "Just What I Needed" and "You Might Think" and sped them up to about 130 BPM, you're in the ballpark. Fenway, to be exact.

What amuses me the most is that while I feel we're playing in this so-called new wave style, due to modern technology (and, oh, 20 extra years of music), we also sound like a half-decent mid-90s post-grunge act. Same situation. Take the raw nerve revolution (I'm trademarking that phrase, by the way), and see what sort of pop crops up after the initial blast. Superdrag? Veruca Salt? Green Day? Big, loud, pissed-off rock music that stayed stripped down but doesn't have the bile of the "musical reset" (trademark also pending) of the revolution that came before it.

Forget it. We play punk rock. Let's just leave it at that.

"Must-See TV": Punk Rock Edition

Punk rock changed my life. It may not be as obvious a change as the kind of change that happened to Mike Watt or Ian MacKaye, but punk rock changed my life. When I discovered it, it was not just the music or the culture, but the ethic. The ethic of "do it yourself" and "don't be a jerk" was instilled in me by these people, and in a lot of ways, the music and culture was just periphery, although the best way to immerse myself in the ethic was to listen to these records which I loved both musically and philosophically.

Aside from a sort of knee jerk reaction at first which lent itself to dogmatic stringency, punk rock always freed me to be a more decent person. Help your fellow man, let's do this together. The system is fucked, let's have our own system. I used to think it was the so-called "sellouts" that made that "work within the system" argument, but I will, until my dying day, contend that the moral compass that punk rock either instilled in me or brought to the forefront (my pre-punk life wasn't exactly a morass of bad vibes and stepping on the little guy) lent itself to my being a smarter, more understanding man than I otherwise would have been.

Unfortunately, the majority of the world still sees punk rock as an adolescent loogie hocked upon the shoes of decent, upstanding society. US hardcore punk was one of the hardest-working, ethically stringent cultural movements in the past fifty years, but its' music is not approachable to mass culture - too aggressive, too intense. More "listenable" bands like the Sex Pistols got there first, and squandered the D.I.Y. with images of a bloody Sid Vicious spitting at teenagers. First impressions are, as I believe Shakespeare put it, a bitch.

But I had my own little victory for the punk culture last week, and I didn't even realize it.

I work in the news. My desk is in the newsroom, and more often than not, when I'm at work, my desk is on camera, and I'm being broadcast. It seemed weird at first, and eventually you don't even notice it. Last week, I found myself wearing my usual weekend uniform of Converse, shorts, and a button-down shirt, often open to reveal whatever clean t-shirt I could find that morning, which, that day, was the Misfits shirt I've got. At one point, I was standing next to a producer's desk, chatting, and realized that not only was I on camera, but that my shirt was pretty clearly visible. Which made me happy. The Misfits these days are, at best, a fun, trashy nostalgia act for those in the know, and with the proliferation of Hot Topic and the like, some of the trappings and symbols of punk rock have become a commodity, thereby losing some of its meaning. But I really felt proud for a minute or two once I realized it - here I was, the same guy I've always been, maybe a little more grown up, but I was putting a little punk rock moment on TV. Unintentionally, sure, but I wasn't paid to wear the shirt, I wasn't being asked to do it, but I was still able to get a little symbol of this culture that I love, that's still an outsider culture, broadcast to, what, a hundred thousand people? What percentage of them noticed? Probably less that 1%. But that's still a few hundred people who may have seen it and said what I would have sad: "Look! That guy in the background is wearing a Misfits shirt!" I was able to get a little bit of punk rock on large-market TV.

Once I realized that, it made me realize that while my viewpoints on many things have changed since I was 13, mainly due to experiences, changing times, etc., everything I did then and everything I do now is sort of filtered through this moral/ethical lens that was given to me by punk rock. I think it was Steve Albini (that paragon of righteousness), who once said about his band Big Black:

"You can be an asshole, or you can not be an asshole... and we didn't see any reason to screw people over."

It makes sense. I've found in this life if you treat people like you would HOPE people would treat you, often times they're so thrown off balance at you NOT trying to screw them over, they'll surprise you. Nearly any religion's basic tenet is "be a good person." The details differ, but being a decent human is what it often all boils down to.

I'm proud to come from punk rock. The music I play is only vaguely punky anymore, and some of my listening and fashion tendencies aren't exactly ripped from the Dischord handbook, but come hell or high water, I'm a punk. A proud one. And as long as I can bring that ethic, that sensibility to the world around me, I think I'll do alright.

Overlooked Classics: "Good God's Urge"

Sometimes, when exposed to something at exactly the right moment, in exactly the right set of circumstances, one becomes connected to that thing, no matter how your rational mind may tell you otherwise, and no matter how incorrect it may seem with the rest of your life, there are things that we love, for which we can offer little to no excuse. We like them. And there's nothing wrong with that.

One of the benefits to this blind appreciation (I won't call it devotion, as there ARE limits to an otherwise sane person), is that one can then find elements of excellence that others would have overlooked, not being willing to devote the time or energy that someone who was more inclined to enjoy it would. And that's where I stand on Porno For Pyros.

Jane's Addiction was one of those things for me. So, just as I'll buy anything that has "The Stooges" printed on it, I'm inclined to check out anything "Jane's Related", from bootlegs to side projects. Some of these are excellent (the post-JA Deconstruction album), and some are unspeakably awful (*cough* the Chili Peppers' One Hot Minute *cough*). But some of them are not only worthy of your time, they're better than they deserve to be. Jane's worked because of the balance between members. Without guitarist Dave Navarro, leader/vocalist Perry Farrell got too artsy and freaky and self-indulgent, and without Farrell, Navarro would mire down in a sea of hackneyed metal cliche, for instance.

So upon the breakup of Jane's Addiciton, Perry Farrell started Porno For Pyros, and no Navarro or bassist Eric Avery meant it was going to be far more wigged out and pretentious than he has any right to make (*ahem* Satellite Party...), right?

Nope. Porno For Pyros' self-titled first album has its moments, but it's by and large a tight, rocking band that strays into the oddball at times, but is ultimately pretty satisfying. Guitarist Peter DiStefano was a lot more textural than Navarro, the band was by-and-large less aggressive, it was a nice soundtrack for the early 90s: intellectual, artistic, hooky, bohemian. This was a time when Dee-Lite's "Groove Is In The Heart" was ruling the charts. People were ready for freaky boho rock. Grunge had cracked the listening public right open and the world was ready to hear anything.

By 1996, however, their second album sank like a lead-lined rock.

1996, buddy! Korn was happening! 311! Tool! Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was like quadruple-platinum! Alanis went huge and Metallica went alternative. The Fugees, No Doubt, and Rage Against The Machine all had number one records in 1996. You expect me to listen to your understated album full of acoustic guitars and tropical percussion? Freaky hippie stuff with soundscaping?

Well, yeah.

"Tahitian Moon" starts out with a crazy noise guitar and cuts loose into the sound of laying on a beach under the stars. Otherwise icky hippie hand drums and trippy songwriting is obscured with enough haze to make it absolutely delightful. I once spent a week canoeing to this album, and it somehow fits the outdoors, near the water. "Kimberley Austin", in particular, reminds me of a song that's been barely written, but caught on record in that magical period between songwriting and arranging, when something can sound fresh and spare at the same time. Could it, as a song, have benefited from a little more fine-tuning? Yep. No doubt about it. But the freshness of it completely overrides it - any more and it would be overcooked. I think that sums up this whole album, in fact. Despite the layers of overdubs on everyone's part, this album is absolutely a perfect example of being laid back.

The players, as well, deserve some credit here. Guitarist DiStefano is quite possibly more inventive than Navarro (who guests here) in a sonic way, and Mike Watt, possibly the greatest bassist in the past three decades, lays WAY back on the tracks he features on, avoiding his Minutemen-style bean jumping, preferring to slide into notes and let the lines breathe. Stephen Perkins brings the most intricate and well-placed percussion of his career to the table, and to Perry Farrell's credit, he keeps his ego in check, almost always coming across as just one of the group, never dominating the proceedings.

Good God's Urge had the misfortune of being released in one of the worst possible musical climates for what it is, and due to that, was largely overlooked, even by former Jane's Addiction fans. In this post-millenial musical world, the disc has enough variety for the iPod Shuffle generation, but stands as a remarkably solid piece of work as a whole.

In short, it's absolutely worth the $.99 it would cost you to pick it up out of any used CD bin in America. I love this country.

Voodoo Ritual: In A Silent Way

While I was a young man in college, I had a chip on my shoulder about jazz. You see, I was an outspoken proponent of the artistic merit of rock music. I worked in the rock and roll department of the Indiana University School Of Music, a prestigious music school to be sure. But we rockers in the staff were sneered at, belittled by the cultured classical divisions, as well as the jazz department, who felt that out music was often a blight on the school, a vulgar blight that was better left unmentioned among the cultured ponderings of so many jazz historians.

Seems silly, coming from guys whose music developed in brothels and bars, don't you think?

Were I feeling more academic, I'd consider spouting off about the heirarchy of popular music, how jazz was derided by the upper class in the early part of the century, only to be replaced at the bottom of the ladder by rock and roll in the latter half of the 1900s. However, I'm not in that sort of mood...

You see, partially because of my youthful ignorance, and then magnified by my resentment of the superior attitudes of academic jazz fans, I've never been a big fan of jazz in practice. In principle, I have no problem with the genre, but in practice, I've never been a big fan of it. I've studied it under some wonderful luminaries, but never fully appreciated it, at least, not to the extent that most jazz fans seem to. I have my problems with the attitudes of many hardcore jazz fans, but this is not about the fans, this is about the music.

Much of the more "classical" jazz music follows a particular format: start out with a "head", which is the main theme of the piece, let each member solo, returning to the head at either the end, or between each solo. My problem is that the "widdly diddly" soloing, while technically proficient, and in the best cases, really beautiful and melodic, has always been a drag to me. I don't really even care for guitar soloing - I'd much rather hear lead lines played in service of the song, not as an excuse for showing off or for "getting down" in the heat of the moment.

I realize this is a serious oversimplification of a varied genre, and please forgive what may come across as ignorance - it's merely conjecture. There are, however, two large exceptions to my listening taste when it comes to jazz. The first is free jazz. Wild excursions into dissonance, arhythimc sounds skittering across the air, bleating raw and wild... it's essentially the spirit of punk music with the opposite approach: you have to be REAL good to make this primal noise, rather than the anyone can do it approach of punk rock. Nobody ever accused Ornette Coleman and John Coltrane of not being able to play.

The other exception, and the reason for all that wind-up, is when jazz players take themselves and their abilties out of the equation, and play for the moment that's in the air, not the next one. When the music sits and thinks and pulses and flows like a living organism. Miles Davis' The Complete In A Silent Way sessions is a perfect example of this.

Not strictly downtempo, the closest comparison I can make in the rock world is Can's Future Days, it's jazz without being strictly jazz, ambient without seeming motionless, and experimental without losing grounding. Mysterious and murky in ways that the more "rock world" lauded Bitches Brew isn't. Bitches Brew has cultural importance on its side, but the funky rhythms of that album have tainted most other "fusion" music for my ears. On the In A Silent Way sessions (which, I should point out for the cash-strapped, the official album is more than representative of this box set, on which both album tracks appear), it never loses its status as jazz music, but it is perhaps the most subtle and atmospheric jazz music I've ever heard. Electric pianos abound, but not quite in that "instantly dated" tone that a lot of Bitches Brew has, and every element is clearly within the jazz realm, but somehow, the whole is more avant-garde than the sum of its parts.

Of course, my other favorite Miles Davis album/sessions is The Complete Jack Johnson Sessions, another dark, mysterious album that owes more to funk than jazz, but that's another story, and betrays what perspective I come at this music from. But the regard in which jazz fans hold In A Silent Way surprises me. While it has vague precedents in Miles' music, it stands as a major break to what he'd done before, while not quite ever sounding like anything he put out later. Sure, Filles de Kilimanjaro indicated, in hindsight, where things might be going, but Bitches Brew (released immediately after In A Silent Way) was a whole different creature, one that seemed to prove more influential on not only jazz fusion, but Davis' own future works. More percussion, more polyrhythm, and more creeping funk influence led to what is probably the pinnacle of that direction, 1972's willfully singular On The Corner, which seems like it's a descendent of a completely different lineage.

So what's so appealing about In A Silent Way? I dunno. And that's it. It's mysterious. I can only compare it to the moments BETWEEN lines in David Lynch's Blue Velvet, the moments of deep mystery, tension, danger, stillness... by removing the head/solo/head/solo format, as well as the aesthetic, Davis and the rest of the band have managed to create jazz without jazz, jazz as ambient soundscape. It's a voodoo ritual, writhing and pulsing, crouching in the darkest corner, waiting for you to poke your head in, never making the concession to come out into the light. Ultimately standing on its own, it's a recording that neither gives ground nor takes it, daring you to come closer, luring you in, never letting you know what's on the other side.