R5 Productions sure has come a long way. For those of you who don't know, R5 is a self-described "'Do it Yourself' show promotions agency" that operates in Philadelphia. The idea is to offer an alternative to the tyranny of the Clear Channel-controlled industry of concert booking and promotion. For years I've gone to their shows, and it was great because you could see great talent at a reasonable price in an extremely intimate environment. It was good enough that I didn't mind putting up with occasionally poor sound, venues with stifling heat and no view of the stage whatsoever for people who aren't in the first row, and shows that started literally hours behind schedule. They've never been a really "professional" organization, so those things were inevitable. But they didn't matter, because nobody else would even book artists like Trans Am or Four Tet to play in a venue in Philly, let alone in a tiny church basement for $7. There was also that satisfying feeling that you were somehow "sticking it to the man" by participating in an underground scene instead of paying $20 plus a $10 Anal Rape Fee through Ticketmaster.
But something strange has been happening lately: R5 Productions has grown through the roof. The last few shows I've gone to have resembled actual rock shows, and not in the good way: people line up around the block an hour before the doors open to get a good spot, every other person there seems to be saying "I heard this band is supposed to be really cool/hip, which is why I came," every show seems to sell out, and 2/3 of the people there look young enough to not even have a driver's license. People start cheering after every song on the PA ends because they think the show's about to start, and the bands are treated like the Rolling Stones instead of just some cool guys who happen to make good music: "I can see Kevin Barnes! Where's my digital camera?! EEEEE!!!!" Prices have slowly gone up from $5 to $7, and now $10 is the absolute minimum you will ever pay to see a show there. And I never thought I'd see the day when people at R5 shows were the types of people who feel the need to shove as close to the stage as possible with no regard for the people they're shoving out of the way, or take off their shirt and still clap with their hands over their head, not stopping to think that people next to them might be getting a disgusting whiff of sweaty armpit.
Frankly, shows there are starting to suck.
I used to love R5 shows because none of that stuff happened. They made going to shows relaxing and fun. Now I have to start worrying about little inconveniences like buying tickets ahead of time. I went to see Of Montreal last night, and was shocked to find a line stretching around the block when I got there. Of Montreal! They're Of Montreal, not Coldplay! Where did all these people come from? I was lucky that my friend Priya got there before I did and got a place in the line or else I might not even have gotten in. To see Of Montreal!
So all of a sudden the First Unitarian Church starts feeling a lot like the TLA or the Electric Factory. Except it's worse. Because those are professional dedicated venues, not a church basement. When people start treating a church basement as if it were an actual venue, those things that I used to overlook start seeming like a big deal. The basement is even more unbearably hot when it's stuffed to the breaking point with as many people as it can hold. I couldn't hear any of the pretty and intricate harmonies that characterize Of Montreal because the sound was so muddy, not to mention way too loud. And there was the aforementioned shirtless nitwit.
At least if I go see a show at the TLA, I can be guaranteed room to stand, and a view of the stage, and sound done by paid professionals. If the floor is too crowded, I can go sit in the balcony, and if I'm getting too tense because of all the irritating high school kids (and high school kids are always irritating, no matter how hard they try not to be, a fact I knew when I was in high school as well as I do now), I can go the bar and have a drink. If R5 Productions is going to start acting like a truly professional booking and promotion agency, they've got a way to go before the product they're selling matches the price they're asking (if you count the numerous inconveniences of going to a show, like wait time, cramped legs, and oppressive heat to be part of the "price"). Otherwise they've just outgrown themselves.
Saturday, August 27, 2005
Friday, August 26, 2005
The Flaming Lips: Eccentricity vs. Major Label Recording Contract
The Flaming Lips sure have a way of staying in the spotlight for far longer than they've really earned. If you've been paying attention to all their recent activities, would you believe that their last new album came in 2002? Yes, Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots is really that old. That was the year I first saw the Lips live, and the album had already been out for months by that point. They've stuck around due to their EPs and soundtrack contributions (there really isn't a more perfect band to contribute original music to the Spongebob Squarepants movie... just try to imagine anybody else even playing a song called "Spongebob and Patrick Confront the Psychic Wall of Energy," let alone appearing in the video dressed alternately as pirates, a ham, and a giant wedge of cheese), and now they're finally coming out with new music.
Here is the newly released video for their newly released single, "Mr. Ambulance Driver," from their forthcoming album, At War with the Mystics, which should be out early in 2006. It should also be noted that the song was also on the soundtrack to The Wedding Crashers, but is still being advertised on the Lips' official site as being from their new album.
Now first of all, a band releasing a single six months or more before an album's release is just plain teasing, especially when it'll have been four years since their last album, and when their last two albums have been ridiculously amazing, and even more so when the band is easily the most unique and other worldly in the world of mainstream pop music. Seriously, they are. Who else could possibly claim that title? OutKast? They're slightly eccentric, but not necessarily ground-breaking. Radiohead? It's been five years since they last put out a great album. Bjork? Ok... maybe it is Bjork, now that I think about it. At any rate... come on! I want more! One song isn't going to tide me over!
As for the song itself, it seems the Lips have really scaled back their sound. It's never really been easy to tell what direction the Flaming Lips are going in (for God's sake, who could possibly have seen something as incomprehensibly bizarre as Zaireeka coming?), so maybe this isn't representative of the entire album, but it's not really making me optimistic. This song sounds more akin to the relatively unadorned power pop of Clouds Taste Metallic (although this is much more slick and clean than anything on that album) than their last few albums, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for somebody who's spent the last few years acquainting himself with every earth-shattering second of an album like The Soft Bulletin, this just sounds plain and uninteresting.
The video reflects this stripped down sound as well. There's not a single strobe light, animal costume, disco ball, Vegas dancer, or trademark white suit to be found (Wayne Coyne is much better suited to a trademark white suit than Tom Wolfe, if you ask me). There's not even a single band member enclosed in a giant clear plastic bubble! It's almost like they've become the last thing you'd possibly expect the Flaming Lips to be: a normal rock band! Or at least as normal as the Flaming Lips can appear. Say it ain't so, boys!
Here is the newly released video for their newly released single, "Mr. Ambulance Driver," from their forthcoming album, At War with the Mystics, which should be out early in 2006. It should also be noted that the song was also on the soundtrack to The Wedding Crashers, but is still being advertised on the Lips' official site as being from their new album.
Now first of all, a band releasing a single six months or more before an album's release is just plain teasing, especially when it'll have been four years since their last album, and when their last two albums have been ridiculously amazing, and even more so when the band is easily the most unique and other worldly in the world of mainstream pop music. Seriously, they are. Who else could possibly claim that title? OutKast? They're slightly eccentric, but not necessarily ground-breaking. Radiohead? It's been five years since they last put out a great album. Bjork? Ok... maybe it is Bjork, now that I think about it. At any rate... come on! I want more! One song isn't going to tide me over!
As for the song itself, it seems the Lips have really scaled back their sound. It's never really been easy to tell what direction the Flaming Lips are going in (for God's sake, who could possibly have seen something as incomprehensibly bizarre as Zaireeka coming?), so maybe this isn't representative of the entire album, but it's not really making me optimistic. This song sounds more akin to the relatively unadorned power pop of Clouds Taste Metallic (although this is much more slick and clean than anything on that album) than their last few albums, which isn't necessarily a bad thing, but for somebody who's spent the last few years acquainting himself with every earth-shattering second of an album like The Soft Bulletin, this just sounds plain and uninteresting.
The video reflects this stripped down sound as well. There's not a single strobe light, animal costume, disco ball, Vegas dancer, or trademark white suit to be found (Wayne Coyne is much better suited to a trademark white suit than Tom Wolfe, if you ask me). There's not even a single band member enclosed in a giant clear plastic bubble! It's almost like they've become the last thing you'd possibly expect the Flaming Lips to be: a normal rock band! Or at least as normal as the Flaming Lips can appear. Say it ain't so, boys!
Thursday, August 25, 2005
Are you ready for some football?
It's almost September, which can mean only one thing: my chronic case of Eagles Fever will soon be in full tilt. I'll begin counting down the days every week until Sunday (and sometimes Monday), I'll wake up in the morning with visions of Donovan McNabb completing screen passes that go for 50 yards to Brian Westbrook, and I'll read the sports page daily for reports of hamstring injuries and such in offensive linemen and anything else that might have the slightest effect on the outcomes of games. Will Corey Simon's continued absence leave the Eagles with no presence up the middle and let Michael Vick run wild in the season opener? (No, he's not really as good as the holdout and "franchise player" tag would suggest anyway.) Will Terrell Owens eventually just shut up and play? (Probably.) Oh, the suspense, the drama, the fun!
I was previously priding myself on being possibly the only person in Philadelphia with a blog who hasn't yet commented on Terrell Owens, but oh well.
All I'm saying right now is that I'm very pumped up for the season to start (only 18 days away!), and that if this season is anything like the last four or so, I'll be bleeding Midnight Green well into 2006. So with that said, here are my preseason notes that have probably been stated by a thousand other people already, but oh well:
- Going back to Corey Simon... who does he think he is? And who does he think he's dealing with? It boggles my mind that players still think it's a good idea to try to play chicken with the Eagles' management. They've never given in before, and they never will. If he wants a long term contract he should show up (in shape), and play well enough to earn one after this season.
- A few weeks ago, I was ready to banish Terrell Owens to Siberia, but he's come back to the team and there hasn't been an absurdly overinflated controversy yet, so let's give him a second chance. Or... possibly third. Whichever one we're up to now.
- Should we still be considering Correll Buckhalter to be an NFL running back? His job for three of the past four seasons (including this one) has been reduced more to "Professional Cheerleader." Will Dorsey Levens do us a favor and come out of retirement for a third time? Or is this dude Ryan Moats really the second coming of Brian Westbrook?
- What ever happened to Jon Ritchie?
I was previously priding myself on being possibly the only person in Philadelphia with a blog who hasn't yet commented on Terrell Owens, but oh well.
All I'm saying right now is that I'm very pumped up for the season to start (only 18 days away!), and that if this season is anything like the last four or so, I'll be bleeding Midnight Green well into 2006. So with that said, here are my preseason notes that have probably been stated by a thousand other people already, but oh well:
- Going back to Corey Simon... who does he think he is? And who does he think he's dealing with? It boggles my mind that players still think it's a good idea to try to play chicken with the Eagles' management. They've never given in before, and they never will. If he wants a long term contract he should show up (in shape), and play well enough to earn one after this season.
- A few weeks ago, I was ready to banish Terrell Owens to Siberia, but he's come back to the team and there hasn't been an absurdly overinflated controversy yet, so let's give him a second chance. Or... possibly third. Whichever one we're up to now.
- Should we still be considering Correll Buckhalter to be an NFL running back? His job for three of the past four seasons (including this one) has been reduced more to "Professional Cheerleader." Will Dorsey Levens do us a favor and come out of retirement for a third time? Or is this dude Ryan Moats really the second coming of Brian Westbrook?
- What ever happened to Jon Ritchie?
Monday, August 22, 2005
CityPaper and the "Baron of Blight"
Just a quick follow-up to my last entry. Look what was in the CityPaper this week:
http://citypaper.net/articles/current/canon.shtml
This is certainly a much more serious take on the matter. I never really tend to think of the billboards in question as a "blight" because frankly, the neighborhoods most of them are in aren't in the best of shape anyway. But if they're illegal, then get 'em out, because like writer Bruce Schimmel says, allowing any of them to stay while eliminating others is, in essence, "secretly deciding which historically abused neighborhoods should continue to be blighted."
Although my neighborhood contains a fair number of the ads in question, I don't think of it as "historically abused." I'm sure he was referring more to the much poorer and much more blighted neighborhoods to the north, west, and southwest of here. Just to clear that up. But I agree with him in principle, I'm just not up in arms about it yet.
http://citypaper.net/articles/current/canon.shtml
This is certainly a much more serious take on the matter. I never really tend to think of the billboards in question as a "blight" because frankly, the neighborhoods most of them are in aren't in the best of shape anyway. But if they're illegal, then get 'em out, because like writer Bruce Schimmel says, allowing any of them to stay while eliminating others is, in essence, "secretly deciding which historically abused neighborhoods should continue to be blighted."
Although my neighborhood contains a fair number of the ads in question, I don't think of it as "historically abused." I'm sure he was referring more to the much poorer and much more blighted neighborhoods to the north, west, and southwest of here. Just to clear that up. But I agree with him in principle, I'm just not up in arms about it yet.
Friday, August 19, 2005
The mystery of the urban billboard
Those of us who reside in big cities are exposed to far more advertising than suburban and rural folk. This makes sense; there are more people condensed into smaller spaces, so advertisers get more bang for their buck. I walk down the street, and a trolley goes by advertising a new Nicolas Cage film. I go down into the subway station, and there are ads for McDonald's, Drexel University, and FOX 29 10:00 News. The train pulls up, we go in, and there are ads on every possible square inch on the inside. Hop onto the cruelly-named Schuylkill Expressway headed east, and there are huge billboards every few seconds (or every few minutes if traffic is at its usual volume), with everything from Herr's Potato Chips (former Eagle Mike Quick says: "make Herr's yours!") to strip clubs near the oil refineries. It reminds me of the Simpsons episode when Homer drives down the highway on "new billboard day" and buys all of the food products advertised.
And then there's that weird world of advertisements that a lot of people don't know exist... the urban billboards. Smaller than normal billboards, tacked onto the sides of pizzarias and thrift stores in out of the way thoroughfares, these ads seem to exist in an alternate universe. A universe in which The Transporter 2 is an eagerly awaited late-summer blockbuster instead of a sequel to a film I didn't know existed (seriously... on first glance I thought they made a sequel to Trainspotting), and in which Mountain Dew's "Invasion of the Ballers" advertising campaign is a successful parody of corporations who try to approximate "urban culture" ("You sweat from playing basketball all day and all night! Well MOUNTAIN DEW has got your back! Uh.... G!"), or possibly a laughable attempt to approximate "urban culture," rather than a series of little-seen billboards in West Philadelphia that are incredibly easy to mistake for ads for a movie about alien basketball players. I literally can't find ANYTHING on the web about that one, so you'll have to take my word that they actually exist.
These ads invariably contain things that I never see or hear of again. It really seems like an alternate reality. How do they get there? I have an image in my head of corporations and marketing firms signing misguided contracts and being forced to say, "Well, this ad has to go up somewhere or else we're in breach of the contract. What's the cheapest available space? The side of Ted's Pizza Express in West Philadelphia? Perfect."
I have no idea why I find this topic so fascinating. I'm just really interested in the quirky idiosyncracies of urban life lately. Plus I walk by several of these weird ads every day. Eventually I'll take pictures so you don't think I'm crazy.
And then there's that weird world of advertisements that a lot of people don't know exist... the urban billboards. Smaller than normal billboards, tacked onto the sides of pizzarias and thrift stores in out of the way thoroughfares, these ads seem to exist in an alternate universe. A universe in which The Transporter 2 is an eagerly awaited late-summer blockbuster instead of a sequel to a film I didn't know existed (seriously... on first glance I thought they made a sequel to Trainspotting), and in which Mountain Dew's "Invasion of the Ballers" advertising campaign is a successful parody of corporations who try to approximate "urban culture" ("You sweat from playing basketball all day and all night! Well MOUNTAIN DEW has got your back! Uh.... G!"), or possibly a laughable attempt to approximate "urban culture," rather than a series of little-seen billboards in West Philadelphia that are incredibly easy to mistake for ads for a movie about alien basketball players. I literally can't find ANYTHING on the web about that one, so you'll have to take my word that they actually exist.
These ads invariably contain things that I never see or hear of again. It really seems like an alternate reality. How do they get there? I have an image in my head of corporations and marketing firms signing misguided contracts and being forced to say, "Well, this ad has to go up somewhere or else we're in breach of the contract. What's the cheapest available space? The side of Ted's Pizza Express in West Philadelphia? Perfect."
I have no idea why I find this topic so fascinating. I'm just really interested in the quirky idiosyncracies of urban life lately. Plus I walk by several of these weird ads every day. Eventually I'll take pictures so you don't think I'm crazy.
Tuesday, August 16, 2005
This week's musical obsession is... Todd Rundgren?
When I was younger, I always used to confuse Todd Rundgren with Jackson Browne. I don't know why I couldn't tell them apart. I was exposed to both through my parents. I knew one did "Running On Empty," which was noteworthy (to me) mainly for being one of the 300 million pop songs featured in Forrest Gump, and I knew the other did Carole King pastiches that were better than Carole King, but I didn't know which was which.
Fast forward ten years, and I've finally discovered that the latter was much more talented than the former, and that the latter is Todd Rundgren. I decided to check into Todd when I got a copy of XTC's Skylarking (another long overdue purchase) and saw that he was the producer, which piqued my curiosity because I could hardly imagine crusty old fogey Todd Rundgren (for that was what I assumed him to be by 1986) working with hip young whippersnappers like XTC (I know XTC weren't particularly young nor hip when they made Skylarking, but for whatever reason, that's the image I concocted in my head). And wouldn't you know it, Todd Rundgren is actually amazingly talented. He's also from Upper Darby, PA, which got him points right away because I have a lot of Philly pride, or Philly-metropolitan-area pride, I guess.
The album I've been playing on repeat for the past couple weeks is Something/Anything?, which is one of the few double albums I've ever heard that I honestly didn't think needed to be trimmed down into a single album*. This one does contain a few jokey songs, a few gimmick songs, and a few weird experimental songs, but the thing about Todd Rundgren is that it's hard to call anything a throwaway song, because to him, everything is of equal value, and beautiful pop songs like "I Saw the Light" are as likely to be frivolous as a strange early electronic experiment like "Breathless." And there are great liner notes for every song and every side of the album, written by Rundgren himself, which really let his tongue-in-cheek personality shine. And all the more impressive is that 3/4 of the songs were played by Rundgren and Rundgren alone, which make this one of the most impressive one-man-band albums I've ever heard (Side 4 of the album (or the second half of disc 2 for you CD listeners, or... tracks 19-25 for you mp3 people) features a real live band, and that's his faux-operetta, which, it should be obvious, is a huge joke, except with genuinely good songs). It's not just the fact that he did it all by himself, it's the fact that it's so subtle and nuanced, and there are moments when everything sounds so tight that it's hard to imagine it not being played by five different people at the same time. And everything just sounds so great. It's not hard to see why he's such a sought-after producer. He makes Paul McCartney's one-man-band albums sound amateurish (not to take away from brilliant songwriting like "Maybe I'm Amazed" or "Junk," but post-Beatle Macca really has nothing on Todd Rundgren). Even Stevie Wonder rarely put out something so professional and cohesive (Innervisions aside, of course). I will have to seek out some of his other albums. I'm sure my parents have a lot of him on vinyl in their basement waiting for me...
*This really is a short list for me. The only others I can think of off the top of my head are both by Godspeed You Black Emperor! (Lift Yr Skinny Fists... and Yanqui UXO, which I own on 2LP but is apparently on a single CD, so I don't know if that even counts). Exile on Main St, The Wall, Tommy, Bitches Brew, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness? Nope, put 'em on one album! The White Album may be an exception... I'd have to hear it cut down to a single album first.
Fast forward ten years, and I've finally discovered that the latter was much more talented than the former, and that the latter is Todd Rundgren. I decided to check into Todd when I got a copy of XTC's Skylarking (another long overdue purchase) and saw that he was the producer, which piqued my curiosity because I could hardly imagine crusty old fogey Todd Rundgren (for that was what I assumed him to be by 1986) working with hip young whippersnappers like XTC (I know XTC weren't particularly young nor hip when they made Skylarking, but for whatever reason, that's the image I concocted in my head). And wouldn't you know it, Todd Rundgren is actually amazingly talented. He's also from Upper Darby, PA, which got him points right away because I have a lot of Philly pride, or Philly-metropolitan-area pride, I guess.
The album I've been playing on repeat for the past couple weeks is Something/Anything?, which is one of the few double albums I've ever heard that I honestly didn't think needed to be trimmed down into a single album*. This one does contain a few jokey songs, a few gimmick songs, and a few weird experimental songs, but the thing about Todd Rundgren is that it's hard to call anything a throwaway song, because to him, everything is of equal value, and beautiful pop songs like "I Saw the Light" are as likely to be frivolous as a strange early electronic experiment like "Breathless." And there are great liner notes for every song and every side of the album, written by Rundgren himself, which really let his tongue-in-cheek personality shine. And all the more impressive is that 3/4 of the songs were played by Rundgren and Rundgren alone, which make this one of the most impressive one-man-band albums I've ever heard (Side 4 of the album (or the second half of disc 2 for you CD listeners, or... tracks 19-25 for you mp3 people) features a real live band, and that's his faux-operetta, which, it should be obvious, is a huge joke, except with genuinely good songs). It's not just the fact that he did it all by himself, it's the fact that it's so subtle and nuanced, and there are moments when everything sounds so tight that it's hard to imagine it not being played by five different people at the same time. And everything just sounds so great. It's not hard to see why he's such a sought-after producer. He makes Paul McCartney's one-man-band albums sound amateurish (not to take away from brilliant songwriting like "Maybe I'm Amazed" or "Junk," but post-Beatle Macca really has nothing on Todd Rundgren). Even Stevie Wonder rarely put out something so professional and cohesive (Innervisions aside, of course). I will have to seek out some of his other albums. I'm sure my parents have a lot of him on vinyl in their basement waiting for me...
*This really is a short list for me. The only others I can think of off the top of my head are both by Godspeed You Black Emperor! (Lift Yr Skinny Fists... and Yanqui UXO, which I own on 2LP but is apparently on a single CD, so I don't know if that even counts). Exile on Main St, The Wall, Tommy, Bitches Brew, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness? Nope, put 'em on one album! The White Album may be an exception... I'd have to hear it cut down to a single album first.
Sunday, August 14, 2005
Advance Single Bonanza!
I love getting singles before an album comes out. I've actually run out and bought CD singles before there were such things as mp3's (or before I cared enough to know what they were). I'm obviously way too young for 45's, and by the time I got a record player I couldn't be bothered to pay money for two tracks. Anyway, what with this internet and all, singles are now much easier to find. And cheaper too. I recently came by two songs off of albums I'm very much looking forward to: "Lazer Beam" by Super Furry Animals (from Love Kraft), and "7/4 (Shoreline)" by Broken Social Scene (from a forthcoming self-titled album).
Let's start with the Super Furry Animals. Anybody who's a fan of them already knows that they're more or less insane, and sure enough, this is no different. Fuzzy ear-piercing guitar solos, harmonizing falsetto vocals, a string section straight out of an Elton John song, so many bips and boops that there's no point in even trying to figure out where they're coming from, handclaps, and just for good measure, there's a vocoder! This is frantic, sometimes abrasive, and nearly incoherent, and I wouldn't have the SFA any other way.
The Broken Social Scene song doesn't fare quite as well. Supposedly this is the properly mixed and mastered version, but if that's the case, I suggest they go back and try it again, because there are moments where I can barely make out the lead vocals, or anything other than drums for that matter. And it sounds like I'm hearing some clipping. The song itself is passable, but not great, and I couldn't help but wonder if it would have any distinguishing characteristics at all if it wasn't in 7/4 time. The title also works against it, because I find naming songs after their own odd time signatures more annoying than cute*. The only part of the song that jumps out at me is the part with the horns at the end, although I wasn't even sure if they were horns or a string section, or maybe synthesizers until the end (there's the mix problem again). I'm not really all that discouraged by this song, since my favorite parts of the last Broken Social Scene album were the instrumentals anyway (ironically, their first album is almost entirely instrumental, and I think that album is pretty boring... their skills sure progressed a lot in between albums), and not the upbeat rockers like "Almost Crimes" (which I suppose is the closest reference point for this track).
And here's how good of a guy I am. Both songs, in their entirety, right here for downloading! Here's hoping the FCC isn't monitoring me.
Broken Social Scene: "7/4 (Shoreline)"
Super Furry Animals: "Lazer Beam"
(Scroll down, click "FREE," wait a few seconds, and they're yours.)
*Could you imagine if a group like the Dave Brubeck Quartet did that? Their biggest hit was sort of named after its time signature ("Take Five"), but if they did that for every song they had that wasn't in 4/4 or 3/4 (or 6/8), every song would be a set of numbers.
Let's start with the Super Furry Animals. Anybody who's a fan of them already knows that they're more or less insane, and sure enough, this is no different. Fuzzy ear-piercing guitar solos, harmonizing falsetto vocals, a string section straight out of an Elton John song, so many bips and boops that there's no point in even trying to figure out where they're coming from, handclaps, and just for good measure, there's a vocoder! This is frantic, sometimes abrasive, and nearly incoherent, and I wouldn't have the SFA any other way.
The Broken Social Scene song doesn't fare quite as well. Supposedly this is the properly mixed and mastered version, but if that's the case, I suggest they go back and try it again, because there are moments where I can barely make out the lead vocals, or anything other than drums for that matter. And it sounds like I'm hearing some clipping. The song itself is passable, but not great, and I couldn't help but wonder if it would have any distinguishing characteristics at all if it wasn't in 7/4 time. The title also works against it, because I find naming songs after their own odd time signatures more annoying than cute*. The only part of the song that jumps out at me is the part with the horns at the end, although I wasn't even sure if they were horns or a string section, or maybe synthesizers until the end (there's the mix problem again). I'm not really all that discouraged by this song, since my favorite parts of the last Broken Social Scene album were the instrumentals anyway (ironically, their first album is almost entirely instrumental, and I think that album is pretty boring... their skills sure progressed a lot in between albums), and not the upbeat rockers like "Almost Crimes" (which I suppose is the closest reference point for this track).
And here's how good of a guy I am. Both songs, in their entirety, right here for downloading! Here's hoping the FCC isn't monitoring me.
Broken Social Scene: "7/4 (Shoreline)"
Super Furry Animals: "Lazer Beam"
(Scroll down, click "FREE," wait a few seconds, and they're yours.)
*Could you imagine if a group like the Dave Brubeck Quartet did that? Their biggest hit was sort of named after its time signature ("Take Five"), but if they did that for every song they had that wasn't in 4/4 or 3/4 (or 6/8), every song would be a set of numbers.
Thursday, August 11, 2005
Dear Billy Corgan: please stop.
As much as I worry about it happening, artists who have created classic works of art years ago and are well past their prime can't seem to destroy their legacy, no matter how hard they try. The first three Star Wars movies are still great despite the much-discussed inferiority of the new ones (I still liked Episode III and II wasn't all bad, but that's for another post), Paul McCartney's Beatles work and first few solo albums are still great despite pretty much everything he's done since then, Michael Jackson's entire life after 1991 or so hasn't changed the fact that he was the single most important musician of the 1980's, and you get the idea. But I still have a request to make:
Billy Corgan, please stop. Stop making music. Stop taking out publicity-grabbing ads claiming you're reuniting the Smashing Pumpkins. Stop giving pompous, infuriating interviews. Just stop it. Stop everything.
Billy Corgan may be the exception to the above-stated rule. He hasn't made a good album since 1998, when the Pumpkins released Adore. He hasn't made a true classic album since 1993, when they released Siamese Dream*. So what's he been doing? All the drama within the Smashing Pumpkins provided them with much more publicity than they really deserved, to the point that it almost comes as a surprise to realize that they released five albums (not including the b-side comp Pisces Iscariot), and that only three of those are good. They finished up with MACHINA: The Machines of God, which was an unmitigated mess of industrial sludge and is every bit as pompous and overblown as the title suggests, and the first sign that Billy Corgan's well was running dry. Corgan returned with Zwan, which turned out to be much better on paper than in practice (who'd have thought that Corgan, Jimmy Chaimberlin, Matt Sweeney, and David freaking Pajo in the same band could be so uninteresting?), and now he's finally venturing into the world of solo albums, with The Future Embrace.
The obvious joke to make is that a solo album shouldn't really be any different for Corgan, since he's so notoriously controlling. And that's not really too far off, except now he's mining the Joy Division and New Order catalog for his music. This would seem like a significant change, except... that's pretty much what everybody is doing these days. New Wave is in. Post-punk is in. Whatever it is, if it sounds like the early to mid 80's, we love it now. Some may be name-checking Gang of Four, some may be name-checking New Order, but there's no denying that's in vogue right now.
And this is where I start turning my cynical eye toward old Billy Corgan. He played loud guitars in the early 90's when loud guitars were in (remember Nirvana and Pearl Jam?). He turned to pseudo-electronica and over-processed industrial grit in the late 90's and the turn of the century after The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers made that big. And now he's layering fuzzy sawtooth synths and slick, sterile drum machines. Is he evolving artistically or cashing in on another trend?
I don't know, and that's why Billy Corgan needs to stop. He hasn't done anything worth hearing since 1997 (even though he hasn't really made a really bad album either, other than MACHINA), and he shows no signs of even acknowledging that he's ever made a subpar album, let alone getting himself out of his funk (judging from the interviews he gives, he still seems to regard himself as the most singular and amazing talent in the world of popular music). The more he does, the more I start looking at him as an opportunistic phony (especially in the wake of his announcement that he wants to reform the Smashing Pumpkins THE SAME WEEK HIS SOLO ALBUM CAME OUT), and I'd hate not to be able to enjoy Siamese Dream someday because of that.
If there's a silver lining for Billy in all this, it's Jimmy Chamberlin. Chamberlin has stuck with Corgan through the Pumpkins, and through Zwan, and apparently has played a couple solo shows with Corgan too. When Billy Corgan finds a bandmate that can stand his presence for two minutes, let alone for more than 15 years, he should hold on to him for dear life, for that's something truly special.
*A lot of people will consider 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness to be a classic, but I don't equate audacity with quality. I remember that album more for providing enough hit singles between the throwaway tracks to make up an entire box set, and for being, despite its eclecticism and heady ambitions, ultimately much less satisfying than its predecessor.
Billy Corgan, please stop. Stop making music. Stop taking out publicity-grabbing ads claiming you're reuniting the Smashing Pumpkins. Stop giving pompous, infuriating interviews. Just stop it. Stop everything.
Billy Corgan may be the exception to the above-stated rule. He hasn't made a good album since 1998, when the Pumpkins released Adore. He hasn't made a true classic album since 1993, when they released Siamese Dream*. So what's he been doing? All the drama within the Smashing Pumpkins provided them with much more publicity than they really deserved, to the point that it almost comes as a surprise to realize that they released five albums (not including the b-side comp Pisces Iscariot), and that only three of those are good. They finished up with MACHINA: The Machines of God, which was an unmitigated mess of industrial sludge and is every bit as pompous and overblown as the title suggests, and the first sign that Billy Corgan's well was running dry. Corgan returned with Zwan, which turned out to be much better on paper than in practice (who'd have thought that Corgan, Jimmy Chaimberlin, Matt Sweeney, and David freaking Pajo in the same band could be so uninteresting?), and now he's finally venturing into the world of solo albums, with The Future Embrace.
The obvious joke to make is that a solo album shouldn't really be any different for Corgan, since he's so notoriously controlling. And that's not really too far off, except now he's mining the Joy Division and New Order catalog for his music. This would seem like a significant change, except... that's pretty much what everybody is doing these days. New Wave is in. Post-punk is in. Whatever it is, if it sounds like the early to mid 80's, we love it now. Some may be name-checking Gang of Four, some may be name-checking New Order, but there's no denying that's in vogue right now.
And this is where I start turning my cynical eye toward old Billy Corgan. He played loud guitars in the early 90's when loud guitars were in (remember Nirvana and Pearl Jam?). He turned to pseudo-electronica and over-processed industrial grit in the late 90's and the turn of the century after The Prodigy and The Chemical Brothers made that big. And now he's layering fuzzy sawtooth synths and slick, sterile drum machines. Is he evolving artistically or cashing in on another trend?
I don't know, and that's why Billy Corgan needs to stop. He hasn't done anything worth hearing since 1997 (even though he hasn't really made a really bad album either, other than MACHINA), and he shows no signs of even acknowledging that he's ever made a subpar album, let alone getting himself out of his funk (judging from the interviews he gives, he still seems to regard himself as the most singular and amazing talent in the world of popular music). The more he does, the more I start looking at him as an opportunistic phony (especially in the wake of his announcement that he wants to reform the Smashing Pumpkins THE SAME WEEK HIS SOLO ALBUM CAME OUT), and I'd hate not to be able to enjoy Siamese Dream someday because of that.
If there's a silver lining for Billy in all this, it's Jimmy Chamberlin. Chamberlin has stuck with Corgan through the Pumpkins, and through Zwan, and apparently has played a couple solo shows with Corgan too. When Billy Corgan finds a bandmate that can stand his presence for two minutes, let alone for more than 15 years, he should hold on to him for dear life, for that's something truly special.
*A lot of people will consider 1995's Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness to be a classic, but I don't equate audacity with quality. I remember that album more for providing enough hit singles between the throwaway tracks to make up an entire box set, and for being, despite its eclecticism and heady ambitions, ultimately much less satisfying than its predecessor.
Saturday, August 06, 2005
"Only this moment (Holds us together)"
I tend to think of Röyksopp as a very frustrating group. Their first album, Melody A.M., contained some of the most breathtaking music I've ever heard. It also contained a lot of bland, middle-of-the-road electropop. Listening to that album, I felt like they were on the verge of something unbelievable, and I couldn't help but wonder what could have been if they'd somehow made an entire album of music as transcendantly beautiful as "Eple," "In Space," and "Sparks." At their best, they were in that wonderful world occupied by Boards of Canada and pretty much nobody else, a world of music that sounds like it was made by people dropped in from a different planet of indescribable beauty. At their worst, they were cringe-inducing breakbeat pushing a sound that had peaked a decade before their time.
So with that in mind, I guess it should come as no surprise that their new album, The Understanding, is similarly frustrating. This one is definitely inferior to its predecessor. While there are no moments that make me drop my jaw and consider forsaking all other music in the world today, there are certainly moments that make me want to crank up the speakers and lose myself. But this simply isn't enough! These guys could have been huge! They could have made something along the lines of Music Has the Right to Children! Plain and simple, they settled for less, and worse, it took them four years to do it, filling in the intervening time period with a slew of unsatisfying remixes*.
As on their debut album, there are tracks that I'll probably skip past after the "getting-to-know-you" period finishes. "49 Percent" is particularly embarrassing, as is "Alpha Male," which is not only about four minutes too long (at 8:11), but also sounds a lot like the music on the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic-themed game I used to own for Sega Genesis (it's not just the Scandinavian theme, it really does sound like it).
Even the best moments sound like countless other tracks. Is anybody still blown away by the swirling bips and boops that mark "Only This Moment"? How about the shuffling disco breakbeat in "Circuit Breaker"? Those are both good tunes (particularly the latter), but nothing I haven't heard countless times before. Also in the "yeah it's nice, BUT..." category is the closing track, "Tristesse Globale," which is about as professional as a blatant ripoff of Brian Eno's ambient work has ever been (save maybe some of Radiohead's Kid A stuff, which, by the way, I still love). It's a nice change of pace to hear them ape a sound that peaked 30 years ago, as opposed to 10 or 15 years ago, but still... I wish they'd go back to the drawing board and give me some more of that outer-space, genre-defying instrumental bliss.
*The term "unsatisfying remix" almost seems redundant. I could probably count on one hand the number of remixes that I've liked. Not surprisingly, Boards of Canada account for a couple (their remix of Beck's "Broken Drum" is infinitely better than the original), but even those are frustrating because I'd rather them spend their time recording original music.
So with that in mind, I guess it should come as no surprise that their new album, The Understanding, is similarly frustrating. This one is definitely inferior to its predecessor. While there are no moments that make me drop my jaw and consider forsaking all other music in the world today, there are certainly moments that make me want to crank up the speakers and lose myself. But this simply isn't enough! These guys could have been huge! They could have made something along the lines of Music Has the Right to Children! Plain and simple, they settled for less, and worse, it took them four years to do it, filling in the intervening time period with a slew of unsatisfying remixes*.
As on their debut album, there are tracks that I'll probably skip past after the "getting-to-know-you" period finishes. "49 Percent" is particularly embarrassing, as is "Alpha Male," which is not only about four minutes too long (at 8:11), but also sounds a lot like the music on the 1994 Lillehammer Olympic-themed game I used to own for Sega Genesis (it's not just the Scandinavian theme, it really does sound like it).
Even the best moments sound like countless other tracks. Is anybody still blown away by the swirling bips and boops that mark "Only This Moment"? How about the shuffling disco breakbeat in "Circuit Breaker"? Those are both good tunes (particularly the latter), but nothing I haven't heard countless times before. Also in the "yeah it's nice, BUT..." category is the closing track, "Tristesse Globale," which is about as professional as a blatant ripoff of Brian Eno's ambient work has ever been (save maybe some of Radiohead's Kid A stuff, which, by the way, I still love). It's a nice change of pace to hear them ape a sound that peaked 30 years ago, as opposed to 10 or 15 years ago, but still... I wish they'd go back to the drawing board and give me some more of that outer-space, genre-defying instrumental bliss.
*The term "unsatisfying remix" almost seems redundant. I could probably count on one hand the number of remixes that I've liked. Not surprisingly, Boards of Canada account for a couple (their remix of Beck's "Broken Drum" is infinitely better than the original), but even those are frustrating because I'd rather them spend their time recording original music.
Wednesday, August 03, 2005
"Nothing really matters to meeeeee..."
As you may or may not know, there was a Queen tribute album released yesterday. Normally this information would pass briefly through my head while reading allmusic.com's new release newsletter and be filed away way in the back until somebody demanded to know which shitty pop-punk band massacred "Killer Queen," at which point I may possibly remember that the answer is Sum 41.
But this one is different. You knew there had to be somebody doing "Bohemian Rhapsody," but would you have guessed it would be The Flaming Lips*?! This is genuinely exciting news. If there's any band in the world today that can capture the stupid operatic bombast of that track, it's the Flaming Lips. (I'd wager that The Polyphonic Spree could pull off an even better version, but I'll take what I can get.) Unfortunately, all I can find so far are 45 second clips on various Queen-related websites, so if somebody gets a hold of the whole thing, be sure to let me know. The clip I heard sounds like no other Flaming Lips recording I've ever heard. It's like they kept the kitchen-sink arrangements from The Soft Bulletin (the reverb-drenched organ and synths, the church bells, and so many overdubs of everything that you're not even sure what you're hearing) but added the big guitars from their early days. Plus, you know... they're doing "Bohemian Rhapsody." I need to hear this in all its glory, because I'm sure the Lips have done it justice while adding their own uniqueness to it. But obviously I need to hear it without paying for it, because I have no interest in hearing the rest of it.
*There are actually two versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the disc, the other one performed by the guy named Constantine who was in the last American Idol, backed by the cast of the other current major endeavor to destroy the last bit of Freddie Mercury's dignity, the musical We Will Rock You. This is one of the few tracks I've been able to find in full (as opposed to short clips), and it sounds so close to the original that I wonder why they even bothered, other than that the vocals have obviously been digitally corrected for pitch, as opposed to the Queen version, which utilized a crazy little thing called "talent" to make sure the vocals were in tune. At any rate, it's an exercise in pointlessness, because everything is literally EXACTLY the same, right down to things like the lyrics "Easy come, easy go, little high, little low" in the beginning panned left to right like in the original ("easy come" left, "easy go" right, etc.).
But this one is different. You knew there had to be somebody doing "Bohemian Rhapsody," but would you have guessed it would be The Flaming Lips*?! This is genuinely exciting news. If there's any band in the world today that can capture the stupid operatic bombast of that track, it's the Flaming Lips. (I'd wager that The Polyphonic Spree could pull off an even better version, but I'll take what I can get.) Unfortunately, all I can find so far are 45 second clips on various Queen-related websites, so if somebody gets a hold of the whole thing, be sure to let me know. The clip I heard sounds like no other Flaming Lips recording I've ever heard. It's like they kept the kitchen-sink arrangements from The Soft Bulletin (the reverb-drenched organ and synths, the church bells, and so many overdubs of everything that you're not even sure what you're hearing) but added the big guitars from their early days. Plus, you know... they're doing "Bohemian Rhapsody." I need to hear this in all its glory, because I'm sure the Lips have done it justice while adding their own uniqueness to it. But obviously I need to hear it without paying for it, because I have no interest in hearing the rest of it.
*There are actually two versions of "Bohemian Rhapsody" on the disc, the other one performed by the guy named Constantine who was in the last American Idol, backed by the cast of the other current major endeavor to destroy the last bit of Freddie Mercury's dignity, the musical We Will Rock You. This is one of the few tracks I've been able to find in full (as opposed to short clips), and it sounds so close to the original that I wonder why they even bothered, other than that the vocals have obviously been digitally corrected for pitch, as opposed to the Queen version, which utilized a crazy little thing called "talent" to make sure the vocals were in tune. At any rate, it's an exercise in pointlessness, because everything is literally EXACTLY the same, right down to things like the lyrics "Easy come, easy go, little high, little low" in the beginning panned left to right like in the original ("easy come" left, "easy go" right, etc.).
Monday, August 01, 2005
I now have a much deeper admiration/fear of insects.
A beetle, no more than a half inch long, pushes a clump of dirt three times its size across a landscape of rocks and dirt. It unwittingly impales the clump onto the end of a twig. We watch as the beetle slowly and methodically examines the situation. It digs around the clump, and under it. It tries to push on in the direction it was moving, and impales it further. It pushes it in all directions, and finally in the right one and moves it off its trap, and continues on its way. The camera pulls back to remind us how far the beetle has traveled: a distance of perhaps two feet, which might as well seem like the distance from here to Tokyo.
This scene is Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe in a nutshell. We never do find out where the beetle was going, or why it felt compelled to go to such lengths to bring a piece of dirt with it, but it's fascinating to watch it anyway. The film is a documentary about insects, and the world they inhabit. The title is apt, because it really is a world unto itself, that has only the most minimal connections to the world we live in.
As a person with a pretty strong aversion to bugs, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about seeing them up close. And my fears were justified: I saw a lot of insects in a lot closer detail than I ever really wanted to. I have a new appreciation for just how disgusting some of those evolutionary freaks can be. But there's no denying that some of the images are simply extraordinary, and the detail is astounding.
There are some Koyaanisqatsi-type shots of flowers blooming and raindrops rippling the surface of a lake (I think Godfrey Reggio should be paid royalties everytime somebody uses time-lapse photography in a film), but the insects are the star of this show, and the film does an excellent job of drawing us into their tiny little world. Blades of grass become gigantic tree trunks, frogs and birds stomp onto the scene in Godzilla-like proportions, and when we see the storm clouds roll in overhead, we don't have to be told that this is going to be bad news for the little creepy crawlies. Water itself poses an entirely different hazard for insects than anything we're used to. For creatures that weigh a fraction of an ounce, breaking the surface tension of water can be the difference between life and death.
The only negative aspect was the lack of any kind of narration, other than at the very beginning and the very end. I understand wanting to avoid boring National-Geographic-style narration, but a lot of the time I simply had no idea what I was looking at. Other than that, though, it's a revolutionary look at the lives of the our most plentiful unseen neighbors.
This scene is Microcosmos: Le peuple de l'herbe in a nutshell. We never do find out where the beetle was going, or why it felt compelled to go to such lengths to bring a piece of dirt with it, but it's fascinating to watch it anyway. The film is a documentary about insects, and the world they inhabit. The title is apt, because it really is a world unto itself, that has only the most minimal connections to the world we live in.
As a person with a pretty strong aversion to bugs, I wasn't exactly enthusiastic about seeing them up close. And my fears were justified: I saw a lot of insects in a lot closer detail than I ever really wanted to. I have a new appreciation for just how disgusting some of those evolutionary freaks can be. But there's no denying that some of the images are simply extraordinary, and the detail is astounding.
There are some Koyaanisqatsi-type shots of flowers blooming and raindrops rippling the surface of a lake (I think Godfrey Reggio should be paid royalties everytime somebody uses time-lapse photography in a film), but the insects are the star of this show, and the film does an excellent job of drawing us into their tiny little world. Blades of grass become gigantic tree trunks, frogs and birds stomp onto the scene in Godzilla-like proportions, and when we see the storm clouds roll in overhead, we don't have to be told that this is going to be bad news for the little creepy crawlies. Water itself poses an entirely different hazard for insects than anything we're used to. For creatures that weigh a fraction of an ounce, breaking the surface tension of water can be the difference between life and death.
The only negative aspect was the lack of any kind of narration, other than at the very beginning and the very end. I understand wanting to avoid boring National-Geographic-style narration, but a lot of the time I simply had no idea what I was looking at. Other than that, though, it's a revolutionary look at the lives of the our most plentiful unseen neighbors.
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