| Corporate rock still sucks, and the kids will still buy anything |
[May. 31st, 2009|11:37 pm] |
I recently watched an hourlong show about the making of Nirvana's Nevermind. It was pretty good. I especially enjoyed producer Butch Vig explaining how certain tracks were built. For such loud, brash, simple music, there is surprising subtlety.
Inevitably, my thoughts went back to that fall of 1991, my junior year in high school. There I am, having stumbled on to Boston's underground music scene a mere six months earlier. Nirvana brings the underground to the mainstream in 1992. By 1993, the asshole football players from my high school are showing up at Dinosaur Jr. gigs. And that was just the beginning.
Nevermind was supposed to save us from insipid popular music. Okay, maybe Kurt, Chris, and Dave never intentionally planned that outcome. But my sixteen year-old self wanted it to happen. I think thousands of other people felt the same way. That's why Nevermind became a classic. The fans made the album -- and perhaps Nirvana themselves -- fulfill our wish. Destroy the mainstream and replace it with good music.
That battle cry succeeded all too well.
Victory was sweet at first. Alternative rock dumped a heaping handful of salt on the oily slug known as hair metal, instantly killing it. Bland easy listening wilted too. (We're ever so sorry, Billy Ocean.)
Then the sweetness curdled. The rise of the "alternative nation" brought the aforementioned football goons to ruin the live shows. It made it possible for fashion designers to sell flannel shirts and pre-ripped jeans at sky-high prices. It brought music marketing executives to poison the scene with pale Nirvanawanna-bes and coattail-riders like Bush, Third Eye Blind, Better Than Ezra, Stone Temple Pilots, Silverchair, and so forth.
By 1998, everything had been co-opted, focus-grouped, and niche-marketed to death. Every vein had been tapped. At least Kurt never lived to see the horror of what came next.
Like corpses from a Lucio Fulci movie, vapid pop music rose from the grave, invading every corner of the media. From Britney Spears, N'Sync, and Puff Daddy to Miley Cyrus, Nickelback, and Kanye West, it's been a decade-long reign of shit.
Nevermind didn't save us. It just stunned the status quo for a short time. Then it was back to business as usual.
It reminds me of Jeff Lieberman's short film The Ringer, which satirizes mass-marketed youth culture and the freewheeling drug use of the '70s. The corporate fatcats gloat over gullible consumers who buy anything if it's marketed right. Sometimes I wonder what might have happened if those alternative kids in the '90s had adopted the substance of the music, rather than merely the style. I guess it's easier to let someone else do the thinking for you. I've done it at times; we all do. Within that space is where this fungus of marketed music grows. And every mildewed, Auto-Tuned note of Kanye's "Love Lockdown" makes me want to reach for the Bleach. |
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| While watching the Sci-Fi Channel's Land of the Lost marathon |
[May. 25th, 2009|09:20 pm] |
C: So it's basically lots of yelling, running around, and cheap sets?
M: Of course. It's a kids' show.
*The show starts. The corny theme music plays*
C: This makes me want to drive sharp sticks into my ears.
*During an episode featuring a "pylon" monolith, magic energy crystals, and a baton that turns people into zombies and zaps other people*
M: The writers are clearly on drugs. It's like a Matthew Barney movie.
Ape-child character: "Cha-Ka like!"
C: Cha-Ka is scary.
M: I wanted to kill Cha-Ka when I was a kid.
C: I can see why. |
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| Ax-Men |
[May. 25th, 2009|02:07 am] |
I've started watching Ax-Men on the History Channel. It's been kinda weird.
Like all reality shows, Ax-Men is edited into an advertiser-friendly drama-fest. On the plus side, you don't have to watch all the hours of dull, tedious labor. Or wake up at 4am with aches everywhere and drive back to the job site for another hard day's work.
They've got a good mix of characters, painted in broad strokes by the producers. Craig is the hotheaded redneck Snidely Whiplash; Mike, the strapping, stoic leader; Dwayne, the snaggletoothed old coot; Jay, the cold and aloof manager. Then there's the S&S Aqua Logging guys, whose talent for dysfunctional bickering probably landed them on the show as comic relief.
(It gets even funnier: it turns out they were logging without a permit. Unfortunately for them, Washington state officials have televisions too. Whups.)
The weird part is that watching the show can bring back memories. In my college days, I competed in some old-time lumberjack contests and worked a small logging job. That's a far cry from modern professional logging. But wood is wood. I know the basics. I know there's two ways to fell a tree: the right way, and the way that can put someone in the hospital or in the ground. I know how axes and chainsaws work. I know it's backbreaking labor. I know the men (and the few women) who do it can be terrific, decent, insane, ignorant, evil -- and sometimes all of the above before lunch break. So it's weird to watch the show and see the same behaviors, personalities, and situations that I observed back in the day.
Ax-Men is okay. Not great, but it keeps pulling me back. Maybe it's the memories. As with any reality show, I'm not looking for profound truth. It's the entertainment equivalent of potato chips. But I'll take those chips over the rotten canned cheese of Survivor, The Apprentice, or The Hills. |
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| a spring day in sf |
[Apr. 28th, 2009|12:14 am] |
Mark and I went to SF on Sunday. Pictures were taken. We stopped by the Indie Mart at the Independent to check out the vendors, including a friend of Mark's who does some really cool collage artwork. Other than that, everything else was fairly spontaneous. We rambled around town. We ate a very tasty brunch in the Castro. We saw an insane homeless guy yelling at people and almost beat up some guy. We visited a hip little record store where I got the new Decemberists and a Mission of Burma reissue. We saw the aftermath of a motorcycle accident. We saw some really cool plants. We saw a lot of people in the park, including some guy in hilariously skimpy shorts. We got some tasty organic snacks at some crunchy granola local grocery. I got to meet the artist who made one of the stranger paintings hanging in our apartment. And on the way home, we braved the suburbian miseries of Palo Alto and Ikea for a new living room lamp and a few other items. A very nice day indeed. |
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| the alumni magazine; or, how not to relive your college years |
[Apr. 19th, 2009|04:34 pm] |
My college lost track of me years ago, and I'm okay with that.
I don't miss their self-congratulatory propaganda masquerading as an alumni magazine. I don't miss the mewling pleas for donations. College was a good experience but it's also ancient history. Looking back doesn't interest me much when the present and future are so much more engaging.
In spite of this, my mother forwards me the alumni magazine twice a year. (The college still has her address, since my parents paid most of the bills.) When I ask why she does it, she says things like, "Oh... well I thought maybe you'd enjoy it." Then I remind her that I don't want it and I rarely read it. Then we repeat the whole thing six months later. Maybe she thinks I should pay more attention to the past. Maybe she's nostalgic. Whatever her reasons, I'm fine with it now. She keeps sending them. I keep throwing them out.
Once in a while, curiosity trumps disinterest and I thumb through the newly-arrived issues. Only once was it ever worthwhile: the issue where they mentioned that a former professor of mine had completed a transition to a different gender.
Short of anything that drastic, the alumni magazine is irrelevant to me. The articles tend to have a common subtext: a justification for the immense sums of money that you (and/or your parents) spent on your education. "Yes! It really was worth it! Look at these interesting alums and faculty and students! They're oh so smart and successful. All because of us. You wish you were this cool. By the way, you want to give us even more of your money. Yes you do!"
Yeah. No thanks.
The latest alumni magazines arrived the other day. Here's some of their contents:
( Read more... ) |
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| the opening and closing of doors |
[Apr. 18th, 2009|06:41 pm] |
It's been a heck of a few weeks. Heck of a few months, really.
First, I should mention my Boston trip before it recedes too far into the mists of the past. I was there for three and half days, ending April 8th. The trip was tiring but great. I saw people and places both familiar and new. It was good for the heart and the soul. It was also nice to see Pete, Ian, Alan, and Matt.
Best of all, I got to see my fella Mark. He'd been touring with Crippled Black Phoenix for the previous week, and I timed my trip to coincide with their Boston show. In spite of some initial sound issues, the band torched the Great Scott with a great performance. The material from their new double-album The Resurrectionists / Night Raider was particularly amazing. It's the best record I've heard this year, maybe in years. (If a double album seems too daunting, a condensed one-album version is also available.)
Since then, I've been swamped with work. The never-ending quest to find bugs and get them fixed before a product goes out the door. I'm excited about my work but there's an enormous amount of it. We have a job opening for someone to take on some of my tasks, freeing me up for other projects. I've helped interview three people so far but no one's fit the bill yet. I can't tell whether the recession is helping or hurting our search. It certainly makes me feel worse when they don't get hired.
Mark's been gone almost two and a half weeks. I'm very independent and I have no trouble keeping myself occupied. But there are occasional moments when I keenly feel his absence. Fortunately he'll be back in a few days.
I've been very reflective in the last few days. An old college friend just became a father. I went to his wedding a few years ago with Tim. My friend and his wife are wonderful people and they'll be terrific parents. I couldn't be happier for them. Meanwhile, I am reminded that another friend from my past is reaching the end of his life. The thought of a world without him fills me a variety of emotions, sharp and kaleidoscopic like the shards of a shattered prism.
All along, all along,
So it goes...
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| phoenix rising |
[Apr. 3rd, 2009|10:39 pm] |
Last night, my partner Mark ![[info]](http://l-stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif) runestonecowboy joined the rest of Crippled Black Phoenix onstage in Chicago for the first show of their American tour.
I couldn't be there, unfortunately, though I do plan on attending the show in Boston next Tuesday. Mark says the show went very well and everyone was great. Some of his pals from the Twin Cities even showed up to cheer him on, which was really cool of them.
I've been listening to their new double album and it's phenomenal. What do they sound like? A modern day, indie-rock, pre-Dark Side Pink Floyd -- minus the ego and plus some hints of Mogwai, Godspeed You Black Emperor, and (occasionally) Tom Waits. Yeah, that's a pretty complicated set of comparisons. They're a complicated band. And that's good in my book.
Go see them on tour if you can -- and say hi to Mark if you see him! Tour dates and music can be found on their Myspace page.
( Click here for their awesome tour poster ) |
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| portland: check yourself please |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|04:22 pm] |
At the Grant Hart show last Thursday, I only caught one of the opening bands: Eat Skull. Awful, awful band. The singer couldn't carry a tune in a bucket, the lyrics were juvenile, the music was mediocre. And of course the twentysomething douches in the audience ate it up.
I assumed they were some lame community college kids from San Jose, but a web search has since enlightened me: they're one of the dim lights of the brown dwarf cluster that is the Portland music scene.
That led me to this dubious MTV coverage and a cloying, self-congratulatory video about the entire scene. If the corporate overlords of MTV are trying to sell your scene's coolness to the rest of the world, then it's probably well past its expiration date. Yes, Portland has some irrefutably cool music; the Decemberists, Quasi, and Steve Malkmus come to mind. But for every great band, there are dozens of derivative hipsters beating the same dead horse until it's a stain on the sidewalk. Just like Minneapolis/St. Paul (hello Uptown!) Just like everywhere else. Check yourself, Portland: you're not that cool. |
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| grant hart at the eagle tavern, 3/26/09 |
[Mar. 29th, 2009|04:21 pm] |
Last Thursday I saw Grant Hart's solo show at the Eagle Tavern. Strange that it was my first time seeing him live, especially since he resides in South St. Paul and I used to live in Minneapolis. Well, better late than never.
Grant was coming off a few shows at SXSW with mixed reviews. Either he improved or the critics were wrong, because the Eagle show was quite good. He covered all the bases of his career, from Hüsker Dü to the present. His guitar playing was good overall. I was impressed by some of the solo-guitar arrangements. Most of the songs were originally recorded for a full band and with only a couple of exceptions, they translated quite well. He kept the between-song downtime to a minimum, and the banter was brief. Even when he calmly rebuked a stageside patron for talking loudly over a quiet song, he was good-natured and self-deprecating.
The other thing that struck me was Grant's appearance. He does not look healthy. I hope I get to see him play live again.
[Addendum:]
I was inspired to make a collection of Grant's Hüsker Dü-era music. A digital mixtape, if you will. Available for a limited time only. Lend your ears for 20 minutes and enjoy.
1. Don't Want to Know If You Are Lonely -- from Candy Apple Grey [buy]
2. Pink Turns to Blue -- from Zen Arcade [buy]
3. Never Talking to You Again -- from Zen Arcade [buy]
4. Flexible Flyer -- from Flip Your Wig [buy]
5. Diane -- from Metal Circus [buy]
6. She's a Woman (And Now He Is a Man) -- from Warehouse: Songs and Stories [buy]
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| Anniversary № 1 |
[Mar. 25th, 2009|11:41 pm] |
A year ago today, I went to First Avenue in Minneapolis for my first date with Mark. (The show was the Boredoms, if you want to know.) It was spectacular all around. I realized that we had something special right away. But I never expected we'd both end up in northern California a year later, as partners. And so here we are.
To mark the occasion, we went to Alexander's Steakhouse in Cupertino. We lucked out and got a terrific waitress. The food and wine were five-star quality. Spectacular, beyond description. After the meal, she even brought out a little "Happy Anniversary" surprise dessert for us.
It couldn't have been a more perfect evening, and I couldn't wish for a more perfect fella to spend it with. Love ya, Mark.
And the fun continues. Tomorrow night we're going up to SF to see some live music. I'm looking forward to seeing Grant Hart (ex-Hüsker Dü) at the SF Eagle. Should be an interesting show.
That's about all. And now back to your regularly scheduled reality TV clips, recession woes, cat macros, and partisan politics. |
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| boston trip: making plans |
[Mar. 24th, 2009|01:41 am] |
I just booked plane tickets to Boston. On April 7th, I'll be at the Crippled Black Phoenix show in Allston to cheer on my lovely and talented partner (and CBP touring member) runestonecowboy. For the preceding two days, I'll be reacquainting myself with the city and perhaps some old friends as well.
I'm excited. I've visited Boston several times since I left six years ago. But most of those visits were only a few hours, as I was traveling to or from family engagements. Not this time. This trip is just for me.
I'm still looking around at hotels. A cursory check did not fill me with much hope for a deal. I'm trying to avoid car rental, but of course everything near Allston and near the T is priced accordingly. Then again, being away from the T may not be so bad. The Cambridge Hyatt looks good, and it would be amusing to be literally within steps of my old office building. |
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| i would walk 1,725 miles |
[Jan. 29th, 2009|12:41 am] |
Acts that I would see if I were going to SXSW 2009:
Beach House
Bottle Rockets
Margaret Cho
Dixie Witch
Melissa Ferrick
Tim Finn
Grizzly Bear
Hank IV
Grant Hart
Jason Isbell
Jon Langford
Raul Malo
Max Tundra
Nashville Pussy
Primal Scream
The Queers
Spiral Stairs
Woven Hand
And, if I want to get drunk and laugh at people: The Proclaimers.
But I almost certainly won't be going. Alas. At least I have memories of last year. |
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| music for the week's end (or weekend anyway) |
[Jan. 11th, 2009|05:17 pm] |
Pretty Parasite: Mark's music project Animals with Machinery has a new song, "Poison for the Parasite". I found it beautiful, sad, and very absorbing. Check it out on the AwM MySpace page.
As Boston as Fenway Franks and Bad Driving: If you grew up in Boston in the '80s, you knew about the Neighborhoods. Perennial local favorites, the 'Hoods started as a power-pop band and migrated to a more hard-rock sound. "Prettiest Girl" was on their first single, recorded by notable producer Rick Harte (Mission of Burma), who lent it the same clean warmth and power as Burma's recordings. It's a tuneful rocker with echoes of punk and The Jam. The cover art (front / back) from the original 45 is equally awesome, evoking a more innocent time when rock music was about having fun. (See also: Cueburn's review)
Went to Town, Shredding on a Guitar: We all need a good laugh these days. To that end, I recently rediscovered the Shreds series of videos. Here are two of my favorites:
On the left, Metallica's "One" -- the high-pitched whiny vocals crack me up every time. To the right, we have Paco de Lucía in a flamenco wankfest that includes his brilliant interpretation of "Old Macdonald". |
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| dragonflies and daffodils |
[Jan. 11th, 2009|01:24 pm] |
"Some Velvet Morning" is a male/female duet set to late-60s pop music, with a dash of psychedelia. It was written by Lee Hazlewood and originally sung by him and Nancy Sinatra. I've been entranced by this song ever since I heard Firewater's cover of it on their Songs We Should Have Written.
The lyrics are mysterious and beguiling. Who is this guy? Who's Phaedra? How does she give and take away life? And why can't I touch the flowers? The music echoes this mood with melodies that go from sugary to sickly sweet, like eating too much cotton candy at the circus. If that isn't disorienting enough, the two singers trade lines at end, creating a see-saw effect.
A search on iTunes turns up a lot of covers, from death metal to bluegrass. I really like Firewater's version, which stays close to the original:
 | Firewater - "Some Velvet Morning" | | 5.2 MB AAC file. Taken from: Songs We Should Have Written [Buy] |
There's also a video for Lee and Nancy's original version:
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| macworld and san francisco in 2009 |
[Jan. 8th, 2009|12:49 am] |
On Wednesday, I took the day off from work to attend MacWorld Expo in San Francisco. Mark and I rode a train up to the city and took in the sights of the Expo hall.
Some of the stranger things that I saw:
• A hard drive that had been run over by a bus.
• Sun Microsystems had a booth. Maybe they had come to explain how ZFS really is *the* filesystem in Leopard...even though it's, um, barely implemented.
• A guy operating a sewing machine.
I haven't been to an Expo in years. The people in the crowd seemed weirder than I remember. At each entrance, you could pick up a free yellow plastic bag with Nikon advertising on the outside. People used them like trick-or-treat bags to collect their booth freebies. All I got was a rock. Or rather, a little CodeWeavers pendant. I guess I didn't rake in the freebies because Mark and I looked too unwilling to listen to sales spiel (and we were). Anyway, the sight of all those people with their oversize badges and yellow trick-or-treat bags was a bit surreal. For the Mac community, MacWorld is as much Halloween as it is Christmas.
Overall the Expo hall was pretty interesting, but I could sense a subdued mood. Could've been the economy, could've been the Expo's uncertain future, could've been the relative lack of headline-grabbing new products this year, could've been many things. I still had a good time. It was a fitting coda.
After that, we walked up to Market St and did a little window shopping. Then we walked over to our favorite Vietnamese restaurant for a truly delicious meal.
We later stopped by the Metreon, which I haven't seen since 2002. The first floor is much as I remember it, but the second floor is almost completely different. Many stores are gone and much of the floor space has been blocked off. Tough times, I guess.
A scene at the Whole Foods down the street from the Metreon: Outside: a couple of homeless people. Inside: a security guard watching the entrance; dozens of rich people shopping for food, blissfully unaware of anyone but themselves. Mark later mentioned the contrast to me, and it rings true. In this city especially, the gap between the haves and have-nots is keenly felt.
Oh, and remind me never to try parking at the Sunnyvale Caltrain station during a business day. Cars jammed in like sardines, no room at all. Our government fails at urban planning. |
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| thoughts on the MacWorld Expo kerfuffle |
[Dec. 17th, 2008|10:19 pm] |
• John C. Welch is an idiot. Apple's employees have "unmanaged random customer contact" all the time, and the company actually likes talking to its customers. All of this happens in places called Apple Retail Stores. You may have heard of them, inconspicuous as they are. And oddly enough, those activities are generally good for their business.
John's also wrong about MacWorld Expo's future. It may take a few years but the sands are definitely slipping through the hourglass. MacWorld Boston/New York died, MacWorld Expo Paris died, Comdex died, and so on. You might think there was a trend going on here. Trade shows are dinosaurs. Unless MacWorld Expo can offer something new to fill the void, they're going the way of the 14.4 modem and the BBS.
• Much smarter commentary can be found in the ever-dependable John Gruber and Andy Ihnatko.
• I've always felt a little sorry for any company that has to do a product intro at MacWorld. One upside to the reduced importance of the Expo: no more Mac developers sweating bullets over the holidays, as they struggle to get their company's new product ready. Instead of fixing bugs, they can drink eggnog and sing carols with everyone else.
• Lest I come off as an Expo grinch: I have fond memories of the summer '98 and '99 Expos in New York. The '98 Expo was my first business trip and my first time in the Big Apple. I stayed at the Paramount, which only magnified the surreal quality of the experience. Sitting in the audience as Steve Jobs talked about the first iMac, I knew I was watching history. I wasn't sure if the iMac would be hit -- but if Apple was going to die, at least it would be in a blaze of innovation. |
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| stewart vs. huckabee |
[Dec. 10th, 2008|10:15 am] |
Jon Stewart rips Mike Huckabee to pieces over gay marriage, then sets fire to the remains
Well, not literally, but close enough. It's a fascinating exchange. Huckabee is no fool and does an admirable job of trying to dodge Stewart's points. Unfortunately for Huckabee, Stewart doesn't let up.
Bonus irony: when I watched it, the video was preceded by an ad for the Navy.
After watching the preceding half of the interview, I'm kinda curious how Huckabee's book goes about advocating for this idea of decreased government through people simply getting along. It smacks of anarchism, and Huckabee himself mentions the similarity. Somehow I can't picture Huckabee going out shoplifting with the Arkansas chapter of Crimethinc. No, I suspect his angle is more like this: We can have less government if we have better morals and treat each other as we would want to be treated. And by the way, those morals are my morals and mine alone. Gays are evil and feminism is wrong. And vote for me in 2012. But that's just a blind guess. If anyone knows how he actually presents the idea in his book, I'd like to know. |
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| music for the week's end |
[Nov. 27th, 2008|02:45 pm] |
Cheap Beer: Amazon's got a nice-looking Black Friday promo: 50 digital albums for $5 apiece. Some good stuff on there right now, including Portishead's Third and Stereolab's Chemical Chords. As for Death Magnentic, discount it to 5¢ and I'll consider it.
Speed Is No Longer the Object: Which leads me to Joan As Police Woman (aka Joan Wasser). I wasn't aware she had a new album out. I was surprised by the languid preview clips, but it made more sense when I learned that she's been hanging out with Rufus Wainwright. The songs do showcase her voice nicely. Even so, I'm not really interested in Joan as torch singer. I'll take Joan as violin-playing indie rocker, thank you.
No Longer An Oxymoron: Looking for a way to kill time this Thanksgiving? Browse MTV Music. I never thought I'd see those two words together again. The selection started out as very mainstream but it seems to be expanding to more obscure artists. Like, say, the Dambuilders: "Shrine" (amusing, bizarre) and "Smell", which is probably not on Ted Kennedy's Top 10 list.
Free Beer: I finally picked up the Eric Avery album. It's sounding pretty good. I also found a free MP3 of "All Remote and No Control" to go with the video I posted earlier.
The Tsunami of Fail: A friend recently exposed me to one of the worst songs I've ever heard, that Honky Tonk Badonka-whatever song by some talentless, pitch-corrected corporate-country tool. As horrible as it is, remember that every tragedy contains an element of comedy. Just do a YouTube search on the song title or Trace Adkins, and watch the world drown in a tsunami of fail. And such as: |
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