Thurston Moore and Kim Gordon are breaking up, and I am sad, sad, sad.
As all good people with minimally-acceptable taste agree, Sonic Youth made a great deal of the best, most original, most interesting rock music of the 80s. I first came on board with Confusion Is Sex---tracks like Freezer Burn and Protect Me From You suggested a world much darker and weirder than the Misfits albums that had previously been my black standard. The Misfits aren't actually the worst comparison point---just like Glenn Danzig was a great vocalist because he always implied vocal energy beyond what he was expending, Thurston Moore could somehow hit a single unchorded string in a way that implied a whole range of counter-harmonics of the sort that would drive a Lovecraft character mad.
But as with any major rock band, the image was as much part of the story as the music. The most punk thing about Sonic Youth was their contempt for the bad-boy mythos of rock ideology: a conviction that being a hard-drinkin' wild boy was exactly what the industry wanted, but being crazy artists with a stable marriage was the biggest bird you could flip to the system.
As The Clash quoted, the overclass always wants to turn a conflict between rulers and ruled into a generational conflict, because generational conflicts fade away. Like protégé Kurt Cobain, Thurston and Kim wanted to prove that you could be in a healthy grown-up relationship without turning into James fucking Taylor, that anger at the world didn't have to be directed at the person you're having sex with, that living well was the best revenge. Sonic Youth rarely sloganeered in their music, but their commitment to each other was inherently political, and the feminist subtext of their songwriting duties, where Thurston tended towards the introspective and Kim towards the aggressive, was unmistakable.
Mainstream rock ideology is enamored of doomed, self-destructive rebellion, because mainstream rock exists to take youthful energy and countercultural anger and render them harmless, and nothing is more harmless than a corpse. That sense of rock ideology as a co-opting was at the base of the punk rebellion, and Sonic Youth was always gleefully snarky about punk bands they saw as dragging out all the old Jim Morrison bullshit. Many a hippie has criticized punk for its nihilism, but the truth is that punk built more infrastructure for sustainable countercultural life---'zines, indie labels, even communes---than the 60s generation ever conceived of. The hippies, raised in wholesome, stable families, always imagined that if they just looked at the powerful with big enough doe eyes, they'd be given what they wanted. The punks, children of a divorced generation, knew that you would only get as much life as you could build yourself.
A marriage is the ultimate collaboration, and the ultimate counterculture---two people forming their own nation, and learning every day the most basic and most important lesson: How to treat another person as though they're as important as you are. Thurston and Kim's commitment to being collaborators, equals, and partners while making angular, smart, deadly, pissed-off noise, was an inspiration to everyone who thought mutual love could be the fulfillment of one's individualism, not the end. The end of this particular marriage doesn't mean that's wrong---what ended this marriage is ultimately none of my damn business, not least because all the fantasies I've spun based on their image has very little to do with these two actual people---but the failure of these two people to keep their partnership together makes me even sadder than all the dashed hopes that will soon be shuffling away from Zucotti Park.
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Music. Show all posts
Sunday, October 16, 2011
Friday, July 17, 2009
Bernstein Would Like to Take You Higher
I finally made it to a River2River event: Steven Bernstein's Millennial Territory Orchestra Plays The Music of Sly & The Family Stone. "Plays the music of" are generally words that strike ennui into the heart of music-lovers, signaling the presence of a---shudder---tribute band, all-too-often with and overenthusiastic singer and embarrassing outfits. And Bernstein is probably overenthusiastic, not infrequently pausing between songs for long, rambling stories about growing up Jewish, Woodstock, and utopian musical hopes. But in fairness, the show was the start of a tribute to Woodstock, and Sly & The Family Stone have been inspiring utopian hopes for a long time.
As part of a Woodstock tribute (seemingly sponsored by the makers of the film The Road To Woodstock, who were out in force passing out fliers to the urban grey-hairs who are pretty much dead center of that biopic's demographic targeting zone), the show focused on the music S&tFS played during their show-stealing performance at Yasgur's farm, which means the hits were well represented. It was a good choice, not least because those songs take very well to the big-band transfer---like the Mingus Big Band, Bernstein's group alternates between brainy deconstructions of a song's musical elements and a full-court press of syncopated volume.
Also on site were a succession of terrific, interesting singers, each determined to bring their own stamp to the classics. Highlights included Shilpa Ray's East Indian punk drone on "Everyday People", Martha Wainwright's god-abandoned gospel keening on "Que Sera Sera", and Dean Bowman busting out his deep-piped cerebral genius freak act all over "Sing a Simple Song". The great Bernie Worrell was on keyboard, and though his instrumental medleys leaned a little heavily towards the jokey, he's a player who's always instinctively understood the jangly jump of the Family Stone's keyboard lines---looking back, the synth that propels The Name of the Band Is Talking Heads sounds not unlike the hyperactive jangling on "I Want to Take You Higher".
Understandably, though, there wasn't much heard from the landmark album "There's a Riot Going On". While we did get the ballad "Family Affair", most of that strange, murky, grim album is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want to hear at an outdoor summer show. It says a lot about my musical tastes that "Riot" is my favorite S&tFS album---it reverses all the principles of funk music, replacing the propulsive crispness that defines the genre with a grim, lurching swirl. Again, the Talking Heads connection---"Riot" was the first album to realize that the tightness of funk tunes could become a prison, and the sound of the singer being buried alive in "Luv 'n' Haight" and "Poet" anticipates the vocalist's paranoid lurking all over "Fear of Music".
Also of note: This was my first time seeing a show at the Castle Clinton space, in Battery Park, and it's quite a charming little venue. It's an enclosed open-air space that seats about 250, and it's a hell of a lot better designed than the average outdoor stage. The ground is well raked, which means that the seats in the back still get good sightlines (better than the seats in front, actually), and although the volume was kept a little on the low side (perhaps out of consideration for the kind of audience drawn to a Tribute to Woodstock show), the enclosure held the sound in nicely. Looks nothing at all like a castle, but 'ey, dis is Amurrica!
As part of a Woodstock tribute (seemingly sponsored by the makers of the film The Road To Woodstock, who were out in force passing out fliers to the urban grey-hairs who are pretty much dead center of that biopic's demographic targeting zone), the show focused on the music S&tFS played during their show-stealing performance at Yasgur's farm, which means the hits were well represented. It was a good choice, not least because those songs take very well to the big-band transfer---like the Mingus Big Band, Bernstein's group alternates between brainy deconstructions of a song's musical elements and a full-court press of syncopated volume.
Also on site were a succession of terrific, interesting singers, each determined to bring their own stamp to the classics. Highlights included Shilpa Ray's East Indian punk drone on "Everyday People", Martha Wainwright's god-abandoned gospel keening on "Que Sera Sera", and Dean Bowman busting out his deep-piped cerebral genius freak act all over "Sing a Simple Song". The great Bernie Worrell was on keyboard, and though his instrumental medleys leaned a little heavily towards the jokey, he's a player who's always instinctively understood the jangly jump of the Family Stone's keyboard lines---looking back, the synth that propels The Name of the Band Is Talking Heads sounds not unlike the hyperactive jangling on "I Want to Take You Higher".
Understandably, though, there wasn't much heard from the landmark album "There's a Riot Going On". While we did get the ballad "Family Affair", most of that strange, murky, grim album is pretty much the exact opposite of what you want to hear at an outdoor summer show. It says a lot about my musical tastes that "Riot" is my favorite S&tFS album---it reverses all the principles of funk music, replacing the propulsive crispness that defines the genre with a grim, lurching swirl. Again, the Talking Heads connection---"Riot" was the first album to realize that the tightness of funk tunes could become a prison, and the sound of the singer being buried alive in "Luv 'n' Haight" and "Poet" anticipates the vocalist's paranoid lurking all over "Fear of Music".
Also of note: This was my first time seeing a show at the Castle Clinton space, in Battery Park, and it's quite a charming little venue. It's an enclosed open-air space that seats about 250, and it's a hell of a lot better designed than the average outdoor stage. The ground is well raked, which means that the seats in the back still get good sightlines (better than the seats in front, actually), and although the volume was kept a little on the low side (perhaps out of consideration for the kind of audience drawn to a Tribute to Woodstock show), the enclosure held the sound in nicely. Looks nothing at all like a castle, but 'ey, dis is Amurrica!
Friday, June 26, 2009
Ding dong, the king is dead.
I hadn't wanted to write a Michael Jackson post. I mean, the man was one of the best dancers ever, and a helluva singer, and a spotty songwriter, and he sold a lot of records, and... y'know, whatever.
But I'm finding myself indignant over all the "burn in hell, pedophile" posts. Granted, the serial incompetence of the L.A. prosecutor's office, which results in a string of celebrities walking out of the courtroom free, does little to reassure people that his acquittal was for real. But the fact is, the person who first made the accusation really does seem to have been a fraud out for the money, and those who know say nothing ever happened.
Jackson was a weirdo, no doubt about it, and I mostly agree with Chris Rock's "I wouldn't let Michael Jackson watch my kids on television"---not because he was a pedophile, but because he was a six-year-old. But the evidence really does point to Jackson being an entirely asexual child obsessive, who would be as horrified by the idea of sex with children as he was by the idea of sex with anyone. The crotch grabs of his adult career always seemed as performative---and phony---as the girl-pining of his childhood singles.
As a number of music writers have noted, the thing that always was bothersome about Jackson was that he was always a performer, never a revealer---his incredibly fluid body distracted from his shadowy face. If nothing else, his whole career has been a reminder that you don't actually need to feel emotions to communicate them in art---I don't believe the little boy singing had ever felt the things expressed by "I'll Be There" or "Never Can Say Goodbye", and he doesn't actually need to. But it's jarring to be reminded of that, especially in America's authenticity-obsessed music culture.
Maybe that's why the glee at his downfall in the 90s---people always resented that someone who attracted so much adoration gave so little of himself. Jackson's combination of hugeness and unrelatability made him a perfect hate object---he was famous enough that hating him felt like revenge, he was vulnerable enough that you felt like a big man, and he was distant enough that you never had to worry about an actual human being being hurt.
But god, it's ugly! Michael, Brittney, Lindsey---there's this terrible urge to crush children. And all of them were children, child stars sufficiently coddled that they would have been completely unprepared for the vitriol suddenly turned on them. I've actually known a child star or two, and they all confirmed that being a child singer is a bizarre combination of being shielded from anything real and being constantly provided with performance-enhancing substances and the occasional hooker. South Park, in one of their more insightful moments, accurately summed it up as some kind of pagan Corn King ritual, wherein a young 'un is made king for a year, then sacrificed. I don't know if Michael Jackson committed child abuse. But Epic Records *definitely* did.
But I'm finding myself indignant over all the "burn in hell, pedophile" posts. Granted, the serial incompetence of the L.A. prosecutor's office, which results in a string of celebrities walking out of the courtroom free, does little to reassure people that his acquittal was for real. But the fact is, the person who first made the accusation really does seem to have been a fraud out for the money, and those who know say nothing ever happened.
Jackson was a weirdo, no doubt about it, and I mostly agree with Chris Rock's "I wouldn't let Michael Jackson watch my kids on television"---not because he was a pedophile, but because he was a six-year-old. But the evidence really does point to Jackson being an entirely asexual child obsessive, who would be as horrified by the idea of sex with children as he was by the idea of sex with anyone. The crotch grabs of his adult career always seemed as performative---and phony---as the girl-pining of his childhood singles.
As a number of music writers have noted, the thing that always was bothersome about Jackson was that he was always a performer, never a revealer---his incredibly fluid body distracted from his shadowy face. If nothing else, his whole career has been a reminder that you don't actually need to feel emotions to communicate them in art---I don't believe the little boy singing had ever felt the things expressed by "I'll Be There" or "Never Can Say Goodbye", and he doesn't actually need to. But it's jarring to be reminded of that, especially in America's authenticity-obsessed music culture.
Maybe that's why the glee at his downfall in the 90s---people always resented that someone who attracted so much adoration gave so little of himself. Jackson's combination of hugeness and unrelatability made him a perfect hate object---he was famous enough that hating him felt like revenge, he was vulnerable enough that you felt like a big man, and he was distant enough that you never had to worry about an actual human being being hurt.
But god, it's ugly! Michael, Brittney, Lindsey---there's this terrible urge to crush children. And all of them were children, child stars sufficiently coddled that they would have been completely unprepared for the vitriol suddenly turned on them. I've actually known a child star or two, and they all confirmed that being a child singer is a bizarre combination of being shielded from anything real and being constantly provided with performance-enhancing substances and the occasional hooker. South Park, in one of their more insightful moments, accurately summed it up as some kind of pagan Corn King ritual, wherein a young 'un is made king for a year, then sacrificed. I don't know if Michael Jackson committed child abuse. But Epic Records *definitely* did.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
C'mon You Homosexual Demon
No post today. Not because I'm so lazy, but because I saw this, and got inspired to make... this:
There is no more. But there's seemingly no way to turn off that freakin' "Read more" in my template.
There is no more. But there's seemingly no way to turn off that freakin' "Read more" in my template.
Tuesday, June 9, 2009
David Byrne at Prospect Park
David Byrne's free Brooklyn show, playing the music of the Byrne/Eno collaborations, was a great Brooklyn event, even if the music was only so-so. Old David Byrne is inevitably not young David Byrne, and the need to co-ordinate with a big band and a lot of backup singers only added to his tendency to give the songs a mannered delivery, fussy and calculatedly antic where the original versions sounded genuinely strangled.
But it was still a great evening, not least because of the sheer fall-of-Saigon crowd---the pre-show line started at the 11th street bandshell, extended back to the 15th street entrance, then wrapped around twice. At least twice, that is---I never did manage to find the end of the line. Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's elected mascot, gave his typical dem, dese, 'n' dose opening speech, which was charming as always (I hope he doesn't really have any power, but he's totally delightful as the political equivalent of Mr. Met).
I wasn't thrilled with the singing, or The David Byrne Modern Dancers (not their actual designation), who boogied around in loose modern-dance-wear while executing what mostly struck me as filler choreography. But it was delightful when Byrne danced along, and any opinion I have must be filtered through the fact that I could only see them in occasional 2-second increments between the heads of everyone else way out beyond the bandshell fence.
And the band had a great funky sound---they truly killed it on "I Zimbra"---and it was amazing to be reminded of just how many hits the Byrne/Eno collaboration produced, including "Once In A Lifetime", "Life During Wartime", and the big encore number, "Burning Down the House". My Life In The Bush of Ghosts remains the most ridiculously ahead-of-its-time record ever, and it's always neat to hear Byrne doing those songs live and singing all the samples, which turns them from collages into surprisingly cohesive songs.
That said, it was a shame that the carefully-planned show didn't give Byrne a chance to note, during the chorus of "Life During Wartime" that nowadays there ain't no Mudd Club nor CBGB. The Mudd Club was an early casualty---the Talking Heads were still playing "Wartime" on the road when it was gone. But while CBGB outlasted most of the bands that played there, the lyrics referencing it em-past-ened the music as surely as all the grade-school kids brought to the show by their parents.
But it was still a great evening, not least because of the sheer fall-of-Saigon crowd---the pre-show line started at the 11th street bandshell, extended back to the 15th street entrance, then wrapped around twice. At least twice, that is---I never did manage to find the end of the line. Marty Markowitz, Brooklyn's elected mascot, gave his typical dem, dese, 'n' dose opening speech, which was charming as always (I hope he doesn't really have any power, but he's totally delightful as the political equivalent of Mr. Met).
I wasn't thrilled with the singing, or The David Byrne Modern Dancers (not their actual designation), who boogied around in loose modern-dance-wear while executing what mostly struck me as filler choreography. But it was delightful when Byrne danced along, and any opinion I have must be filtered through the fact that I could only see them in occasional 2-second increments between the heads of everyone else way out beyond the bandshell fence.
And the band had a great funky sound---they truly killed it on "I Zimbra"---and it was amazing to be reminded of just how many hits the Byrne/Eno collaboration produced, including "Once In A Lifetime", "Life During Wartime", and the big encore number, "Burning Down the House". My Life In The Bush of Ghosts remains the most ridiculously ahead-of-its-time record ever, and it's always neat to hear Byrne doing those songs live and singing all the samples, which turns them from collages into surprisingly cohesive songs.
That said, it was a shame that the carefully-planned show didn't give Byrne a chance to note, during the chorus of "Life During Wartime" that nowadays there ain't no Mudd Club nor CBGB. The Mudd Club was an early casualty---the Talking Heads were still playing "Wartime" on the road when it was gone. But while CBGB outlasted most of the bands that played there, the lyrics referencing it em-past-ened the music as surely as all the grade-school kids brought to the show by their parents.
Tuesday, August 7, 2007
Phillip Glass on SNL
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xo0vmT1nL7s
An odd piece of cultural history, which gets much odder at 2:38.
I'm not sure what strikes me more: that SNL was once so committed to NY hipster culture that they had Phillip Glass as their musical guest, the sight of George Wendt introducing Phillip Glass on SNL (thus creating an 80s-TV hat trick), or that, when paired with the video, Phillip Glass actually does seem to have nailed the feeling of television culture better than anyone since.
And I don't even much *like* Phillip Glass!
An odd piece of cultural history, which gets much odder at 2:38.
I'm not sure what strikes me more: that SNL was once so committed to NY hipster culture that they had Phillip Glass as their musical guest, the sight of George Wendt introducing Phillip Glass on SNL (thus creating an 80s-TV hat trick), or that, when paired with the video, Phillip Glass actually does seem to have nailed the feeling of television culture better than anyone since.
And I don't even much *like* Phillip Glass!
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Guitar Hero Encore: Rock The 80s
My most recent gaming purchase has been (deep breath) GuitarHeroEncoreRockTheEightiesWHEW!---an appropriately silly name for a profoundly silly era in popular music. I've always loved the way that rhythm games give the player a perspective from which to examine the music (interactivity may be a dubious storytelling tool, but it's a fantastic teaching device), and there's all kinds of insights to be gleaned about 80s music in the course of playing. For one, it's a potent reminder of what a cocaine-driven decade the 80s were---all the new wave songs are obsessively downstroke-downstroke-downstroke-dwnstrk-dwnstrk-dnstk-dnstk-
dnstk-dskdskdskdskfasterfasterfasterfasterfastertightertighter. Eighties pop, like eighties interior design, is all about shiny, perfect, impenetrable surfaces executed with gleamy-eyed obsessiveness.
Along with the hits ("I Ran" is surpassingly fun to play guitar on), there's also a lot of the lesser-known punk rock and new wave that's way more exciting to me than the hair metal (and for which they seem to be catching some flack). When I saw the song list, I was simultaneously psyched to play Guitar Hero to the Dead Kennedys and X (Husker Du is too much to hope for, I know), and wracked with sorrow for smash-the-system music turned into a level in a video game.
So I am happy to report that the in-house cover band has censored the punk lyrics heavily---"Los Angeles" has lost a few lines, and the Dead Kennedys "Police Truck" has been more or less altered into incoherence. If I were 15, I might bitch about the System being afraid to let people really hear what the Kennedys were saying; now I'm strangely comforted that there's still something about the music that is, if not terrifying, then at least Not Allowed.
dnstk-dskdskdskdskfasterfasterfasterfasterfastertightertighter. Eighties pop, like eighties interior design, is all about shiny, perfect, impenetrable surfaces executed with gleamy-eyed obsessiveness.
Along with the hits ("I Ran" is surpassingly fun to play guitar on), there's also a lot of the lesser-known punk rock and new wave that's way more exciting to me than the hair metal (and for which they seem to be catching some flack). When I saw the song list, I was simultaneously psyched to play Guitar Hero to the Dead Kennedys and X (Husker Du is too much to hope for, I know), and wracked with sorrow for smash-the-system music turned into a level in a video game.
So I am happy to report that the in-house cover band has censored the punk lyrics heavily---"Los Angeles" has lost a few lines, and the Dead Kennedys "Police Truck" has been more or less altered into incoherence. If I were 15, I might bitch about the System being afraid to let people really hear what the Kennedys were saying; now I'm strangely comforted that there's still something about the music that is, if not terrifying, then at least Not Allowed.
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