20110131
Cee-Lo's "Fuck You" performed in ASL or on sped up video or by William Shatner or...
(thanks tom shad)
or on banjo
or on violin
or solo cello
or like a video game
or by screwy mctwistyface
or ike'n'tina style
20110125
The 2010 Piss and Pap Joll
I spent more time reading the 2010 Village Voice “Pazz and Jop” poll this year than I have any year since Robert Christgau’s dethroning, and that includes back when I was being asked to contribute. Since I hadn’t really read it in some time, I can’t say it’s better than it had been, but I can say this: It’s been a long time since I’ve been as interested in reading about mainstream (yes, “mainstream,” VV) pop as I am in the wake of the just-past fun and fascinating year on the charts.
I don’t mind that I don’t get to contribute to the annual critics’ poll anymore. I’m not really a good juror for the pool, and after I took to the WFMU's Beware of the Blog to chastise not just the Voice’s abandoning of jazz in the poll (I do contribute to Frances Davis’s stopgap jazz poll) but the whole idea of annual besties lists, I didn’t really expect them to keep calling. (For further reading, see my Brooklyn Rail colleague Katy Henriksen’s drawing and quartering of the Top 10 tradition.)
But now — do I wish I could get back in on the cool kids’ table so I too could talk about Cee-Lo and Bruno Mars, and say that M.I.A. is getting short shrift and Nicky Minaj is getting long shrift even while she’s barely getting any shrift at all? Yeah, I kinda do. It’s not just that there were more songs in the mainstream last year that I wanted to hear (enough to allow for the luxury of not having to try to like Katy Perry just to feel some connection with the pizza parlor and America at large). It’s that a cultural shift has been happening tantamount to the Nile reversing its current (which didn’t really happen), and that’s that blacks are making records with guitars and drums while the white are singing over anonymous backing tracks.
Are there exceptions? Sure, scads of them, shut up. And my point is not that the Gaga/Beyonce “Telephone” video was not the greatest thing since Pulp Fiction. But a thing has been going on within the trappings of hip hop which isn’t about rapping anymore and is about bands, instruments and songs. And I don’t care if we call it “Urban” or “Adult Contemporary” or “Newer Jack Swing” or “21st Century Soul.” It is fresh and sweet as a honeydew.
Sometimes it’s easier to make a point using mediocrity as an example, so take as Exhibit A Keri Hilson’s "Pretty Girl Rock” (seen here on Letterman because the band didn't make the video):
It's a cute song, catchy enough, but not great. While the white kids have taken pensive nerdcore to an exhausting level, however, Hilson delivered a straight-up pop song, hovering over the race line like the ghost of Diana Ross, and with people playing instruments. Real people playing real instruments. And I’ve got not a thing against turntables and laptops. But how refreshing is this to see?
Round Two: Will.I.Am vs. Mark Ronson.
Two of 2010’s hottest hits. “Check It Out” vs. “Bang Bang.” Titles that don’t deceive. These are songs designed to make you have fun now. And each has the added plus of a weirdee girl: Minaj (aka Onika Maraj aka Roman Zolanski aka The Harajuku Barbie) in the first instance and Amanda Warner (aka MNDR) in the second.
Maybe what it really is is a Motown revival. Sweet soul sounds abounded in 2010, and the young and pretty genius tunesmith Bruno Mars, with his Strat strapped on, was behind a lot of it. The 25-year-old Hawaiian-born Hispanic singer/songwriter is nominated for seven awards in the upcoming Grammys. He released his own album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans, with the hit “Just the Way You Are” and was behind, and in front of, the gorgeously catchy “Nothing On You” with B.o.B.
Sweet little Bruno was also behind Cee-Lo (look hard, you’ll see him) (sorry) for his smash hit “Fuck You,” who plays it with a band that puts Robert Palmer’s ’80s attempts to shame. The video for the song is equally great, but this clip (from British TV, where he didn’t have to change it to “Forget You”) shows the band at play.
Of course, there’s one man who’s never given up on having a band, even if more often than not he’s the whole band himself. He released a new album, but you can’t buy it (thanks to my British friends who got me copies from the Daily Mirror), and there’s no videos or TV appearances. Since he’s declared the internet over, the best out there is a fan vid. But it’s all supposed to be about your ears anyway, right?
I don’t mind that I don’t get to contribute to the annual critics’ poll anymore. I’m not really a good juror for the pool, and after I took to the WFMU's Beware of the Blog to chastise not just the Voice’s abandoning of jazz in the poll (I do contribute to Frances Davis’s stopgap jazz poll) but the whole idea of annual besties lists, I didn’t really expect them to keep calling. (For further reading, see my Brooklyn Rail colleague Katy Henriksen’s drawing and quartering of the Top 10 tradition.)
But now — do I wish I could get back in on the cool kids’ table so I too could talk about Cee-Lo and Bruno Mars, and say that M.I.A. is getting short shrift and Nicky Minaj is getting long shrift even while she’s barely getting any shrift at all? Yeah, I kinda do. It’s not just that there were more songs in the mainstream last year that I wanted to hear (enough to allow for the luxury of not having to try to like Katy Perry just to feel some connection with the pizza parlor and America at large). It’s that a cultural shift has been happening tantamount to the Nile reversing its current (which didn’t really happen), and that’s that blacks are making records with guitars and drums while the white are singing over anonymous backing tracks.
Are there exceptions? Sure, scads of them, shut up. And my point is not that the Gaga/Beyonce “Telephone” video was not the greatest thing since Pulp Fiction. But a thing has been going on within the trappings of hip hop which isn’t about rapping anymore and is about bands, instruments and songs. And I don’t care if we call it “Urban” or “Adult Contemporary” or “Newer Jack Swing” or “21st Century Soul.” It is fresh and sweet as a honeydew.
Sometimes it’s easier to make a point using mediocrity as an example, so take as Exhibit A Keri Hilson’s "Pretty Girl Rock” (seen here on Letterman because the band didn't make the video):
It's a cute song, catchy enough, but not great. While the white kids have taken pensive nerdcore to an exhausting level, however, Hilson delivered a straight-up pop song, hovering over the race line like the ghost of Diana Ross, and with people playing instruments. Real people playing real instruments. And I’ve got not a thing against turntables and laptops. But how refreshing is this to see?
Round Two: Will.I.Am vs. Mark Ronson.
Two of 2010’s hottest hits. “Check It Out” vs. “Bang Bang.” Titles that don’t deceive. These are songs designed to make you have fun now. And each has the added plus of a weirdee girl: Minaj (aka Onika Maraj aka Roman Zolanski aka The Harajuku Barbie) in the first instance and Amanda Warner (aka MNDR) in the second.
Maybe what it really is is a Motown revival. Sweet soul sounds abounded in 2010, and the young and pretty genius tunesmith Bruno Mars, with his Strat strapped on, was behind a lot of it. The 25-year-old Hawaiian-born Hispanic singer/songwriter is nominated for seven awards in the upcoming Grammys. He released his own album, Doo-Wops & Hooligans, with the hit “Just the Way You Are” and was behind, and in front of, the gorgeously catchy “Nothing On You” with B.o.B.
Sweet little Bruno was also behind Cee-Lo (look hard, you’ll see him) (sorry) for his smash hit “Fuck You,” who plays it with a band that puts Robert Palmer’s ’80s attempts to shame. The video for the song is equally great, but this clip (from British TV, where he didn’t have to change it to “Forget You”) shows the band at play.
Of course, there’s one man who’s never given up on having a band, even if more often than not he’s the whole band himself. He released a new album, but you can’t buy it (thanks to my British friends who got me copies from the Daily Mirror), and there’s no videos or TV appearances. Since he’s declared the internet over, the best out there is a fan vid. But it’s all supposed to be about your ears anyway, right?
20101214
Anthony Braxton
This is a blog post about the cover story on Anthony Braxton I wrote for Burning Ambulance. My feature on Henry Threadgill in issue 1 is also still available. Dang. Two of my number one favorites!
20101203
Porn Rock II
A while back, I posted a short piece about a band whose work I thought was, I guess, more like pornography than a love scene, that is, more about using proven rock tropes and clichés rather than creating real emotion.
At the time, I was also making notes on what else “porn rock” might mean: The Plasmatics and Tubes maybe, Tatu, Devinyls and Missing Persons as well. Traci Lords, the notorious underage porn star from the 1980s, reached #2 on the Billboard dance charts in 1994 with her single “Control” and a lo-fi death metal band called “Traci Lords Loves Noise” dropped a series of thrashingly potty-mouthed records around the same time. Sawa, the lead singer for metal band Watch Me Burn, is also a part of Suicide Girls, a punkish nudie site, and Gaye Advert of the punk band Adverts posed for men’s magazines in the 1970s to make money for band gear. But none of that’s all that interesting. What I really wanted was America’s Hardcore Sweetheart, Sasha Grey.
The porn starlet has made some surprising moves into popular culture. Granted the mainstream and the porn stream are much closer than they used to be, but Grey has bridged the gap, starring in Steven Soderbergh’s film Girlfriend Experience (to mixed reviews) and taking a recurring role on the television show Entourage, among other clothed roles. Perhaps more surprisingly, she appeared on the October, 2010, cover of the naked-but-staid magazine Playboy. At the same time, however, she has also occupied another corner of fringe culture. She has just released her first book, Neu Sex, and she has sung with longstanding industrial outfit Current 93.
I’d seen repeated references to Grey’s “noise band” but hadn’t heard it and after some half-hearted attempts at finding a download I gave up. Truth is, most “noise” is pretty bad, and not in a good way. Like punk - or acting, for that matter - lot of people get away with it who probably shouldn’t. But when Pendu Sound Recordings released the LP A Cassette Tape Culture - Grey’s third as a member of aTelecine (after a previous LP and a 7") - I decided with some trepidation to request a review copy.
I was hesitant because I thought I was just going to make fun of the album while making use of the short list of other examples of porn rock leftover from the post I never wrote, a sequel to a piece I’d never finished to begin with. And that’s not a very good reason to write a review. But that plan was thwarted by actually listening to the record. To begin with, the “noise” moniker was probably applied by someone not familiar with arhythmic music and then repeated by scores of writers who spend their time seeing what’s already been written rather than writing something new. Go blogosphere!
A Cassette Tape Culture is hardly noise in the usual, brutal sense. It’s a far cry from Merzbow, the titan of the industry, and doesn’t bear much in common with the sultrier noise of fellow Japanese pioneer Masonna (or for that matter Hijokaidan, Jojo Hiroshige’s noise band which has used porn star Miki Sawaguchi as a vocalist). Rather, the sounds made by Grey (voice, synth, guitar), Pablo St. Francis (voice, bass, drums, dulcimer) and Anthony Djuan (voice, rhythm, words, synth) are moody and surprisingly ethereal.
All three employ tape loops as well, and there’s a decidedly analog sound to the resulting mix. Vocals and melodies drift in and out. Canned beats are folded in, but never push the music. There’s usually several things going on, creating a nicely disorienting feel, but it never overwhelms. The 12 tracks (clocking in at 36 minutes) overall are actually pleasingly light.
It’s hard to say if Grey qualifies as a crossover artist. Out of curiosity I watched some clips of her adult movies online and found them to be rather abusive and off-putting, the sort of thing that would suggest a more brutal music than aTelecine makes. Likewise, I’m not sure the Soderbergh demographic is overly inclined toward either hardcore pornography or abstract music. Grey isn’t crossing over so much as occupying multiple camps at once, which might be a more impressive feat. Grey has been making music since she was 15 and cites Throbbing Gristle and KFMDM as influences, and has made an interesting career for herself where, truly, anything seems to be permitted.
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