music
September 08, 2006
Pop Culture 2.0?
It's the end of an era. Two of the most influential figures in American pop culture were fired this week: Tom Freston and Robert Christgau. Freston, who was head of Viacom's cable networks, was one of the key executives behind the rise of MTV. Christgau is the self-proclaimed "Dean of American Rock Critics," the writer who redefined the rock canon away from the populism of the mainstream music press, and toward what he sometimes called "semipopular music."
Freston got canned after the MTV Music Video Awards continued their ratings freefall this year, while MTV's web offerrings got their clocks cleaned by "Web 2.0" social networking juggernauts MySpace and YouTube. Christgau got axed after the Village Voice was sold to an alternaweekly chain desperately trying to compete with craigslist's free classified ads.
The old frameworks for making sense of pop culture are starting to collapse. Pop's presumed market of scarcity - only a handful of songs can make it to heavy rotation, only a handful of artists can become stars - is being overwhelmed by an information explosion. On MySpace, thousands of local band listings sit side by side with Paris Hilton promotions - and Paris needs the locals more than they need her. No one indie band has the reach of a pop star, but it's the community they've built that brings eyeballs to Paris's page. Meanwhile, viewers are tuning out TV channels and becoming their own programmers on YouTube.
The demassification of American popular culture continues. Every year, the big networks lose ground to cable, while the big cable channels lose ground to the profusion of newer digital channels. The big record labels' sales shrink, while the global jukebox becomes available on all-you-can-download subscription services like Rhapsody. Radio listeners abandon terrestrial's shrunken playlists for Sirius and XM. "The Long Tail" grows ever longer.
Which explains not only Freston's departure, but perhaps Christgau's, too. When the mainstream dissolves, how do we define the margins? If there's no longer such a thing as pop, how can there still be punk?
Christgau himself was never an indie snob - he's always had the open-earedness to praise a big star like Garth Brooks if he thought the music earned it. And I'm sure he'll land on his feet - some smart publication should grab him for some instant hipster credibility. Freston, I'm not so sure about, although I'm confident his parachute was much more golden than Christgau's. But the real question is what comes next.
Pop Culture 2.0 no longer needs a lowest common denominator. Traditional media companies are always out to score a blockbuster, because it's so much more efficient to sell one product to one million customers, rather than a thousnd products to a thousand customers each. But to MySpace, it's all the same. They make their money off ads, and a million pageviews is a million pageviews, no matter how they're sliced up. In fact, better they be a thousand different pages with a thousand viewers each - all the more room for growth. Finally, the economics are on the side of cultural diversity.
That doesn't mean they'll stay that way. I'm sure that Fox, which bought MySpace, would love to see it simply replace MTV as pop's top tastemaker. But I doubt we'll ever again see the kind of teen monoculture I lived through in the 1980s. There's just too much cool stuff out there to listen to. Christgau's the one who taught me that. And now everybody's figuring it out.
Posted by tedf at 01:21 AM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2006
"The Ten Most Accurately Rated Bands of All Time"
I just discovered this great piece from Spin (which happens to be the first magazine I ever got paid to write for) on those rare bands who end up neither overrated nor underrated, but just right. I don't agree with all the author's judgements (I think Tone-Loc and Young-MC are both seriously underrated - they, like Hanson, made better music with the Dust Brothers than Beck ever has), but the concept is great.
On the related subject of famousness, see the always dead-on Fametracker, which accurately dubs itself "The Famer's Almanac of Celebrity Worth."
And for the origins of this whole thread, check out this piece of basketblogging by moonlighting TPM Cafe and Tapped contributor Matthew Yglesias, along with the wide-ranging discussion it engenders, wherein I end up defending the Fantasic Four movie for its comic-booky charms. (I hated Batman Begins because it went exactly the opposite way - it seemed desperately apologetic about being a movie based on a comic book. But that's a subject for another post . . .)
Posted by tedf at 07:23 PM | Comments (3)
February 11, 2006
My Ballot for the 2005 Village Voice Rock Critics' Poll
My top albums are Common's Be and Loudon Wainwright III's Here Come the Choppers!
Be is in the classic soul tradition of Marvin Gaye's What's Going On, De La Soul's 3 Feet High and Rising, and A Tribe Called Quest's The Low End Theory: rich, coherent musical statements, full of both humor and outrage, but far too humane to fall for gangsta posturing. It's produced by Kanye West, and West's new record is great, too, but I think Common has him beat as a wordsmith. Together, they're an amazing combination.
Here Come the Choppers is the latest from one of America's smartest singer-songwriters. Wainwright's music sounds better than ever before, thanks to brillaint guitarwork from the amazing Bill Frisell. The title track works up a level of dystopic menace that reminds me of Warren Zevon's overlooked 1989 cyberpunk classic, Transverse City (which featured similar guitar from guest Jerry Garcia).
My top single of the year, hands down, is "George Bush Doesn't Care About Black People" by The Legendary K.O." It's a remix of Kanye West's "Golddigger," with new lyrics about New Orleans. It's both a withering indictment of the Bush administration, and a tribute to West's act of political courage for criticizing Bush in front of a national audience on the Katrina telethon (an act that may have cost him several Grammies). The brilliant music video - unplayed on MTV, but one of ifilm.com's top downloads - is available here.
The one album I wished I'd ranked higher is Wilco's new live record, Kicking Television - it kept on growing on me after I sent in my ballot. At first, I figured it was just another live greatest hits package, like Radiohead's disappointing recent set. But it's a lot more than that. I've always admired Wilco, but (as with Radiohead) sometimes their studio albums come off a little too cold - making them feel perhaps less heartfelt than Tweedy intended. The band's new live lineup reimagines their entire catalog, turning experiments like "Misunderstood" and "Ashes of American Flags" into off-kilter anthems, and "At Least That's What You Said" and "Via Chicago" into self-lacerating confessions. Along with Dylan & The Band's Before the Flood, the Stones' Get Your Ya-Ya's Out, James Brown's Revolution of the Mind, Johnny Cash's Live at Folsom Prison, Marvin Gaye In Concert, Maxwell Unplugged, and maybe Frampton Comes Alive, Kicking Television is one of the handful of all-time great live records.
Posted by tedf at 03:02 PM | Comments (2)
December 12, 2005
"My Humps" by the Black Eyed Peas
The thing about "My Humps" is that while for the longest time I thought I hated it, nonetheless every time I heard it on the radio I couldn't turn it off. I've finally concluded that I just have to admire its relentless bluntness. If "humps" and "lumps" are single-entendres - nicknames rather than puns - then the closing references to "all that ass" and "all that breasts" become zero-entendres - somewhere between pornographic and clinical in their literalism. Meanwhile, the detatched way in which Fergie discusses her "lady lumps" has the bracing cynicism of a good Nip/Tuck episode. Fergie makes her T & A sound like just two more accessories she picked up for the evening. Plus, you have to admire the invention of a new term that lumps together breasts and buttcheeks into one indistinguishable batch of soft flesh. It's the dialectical resolution of the long-running American cultural conflict between the values of "breast men" (the traditional Monroe ideal) and "ass men" (the rising J-Lo rebuttal). In a sense, it queers the objectification of the woman's body, refusing to accept familiar distinctions between body parts. It also raises the question of whether men, in turn, can have "lovely man lumps." I'll have to await the inevitable answer record.
For thorough evisceration of the song, check out Notes on "Humps" - A song so awful it hurts the mind. By Hua Hsu
Posted by tedf at 02:40 AM | Comments (0)
October 04, 2005
Kanye and Mike Myers on SNL
Check out this great sketch from this week's SNL. Kanye West and Mike Myers meet awkwardly backstage - and Myers reveals that his American citizenship has been revoked and his phone's been tapped since West blurted out his attack on George Bush at the Katrina concert.
YouSendIt | Email large files quickly, securely, and easily!
Posted by tedf at 02:57 AM | Comments (0)
September 25, 2005
Music Video for "George Bush Don't Like Black People (Remix)"
Here's the music video for the underground hit which samples Kanye West's "Golddigger" (along with his famous statement at the Katrina benefit) for a darkly comic attack on Bush for the New Orleans disaster and plenty more:
http://www.ifilm.com/ifilmdetail/2680444
Posted by tedf at 03:59 AM | Comments (0)
September 03, 2005
Kanye West Blasts Bush During NBC Hurrican Relief Concert - Censored on West Coast Broadcast
This is what Pierre Bourdieu called "doxa" in action - the policing of the boundaries of accepted public discourse. Kanye West didn't curse, he just told the truth as he and many others see it; that was enough to get him censored. See this Billboard article for the details:
Kanye West Rips Bush During NBC Telethon
Posted by tedf at 12:33 PM | Comments (0)
June 21, 2005
Slate on Sleaziest Uses of Classic Songs in Ads
The winner: Iggy Pop's "Lust for Life," a song about shooting up smack used in the current Royal Caribbean ads.
That's just sort of funny, though. The song probably subverts the ad more than the ad neutralizes the song. The real travesties are CCR's "Fortunate Son" being used to sell Wrangler jeans and Janis Joplin's "Mercedes Benz" selling, well, you guessed it. In "Fortunate Son," they play that first line - "Some folks were born to wave the flag/Ooh that red white and blue" - then cut the rest of the lyrics, since the next line goes, "And when the band plays Hail to the Chief/They point the cannon at you." The whole song is about how patriotism is used as a cover for class exploitation and warmongering.
I wonder if Fogerty was hard up for cash, or if he lost control of his publishing rights as part of his general screwing by Fantasy Records. It seems hard to believe the former, since he was still playing "Fortunate Son" as a very appropriate anti-Bush song at Kerry rallies last fall.
What's the Worst Ad Song Ever? - The results are in. By Seth Stevenson
Posted by tedf at 12:19 PM | Comments (1)
June 13, 2005
NYT's Brent Staples on When Keeping It Real Goes Wrong
This is a harsh, but, I'm afraid, completely justified attack on the state of hip-hop today, which so often glamourizes not just fantasy violence, but the real-life violence committed by "thugs" like the 50 Cent and Game posses. Staples is particularly sharp on the complicty and hypocrisy of the hip-hop media, which mocks "snitches" while staying outraged that the murders of Jam Master Jay, Biggie, Tupac, et al remain unsolved. I started my freelance career as a hip-hop journalist, writing for The Source, Vibe, Spin and Details. I'm glad I got out of it before things turned this crass and ugly.
The Hip-Hop Media - a World Where Crime Really Pays - New York Times
Posted by tedf at 12:27 PM | Comments (0)
April 14, 2005
Amerie's "One Thing"
This is the only thing on pop radio right now that stops me from flipping stations. It's produced by Rich Harrison, the same guy who did Beyonce's epochal "Crazy in Love." He also did the new J-Lo single, but we'll forgive him for that. Harrison's trademark is to start with a red-hot sample, crank it up in the mix, and force the vocalist to dance around it. J-Lo's overwhelmed by the sax riff in her single, but Amerie does an amazing job bouncing off the thrilling drum riff in "One Thing," sampled from an old Meters track. The mix is pretty bare bones - mostly the sample, the vocals, and a single guitar chord played once each key change. What makes it work is that Harrison lets the drums, not the vocals, take the lead. At one point, in fact, Amerie just drops out for about 30 seconds, so we can just enjoy the killer riff.
The single was featured on the Hitch soundtrack, and the original version of the video had a lot of fun intercutting between Amerie's moves and Kevin James's attempts in the film to get down. During that drum break, instead of the typical video gyrations, we get thirty seconds of James's enthusiastic fumbling. Sadly, now that Hitch is out of theaters and the song's a hit on its own, MTV Hits is playing a second version of the video without any film clips. It's still the best thing in their rotation.
Posted by tedf at 02:20 PM | Comments (1)
April 05, 2005
Cool Wrestling Lingo Applied to Music and Critical Theory
From the wrestling blog:
[There are three kinds of wrestling fans:]mark - someone who believes it’s all real
smart - someone who knows the inside information, or thinks they do, and is too smart for his own good
smark - a "smart mark” - someone who knows insider stuff, but is still a mark at heart
I really love these hermeneutic categories - they perfectly capture something about the experience of postmodern culture. Beck, for example, is great when he's a smark, but annoying when he's just a smart. Whether you enjoy the Pet Shop Boys or not depends on whether you consider them smarks or just smarts. And watching MTV loses is pleasure when it becomes impossible to remain smarky about it, and you end up just being a smart.
I remain a mark for Hall & Oates, Debbie Gibson, and Superman. I used to be a mark for the Yankees, but that's fading, and I'm not sure I'm even a smark for them anymore. And the world of academic critical theory is full of marks who think they're smarts (Foucault obsessives, Derrida fantatics), and would be better off embracing their smarkiness (like the publisher of Judy!, that great Judith Butler fanzine of the early 1990s).
Posted by tedf at 04:19 AM | Comments (3)
March 31, 2005
Dylan's "Rainy Day Women" in Bullet Points
Click here. (Thanks, Gavin!)
Posted by tedf at 04:45 PM | Comments (0)
March 24, 2005
The Bravery's "An Honest Mistake"
Anybody else notice how much this single sounds like Stacey Q's classic "Two of Hearts"? I don't really mind all these new '80s-nostalgia acts. I really like The Killers, in fact - their new video looks like a lost ABC classic. But given what a ubiquitous trend this is, "The Bravery" seems like a particularly disingenuous name. How about "The Craven," or maybe "The Calculated to Appeal to Former WDRE Listeners"?
Posted by tedf at 01:19 PM | Comments (0)
March 22, 2005
Hootie Returns
In the last few days, I've been getting more and more hits for this essay on Hootie and the Blowfish I wrote about ten years ago. It's even turned up in a couple of blogs, Dead Parrot Society and The Long 21st Century. That's a healthy change of pace, since the other spot my name has turned up recently is in this blog, in which one of my dopplegangers writes about his heroin addiction. (Still, that's better than the Ted Friedman who always used to turn up in Lexis-Nexis searches - a disbarred lawyer so infamous in certain New York law circles that a certain kind of sleazy activity would be knowingly referred to as "a Ted Friedman kind of thing.")
The reason for the renewed interest in Hootie is clear: those strange Burger King commercials featuring Darius Rucker in western gear. I love Dave LaChappelle, the deleriously over-the-topphotographer/music video director who made the commercial. (He should get to make an SF epic - it could be The Sixth Element. And his video for Xtina's "Dirty" is one of the most gloriously perverse things MTV has ever aired.) But I find this ad really depressing. Rucker looks abashed, humiliated. His singing is almost mournful (although also quite lovely - he still has a beautiful voice). And the racial politics are deeply creepy. Rucker's long been mocked for being a deracinated black man in a white frat band, but I've always admired his willingness to play the kind of music he likes, no matter how whitebread. And I found the old-fashioned sentiments of "Hold My Hand" a sweet throwback to '60s peans to cross-racial brotherhood like "Joy to the World." But here, the commercial seems to be mocking Hoote for how far he's willing to go to humor the white man. He's even singing about fried chicken. I imagine LaChappelle thought the image of a black man as a cowboy would be an empowering reversal of cliches - like that cowboy character Laurence Fishbourne played in Pee Wee's Playhouse (a clear influence on LaChappelle). But something went horribly, horribly wrong between concept and execution.
Update:
Check out today's Boondocks on Hootie.
Posted by tedf at 03:38 AM | Comments (2)
March 15, 2005
Beatallica Back Online
Lars Ulrich seems to have learned the PR damage of quashing free expression . . .
Boing Boing: Xeni on NPR: Beatallica back, thanks to Lars Ulrich, fair use crusader.
Posted by tedf at 05:00 PM | Comments (0)
Joining the Rockcrit Guild
Here's a nice entry from my friend Chris Molanphy on the mixed pleasures of joining the illustrious world of Village Voice Pazz & Jop critics' poll voters:
molanphy: HIPPY-HOPPY, PAZZY-JOPPY: MY TOP RECORDS OF 2004
For more incestuous rockcrit, check out this really great piece Chris wrote a while back about the brilliance of Rob Sheffield, the principal author of the new version of the Rolling Stone Record Guide.
Posted by tedf at 02:29 AM | Comments (0)
March 03, 2005
Sony Shuts Down Beatles/Metallica Parody Band
This would seem to be just the kind of stuff the Supreme Court ruled fair use in the 2 Live Crew/”Pretty Woman” decision. But how much good is it to have the law on your side when the other side has all the lawyers?
Yahoo! News - Parody Band Forced Offline by Sony Publishers
It’s pretty easy to find Beatallica MP3s still online. Here’s one link.
Posted by tedf at 02:21 PM | Comments (0)
Great Story on a Dead Corporate Art Form
Yahoo! News - Industrial Musicals Offer Odes to Tractors, Toilets
Posted by tedf at 01:28 PM | Comments (0)