Wednesday, December 18, 2019

Houdini Mansions

I'm a hip guy. Can you smell the hipness? I say things, in my best hick voice, like, "Awww yeah, I like that experimental music. You know...Merzbow...Sonic Youth." But truth be told, I've always had a soft spot for melody. Blame my mom for playing all that Neil Diamond/Carpenters/ABBA 70's schlock. Blame my dad for having a soft spot for Paul Simon. Blame the radio, my truest and deepest friend from ages 10-17. Anyway, there's great experimental stuff all over the cyber-diaspora of the Houdini Mansions label. They're based out of Easley, South Carolina (Easley is easily the closest decent-sized town to Greenville, which is home to the closest minor league baseball affiliate of my beloved Boston Red Sox, G'ville being a 1 1/2 hour drive from my driveway).

House of Cake is as much a collage as a compilation. It bleeps and bloops and drones in all the right places, and in all the wrong places which also happen to be right--don't you know how the universe is chaos and yummy in your (quan)tummy?

But the emotional high point for me is the sweet simple three-note descending bass-tone on track four, which I'm 99.4% sure is titled "Sugar Boys." The vocal melody goes up as the bass melody goes down, and the result is one of those weightless free-floating moments that isn't a million miles away from Dancing Queen. Because the universe also knows how to repeat, and coalesce, and spin slowly enough for you to observe its beauty with wonder and awe.


Artist Of The Decade

Nobody asked me, and I didn't ask anybody, but here's my favorite song from this just-about-over decade. Or maybe my favorite video. Or maybe the video that best embodies the decade, our simultaneous numbness and desperation, horror and entertainment, laughter and death. I'd say Danny Brown is the Artist Of The Decade if I had any confidence in those kinds of proclamations (and Kanye is probably more emblematic, straight-down to his mental illness and lack of critical thinking).

I don't have the authority to give out awards, nor do I have the ability to believe in them. But Danny Brown, in this and other songs throughout the decade (he just put out an album in October! it's got a metacritic score of 83!), embodied the thrill of chasing one's contradictions all over the room. The attempt to confront your traumas and to avoid confronting your traumas, and how it's more fun to believe in nothing, except believing in nothing is a big part of why you can't stop bleeding. The fact that his music makes you want to move your body is just an added bonus. The numbed-out cool in other people feels like a pose; Danny Brown's freaked-out screaming is real*, and sounds like a natural response from anyone who's paying attention to anything.




* - Real as in it-feels-real-to-me, as in it connects on a visceral level that causes me to feel actual feelings that are felt in the places still able to feel. And I can't believe that the debate around "authenticity" (more of a top-down hectoring than a debate, a way to shut up any criticisms of the spoiled-brat private-schooled child-star artistes that are positioned as vital, necessary music makers) has devolved to the point where "realness" that invites scorn. If it doesn't matter whether an artist has anything to say, or makes music that moves you emotionally, then an artist who comes along with those qualities has no reason to be valued. What is valued?, you might ask. I hoped you would. Let's just assume that you did. An artist with something to sell. Which isn't always bad, but just, uh, note who gets excluded. And remember that when sellers (or art, or anything) try to imagine what the public wants to buy, they always envision more-of-the-same, easy-to-digest, and unlikely-to-offend. That goes for prose vendors as well.

An Update For The Dozens

...Of people who follow this blog. Turned in the manuscript a month ago, and it looks like a book will appear in 2020 on an academic press with my name on it. A well-researched, co-written bio of a well-known band. The writing filled every non-working, non-parental moment since July, and after my Domestic Partner lost her job in August, meant that I had to both up my hours at work and write a (rough draft) chapter a week. Then edit, etc.

Thankfully, my DP started a new job in November that will pay enough for us to get out from under the debt we accumulated Aug-Oct. We are lucky beyond belief.

Anyway, I may go back to doing this blog again as a place to anonymously experiment with some stuff, though less anonymously, it turns out, than I had initially hoped.

Never tell anyone a secret if you want it to remain a secret. Lalalala.

A poem for today

The Future

The future is a joke
My idea of a joke
That is to say, dark and filthy
Riddled with corruption
And corrupted by riddles

The future is murder
Same as the past
Only now more indirect
Less culpable
Easier than ever to follow
Someone else’s order

The future is hope
Felt for fleeting moments
Surely the potential exists
Even by the fluke of random occurrence
For something humane
A collective ascent

But no
But know

The future is distraction
Words and identity
Disappearing into a void
Plummeting through a bottomless well
A shared dream

We experience separately

Wednesday, September 18, 2019

Answering Guardian Headlines #1

Here's a feature that will be (possibly) mutually fulfilling, and easily attainable in spite of the looming contractual writing deadline which, coupled with my actual income-producing gig, has consumed nearly every free minute for the last several months.

We will answer (without reading, b/c that's the way we do things in the 21st century) headlines in that day's Guardian that are, for traffic-driving reasons, framed as questions, some more rhetorical than others. We'll also include our favorite hot-take Op-Ed headline at the end as a bonus.

(worth mentioning that it's cool The Guardian isn't hidden behind a paywall. They do some great journalism, and deserve our gratitude and, depending on the balance in your bank account, our financial support).

US healthcare is booming. So why do one in five workers live in poverty?

Because US healthcare is, like most US things, driven by profits. And underpaying your workers is a (simple, stupid) way to make more money.

'Like a sunburn on your lungs': how does the climate crisis impact health?

It makes it worse.

Toy stories: can a woke makeover win Barbie and Monopoly new fans?

Anyone who seriously gives a fuck one way or another should be ashamed of themselves. Note: this isn't an article, it's a free commercial for a multinational conglomerate.

Hollow boom: why black Americans feel left out of US’s robust economy

Not technically a question, but we'll answer it anyway. Because the US is a white supremacist police state is built on the exploitation of all manual labor.

Saved by the Bell: Will the revival be 2020's Most Depressing Show?

No. That will be the election night broadcast. Also pretty sure this is also an ad.



And here's the hot-take Op-Ed of the day that makes us fear for the future of humanity:

Why Ivanka Trump's new haircut should make us very afraid

(Honorable mention goes to To decarbonize we must decomputerize: why we need a Luddite revolution)

Sunday, August 18, 2019

Don't Eat The Rich, Tax Them

The rich aren't like you and I. They're stupid, self-absorbed, petty, and desperately looking for meaning in their otherwise empty lives.

Okay, they're a little like you and I. But you get the point.

I'm reading today, courtesy of a hijacked NYTimes digital subscription, the story of Cordelia Scaife May. A Pittsburgh-born heiress to a massive fortune, Ms. May was, shall we say, quite the fucking piece of work. Here's a link. It's worth using one of your six free monthly articles or whatever it is to read it (plus it's really long, which makes it a bargain).

The point of this post isn't how Ms. May's dedication to reproductive rights slid ever so gradually into a hatred of immigrants, especially the dark immigrants. It's not the story of her miserable-ass empty life either. Though the part where her new husband, a Pittsburgh DA facing corruption charges, killed himself on the day he was formally indicted, and May blamed her brother for turning on the DA guy, and severed their relationship, losing in one quick swoop the only two people she was close to on the planet, and then secluded herself in an Arizona cabin where a year or two later she emerged as a full-blown bigot dedicated to giving her fortune to hate groups, I mean anti-immigration groups--that part was pretty incredible, as a kind of 19th century novel kind of thing.

No, the point of all this is talking about the cycle of grifting and suck that warps our society. The other NYT article that caught my eye was the story of Stephen Miller, trump advisor and full-blown anti-immigration con man. Miller was born into a SoCal life of private school privilege, but his wealth wasn't anything compared to Cordelia Scaife May (Miller only had two names, for example). But he did figure out the quickest way to an adult life of leisure and comfort--embracing an extremist ideology under the cloak of patriotism or whatever, and getting people to give him money for it.

Because what we call the right-wing information complex, or the Fox News company picnic, or the extremist propaganda punditocracy, isn't anything more than a way to fleece rich people from their money. So much so that it doesn't matter whether Hannity, Carlson, Miller, Jones, whoever, believe the shit they're selling. They found the shortest, quickest way to a life of power for an underachieving dipshit--good enough to get into any Ivy League caliber college, but not nearly good enough to excel once they get there--is to stake out a wealth-friendly ideological position that is in opposition to the dominant (informed, humane, liberal) position that pervades on campus. Rich people will throw fucking yacht-loads of money at you. Set yourself up a non-profit and watch those tax-deductible dollars flow in. Call it Turning Point USA or the Leadership Institute.You'll never have to worry about money ever again.

Because wealthy people--and we're talking REAL wealthy, like generational billions--hate two things in this world: paying taxes, and their empty aimless drift through their 80-ish years on the planet. They are naive, stupid, and looking for something to spend their money on. They are easy marks for hustlers and con artists (or con content providers, if you prefer). The whole thing would be funny and adorable if it didn't result in the unconscionable suffering of millions. Stephen Miller couldn't run a fucking Burger King morning shift if you gave him three years to try, but he knew how to suck up to the powerfully-stupid powerful (his first D.C. job was working for Michele Bachmann, whose first three auto-fill suggestions on my google are, in order: corn dog, bikini, and young--should we all kill ourselves together or take turns?). And that's why I type transcriptions of notes called in by financial advisors and insurance agents for $10 an hour while Stephen Miller lives a life of financial comfort and figures out how to profit from his ugly ideologies. But at least I don't look like a semi-sentient bowl of pudding that hasn't slept in a week, and whose ejaculate is made up of (I imagine) a hastily thrown-together mix of saliva, mosquitos and paste.

One solution, what we in the rich-guillotine business call a good start, would involve a Wealth Tax.

Thursday, August 8, 2019

Cantos For David Berman: Part None

Excerpt from a poem in D. Berman's Actual Air, a book I've owned since 1999:

There were long days of bad ideas
when he felt his book was ineffective
like a watercolor of a fire engine
or a statue of the fastest man alive,
and he would go to the window
and watch the fireflies
criss cross wihout insight,
then turning around
sometimes notice his wife Asterisk
lifting dinner to the table.
One night, up considering dead realms,
he heard the sustained woof of a dog.
It drew him up and propelled him outside
to walk cowed under the fierce starlight.


Some brief, stray unconnected thoughts:

It is not easy to live a life so deeply; it's not easy to live any kind of life, really.

I processed his death with a grimace, a sigh, and a "well what else would you expecting" shrug. That's part coping mechanism (defense mechanism?), part tragedy fatigue, and part a calloused something or other inside of me which may or may not be a good thing. Perspective can be healthy, but it's worth keeping in mind that distance facilitates that perspective. And distance is a thing that is lonely and cold.

A person in pain who exits this world (and I am aware that there are all kinds of way to exit the world--shove that needle far enough in, and you are no longer here) may no longer be in pain, but that pain is then diffused out among the living to take up residence in their hearts.

Monday, August 5, 2019

Hipster Transient

Just gotta say, about this Guardian article about people in California living out of their cars, that I was doing this back in 1993 before it was cool. And I'm sure this trend (like most things Californian) will soon be spreading across the country, what with rents rapidly spiraling upwards and all. Did you know real estate is a good investment? You, the person with the money, put a down payment on a house, and then you charge other people to live there. You have these people--people who make less money than you--pay more in rent than you pay for your mortgage, and then you just get to sit back and earn "passive income." It's amazing! It's way more reliable than the stock market! Because while markets can fluctuate, and are subject to unpredictable volatility, people are always going to need a place to live!

It's not so much that humanity is living through the end of capitalism. It's that capitalism is living through the end of humanity.

Sunday, August 4, 2019

We now resume our irregularly scheduled deprogramming...

Though who knows how long it will last. School starts tomorrow here in the more collegiate areas of northeast georgia, in a town where the local university so dominates our town that even the public K-12 system adheres to the same Aug-May schedule. Nothing quite like kids playing outside in 90-plus temps to get that education flowing, I guess. Anyway, the schedules have been cleared for a more-or-less daily writing routine. Though that's subject to change b/c the other income-producing member of our household just saw her planned income stream dry up when the UGA professor she was going to be working for starting next week asked her to forego another month of pay while continuing to work on the project. The nature of this project involved our cohabitant securing funding through grants and donation for the professor's annual conference to promote STEM learning among young women. Turns out the conference is basically a neoliberal grift masquerading as a charity (please secure us over $20,000 in very small, barely detectable donations in order to send 10 lucky high school girls to attend my conference). In return for my cohabitant's participation--the location and securing of said money--my cohabitant would be paid somewhere from $2,000 to $2,500 for six, or maybe five months. It was all quite vague. And so after the meeting where the cohabitant was told she wouldn't be getting paid until next month, but in the meantime keep working on the project, and also please sign this NDA for me, my cohabitant--being no fool, and having recently completed her PhD--bailed on the project and alerted university officials. Ah messy life. So out plan of scraping by for a few months on a couple grand a month while she worked 20 hrs, and we completed our legitimate contracted work on our book about a prominent music group--manuscript due Nov. 1st--was uh...what's the word...totally fucked.

We have options. We are planning. One of us will probably be working full-time. The other will be working full-time on the book (the research is all completed, and most chapters exist in a sort of vomitous rough draft state). Or we'll both be working part-time, and juggling the writing. But that manuscript will be delivered, and it will be great. And until I'm hired, I'll be occasionally typing here to get my writing skills and speed more up to, uh, speed.

Oh yeah. This blog supports Elizabeth Warren for president, but it would vote for a semi-sentient ferret at this point provided it wasn't a white-supremacist swill merchant huckster.

The only optimism I can muster about anything is that this government--its policies, its laws, the way it conducts itself--in no way represents the will or the desire of the people who live here. Maybe one day that will change. The only solution is voting out republicans, voting in democrats, and then holding their feet to the fire and forcing them to do the right thing.


Friday, May 3, 2019

The Number Fortys: Billy Ocean - "Loverboy"

We meet again, Mr. Ocean. You last song reached #1 (Caribbean Queen, we wrote about it a couple of times already), but this one will only reach #2. Which is a goddamn shame because Loverboy is a fucking incredible piece of art.



Not that it matters whether a song does, or does not, reach #1. Or if it even reaches the charts at all. That stuff is so arbitrary, and dependent on factors that have nothing at all to do with the quality, or lack thereof, in the actual music itself, that any quantitative method of evaluating art is inherently meaningless. And yea, and yet, people who have been given money to write about music will cite streaming numbers to support their claim that a song, or an artist, is somehow more important than another.

But getting back to Billy, like most people around my age who got into underground music in the late 80s, I felt that mainstream 80s sounds were synthetic and fake. I totally bought into the narrative that the closer a recording sounded to people in a room, the more real it was (you can read real in quotes if you want). Paula Abdul was fake. The Smiths were real. One sang about things that were fake (real love), and one sang about things that were real (fake love). I carried this prejudice against 80s mainstream production nearly a decade into the 21st century until someone put this song on at work one day. By now I was listening to avant-garde electronic music, and that opening flurry of electronics--that droning synth into the exploding stabs of sound--came across so glorious that I started laughing. Then the song kicked in with a horsey beat so obvious that someone had Billy riding a horse in the video, and, uh, holy shit.

I have never heard 80s music the same way since.

Loverboy isn't just a sonic delight. The pre-chorus (starts at 1:12 if you don't know what a pre-chorus is) floors me every time, the way it just keep ratcheting up the tension. Billy sings the shit out of it. He sounds genuinely anguished, and the "yeah-yeah"s as he arrives at the chorus are so ecstatic that they manage to evoke the beauty and the euphoria of frustrated lust as well as, say, The Smiths ever did.

Billy plays it cool for the chorus, supported by stop-start distorted guitars.You have to love how he spends the verses/pre-chorus working himself into a frenzy, only to hit the chorus and just croon Want to be your... loverboy. Compare the smooth control when he sings "yeah" in the chorus to the unhinged "yeah"s in the pre-chorus.

We're all set up for your typical guitar solo, but instead we get what is essentially a technology solo made up of scratching, samples that are so randomly placed as to sound avant-garde. It brings the song to a thrilling stop like a train slamming into a wall over and over again. The noise subsides and we get a quiet verse, now with that guitar solo. But the verse is shortened to get us to the pre-chorus faster, this time even more unhinged than before, and then the chorus arrives and--

Billy drops out, the song and these near-falsetto voices sing the chorus and it's all just so dramatic and cool. It's the finest moment of Billy Ocean's musical life. And a couple of years later when I made an "Eightiesbilly" mix that had songs from that decade by Idol, Joel, and Ocean, you'd better believe this song was prominently featured.

Score: 10.

THE NUMBER ONE

 

We get two outstanding time capsules of 80s production for the price of one in this installment of The Number Fortys. Out of Touch features all kinds of cutting edge digital sampling, to the point where this song resembles the Art of Noise (less than a year old at this point) as much as Hall & Oates. They brought in Arthur Baker to help with the sonics. Baker had already worked on visionary early 80s stuff like Afrika Bambaataa's Planet Rock (it's a 9), and Freeze's I.O.U. (an 8), and credit to H & O for recognizing the coolness of what he was doing.

Of course being songwriting pros, H & O fashion a genuine moving, anguished melody/lyrics about the draining soullessness of decadence. This was a theme that a more respected writer like Elvis Costello had covered extensively a few years prior, and it says a lot about H & O that their song holds its own lyrically while incorporating avant-gardeish sonics makes a serious case for their artistic credentials--especially compared to a musical reactionary like E. Costello.

Score: 9.

Thursday, May 2, 2019

The Number Fortys: Ray Parker Jr. - "Jamie"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

Songs land at #40 for all kinds of reasons, but the one I'm most fascinated by is the type we'll call:

Their last single was a big hit so even though this one's not nearly as good it's still going to scrape the bottom of the chart just because the last one did so well

A lot of songs we've encountered on this journey have fallen into this category. John Waite, Dan Hartman, Night Ranger, Matthew Wilder. These songs are usually the worst because they sound like a cyncial attempt to have a hit. They lack whatever freshness and originality the hit had, and are usually just the blind fumblings of a career artist trying to "crack the marketplace" or some shit.

Ladies and gentleman, I present the follow-up to Ray Parker Jr.s #1 hit Ghostbusters. It's called Jamie.


This one eventually reached #14, presumably because people recognized Ray's voice. Because the song itself is, um, barely a song at all. It could exist. It could not exist. It starts, it ends, and all our lives are emptier for the time we could have spent listening to something else. At times, it feels more like a song about a guy trying to convince someone of two things:

1. Yes, I really did used to go out with (date? fuckity-fuck? cohabitate with?) Jamie.

2. And, despite Jamie's androgynous name, this person was definitely a girl, not a boy.

As usual in break-up songs--or in this case, a broken-up song--the singer seems oblivious to any part they may have played in the de-coupling (we call this the Jonathan Richman effect). So when Ray says, "I trained her just the way I wanted her," most non-sociopaths go, wait a second. When Ray then adds that, because of the amount of time he put into sculpting and molding (controlling) her, it "ain't fair for her to give it to some other guy," we, the non-sociopaths in the audience, go, holy fuck Jamie I hope you don't get murdered.

For a song about heartbreak, and how it's not fair that a person who "has to have it every night, every night" would prefer to get it from, or in the case of the song "give it to" (nice de-personalization there Ray) someone else (HOW DARE YOU MAKE YOUR OWN DECISIONS JAMIE), Jamie (the song) is pretty breezy and non-dramatic. The lyrics may be about heartbreak and perceived betrayal, but the music is about a little girl skipping rope on a spring day. Go fucking figure.

Score: 1.


THE NUMBER ONE


We continue last week's excerpt from Wham!'s 1983 interview with Paul Morley, as featured in his book Ask. PM is Paul; G is George; A is Andrew Ridgeley. It is a fascinating argument about pop music. The use of "it's only pop music" as a way to justify/excuse the lack of anything interesting in an artist's music is especially prescient. Today, critics play the part of G and A, and isn't that something.

Paul Morley: How can you feel in any way satisfied or inspired being a prime part of he current charity gay abandon, all this flimsy jingly sing-along?
George and Andrew: That's what pop music is all about?
PM: What, a sing-song?
A: That's what makes pop songs popular, because everyone can sing along with them. There's nothing wrong with that.
G: What fucking right have you got to say that we should sing something that is socially important?
PM: I haven't said that, don't insult me!
G: What are you saying then?
PM: I'm just wondering about the extent of your ambition. You must at times get pissed off with music that is popular, not just indifferent, because everyone can sing along with it. You have to draw the line somewhere -- do you have standards?
G: What are you talking about . . . your standards are what you enjoy.
PM: Tell me something about your standards.
A: If you like it, it's all right. What you enjoy it's all right.
PM: Comprehensive stuff. No second thoughts, no doubts, no feelings of restlessness.
G: What are you talking about? There's obviously a great difference between the way you look at music and the way we look at music. We look at music as something to enjoy, not as what the pop song means or what it represents, or whether it's better than pop music made five years ago. All that's not for us.
PM: I'm just an argumentative bitch. I just have this feeling that it's positive for energy to be used in a different way than how it has been in the past; I like movement rather than self-satisfaction.
G: Look . . . we like pop music . . . we make pop music . . why do you expect something from us other than pop music?
PM: I don't expect anything else, certainly not moral action -- I sometimes think -- this is all -- that within the pop song context you might want to appear a little less common. . . .
A: But we're not writing songs for you or for anyone else fro that matter, so we don't give a toss what you say because we like what we do. . . .
G: What the hell you going on about?
PM: I'm finding it hard to be polite. Instead of just having people sing along with your songs, and blink in the glare of your teeth, wouldn't it please you to think that maybe you'd intrigued, provoked and enlivened your audience?
A: Why do we have to intrigue, provoke and . . . whatever else it is you're going on about. . . .
PM: So what do you want to do then? Sorry I'm so curious.
G: Why the fuck should we do anything?
A: Fucking hell, we play music for ourselves.
G: We enjoy it, our audience enjoys it, why the fuck should we provoke them? What the fuck's that about? Ego, that's what this is about. For Christ's sake, most people have an ego, most people who are in pop music are there because they have an ego . . . the whole business is built on ego, vanity, self-satisfaction, and it's total crap to pretend that it's not.
PM: The "ego" you're talking about seems pretty threadbare to me -- it's hardly as though you have the nerve to pretend you're God, just the courage to revel in your own small-minded big-headedness -and if there's ego, self-satisfaction and vanity, why not initiative, inspiration and irritation as well? Wouldn't it be more fulfilling to your ego if you were bolder, bitter, better - you talk of ego but you just mean self-congratulation; you don't want your ego fuelled because of any candour and brilliance.
G: What the hell are you talking about?

Let the record show that George Michael died at age 53. According to Michael's partner, not only was the death a suicide, this was his fifth attempt. At the time of his death. he had sold over 100 million records around the world.

Wednesday, May 1, 2019

The Number Fortys: Toto - "Stranger In Town"


In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

This week's song is bullshit and horrible, so we're not going to spend too much time on it. It's forgettable the way that shitty job you worked at for a month to save up money so you could move was shitty. It's just a thing you did. I've listened to this song five times now, and there is absolutely nothing there.


As long as I'm here though, I might as well say that Toto sucks. Rosanna sucks. Africa (the song) sucks. I'm not going to argue these things. It's a stupid song about a stupid thing. Toto were soulless session musicians--Steely Dan without the wit or melody, and I am not a fan of Steely Dan. They provided some decent backing on some of Michael Jackson's Thriller. Congratulations, Toto.

Score: 1.

THE NUMBER ONE



From my copy of Ask: The Chatter of Pop by Paul Morley, An interview he conducted with Wham--excuse me, Wham!--that appeared in the October 23, 1983 edition of Blitz Magazine, roughly a year before this song reached #1 in the UK and US. Q's are Paul. A's are G. Mike.

Q:You're banal, George.
A: Yeah, I'm banal, as far as what goes on the record. . . but I enjoy the music and a lot of other people enjoy the music, so I don't care."
Q: What do you care about?
A: I care about me, I care about my family. I care about making sure that I'm still here in five or ten years' time. Y'see, I'm about as human as most people are. I don't think you have a grasp of how human most people are. I don't think that you have a grasp of basic human requirements. You seem to use the word "banal" as derogatory. But life if banal . . . if you understand, you know that it is banal and that there's nothing wrong with that. . . . It's just life. It's just the way people are, people are banal, their lives are boring, and they just try to get through life as enjoyable and as simply as possible.
Q: I . . the content of an aimless consciousness is weak and colourlesss . . . the work is futile, the joys ephemeral, the howls helpless and the agony incompetent, the hopes are purchased, the voice prerecorded, the play is mechanical, the rules typed, their lines trite, all strengths are sapped, exertion anyhow is useless, to vote or not is futile, futile . . . it is the principal function of popular culture - though hardly its avowed purpose - to keep people from understanding what is happening to them . . . in every way they are separated from the centres of power and feeling. . . .
A: I do enjoy this kind of conversation . . . I like coming up against questions like these. But I don't think it means anything to people. No one wants to know about the things you're going on about. Enjoyment is what matters.
Q: But doesn't such single-minded attention on the juices of enjoyment become repetitive and desperate? Doesn't such small determination to enjoy, enjoy, enjoy actually nullify the possibilities of pleasure? Don't curiosity, complication, adventure play their parts. . .
A: Yeah, those things, but why should we be the ones to put it about? Why should we? I want us to be happy.

In 1984, a year after this interview, George Michael appeared on a kids TV show and announced that Joy Division's Closer was his favorite album. We'll excerpt some more from this interview as the song continues its reign atop the charts.

Fuck Fleetwood Mac

It's not that there's anything wrong with them. It's not that their music sucks. Is it a little bland? A little boring? Yeah. I mean, if that's what heartbreak sounds like to you, then I envy you your porcelain life. But my big beef with Fleetwood Mac is their status (along with the Eagles, Billy Joel, Phil Collins, et. al.) in the underground. A friend and I were eating breakfast in the local vegetarian joint yesterday morning, when our server--a kind cool young person covered in tattoos--yelped with joy when Fleetwood Mac came on. "Oh, I'm so glad I get to listen to Rhiannon this morning." And yeah, I get that most contemporary songwriters, mainstream or underground, aren't capable of utilizing the minor verse to major chorus shift that the Mac does so effectively in that song (even though it's really easy). But if you're a young person who gets excited about hearing Fleetwood Mac, that just tells me you didn't start listening to music, or the radio, until your senior year in high school. I assume you were raised by christians, or possibly a cult, because Fleetwood Mac has been inescapable on the radio--as have all the other 70's schlock--for the past 40 years.

Again, this isn't anything against F. Mac. Here. I'll post a song I like, one that never gets played on the radio.


It's something you listen to. Me, I listened to it a lot when I was 10 (I went through my Eagles phase when I was 8). That wasn't because I was super cool. It was because I heard it on the radio and liked it. But after hearing it again (and again, and again), it got kind of boring. I wanted to hear more stuff, stuff that made me feel as captivated and stunned as when I first heard Hotel California, a song that, as an eight year old contained vast quantities of mystery and drama. When I last heard it, also yesterday during my vegetarian breakfast, let's just say that it contained significantly less mystery or drama. I told my friend just to concentrate on the kinda sorta cool bassline and we'd get through it together.

I blame Best Coast. I blame Poptimism Inc. The only thing more obnoxious than people singing the praises of the same exact thing that everyone else is singing the praises of is the way they pat themselves on the back, as if somehow their championing of F. Mac, or Beyonce, makes them interesting. It takes serious ideological pretzel contortions to think you're a badass for liking the most popular music ever recorded, but that's your 21st century music critic for you. What's the point in championing the counterculture, the more challenging, the marginalized when all distinctions between types of music are arbitrary. You like the thing that's popular then more people are going to read what you wrote. Eyeballs are power, and, much like music, all eyeballs are exactly the same.

I can accept this desperate scrambling by critics for relevance, and the attendant (small, dwindling, insubstantial) paycheck that comes with that relevance. But imagine being a cool guy in your early 20s with aspirations to being an artist, in a public space where you could play anything you want, you have pretty much the entire recorded history of music at your fingertips, you can signify your aesthetic stance for all the artistic influencers in town, and you put on Fleetwood fucking Mac. That's a hell of a statement. It's a statement that you're boring.

Today, I walked into the local outpost of a regional convenience store chain to grab some soda water and some Takis (product placement alert!). You know what their piped-in corporate-approved speakers were playing? Fucking It's My Life by Talk Talk. And this is something that has happened to me again and again over the last few years. If you want to hear The Cure you go to McDonald's. If you want to hear Pearl Jam Pandora, you go to the local independent coffee shop. And you can fucking forget about hearing anything more obscure than any of those artists I just mentioned. If I heard the Go-Betweens (who were also pretty good at that minor/major thing F. Mac did) in public, or fuck it, if I heard The Bastards of Fate, my legs would probably fall off from shock (I am a cultural critic; I am not a doctor).

I've been listening to F. Mac for three decades now, but I've been listening to the Go-Betweens for nearly two. I've never gotten tired of them the way I got tired of the Mac. I'm going to post a song that could have been, in its musical style, a Mac song. It was never a hit. I have never heard it on the radio. I have never heard it in public unless I was the one playing it (at the same coffee shop that rocks Pearl Jam Pandora, back in the day). It still stops my breath. I wonder what the guy in the restaurant would think of it.


Both this song and Rhiannon are about ghosts, or people who are both inhabiting the "spectral" realm. F. Mac's song is about a Celtic (or Welsh, I forget) witch. The G. Betweens song is about G. McLennan's dead father. It has never failed to move me. There's a performance I want you to watch. I find it stunning. I want to share it with you. It has 22,000 views. The Youtube video for Rhiannon--just the song with a picture of the album, mind you--has 38,000,000. There is more in this musical heaven and earth than is dreamed of in your Fleetwood Mac people.

Wednesday, April 24, 2019

The Number Fortys: Rebbie Jackson - "Centipede"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

The oldest of the 10 Jackson children, yes those Jacksons, Rebbie was 34 when she released her debut album. This was the first single, and the only Top 40 song she would ever have (it would reach #24). It is incredible, both exciting and strange all at the same time.





Her brother Michael, at this time the most famous musician on the planet, wrote and produced it. And yes, it sounds like he contributed some background vocals too. On the back of the single, Michael dedicated the song to his "mannequin friends." Here's his crazy-ass lyrics in full.

Your love is like a raging fire
You’re a snake that’s on the loose
The strike is your desire
But when the centipede is hot
You’re bound to feel the fire
But when the centipede is hot
You’re bound to feel the fire

I feel, oh yeah, a longing for your touch
Like you crawled into the bathroom window
To give him all your love
Like a centipede that’s hot
The fire is in your touch
Just like a centipede you’ve got
A lot of loving to touch

Don’t you know
In the quiet of the night
Is when the snake is in the crawlin’
And the moon starts to glow then disappear
When the time is really right
Is when the centipede is crawlin’
You’ll be crying in the night
So many tears
And crawlin’ like a centipede
(Centipede)

You came to strike him with your love
Like you crawled into the bathroom window
To bite him with your love
Like a centipede that’s hot
The fire is in your touch
Just like a centipede you’ve got
A lot of lovin’ to touch

(Chorus X 3)


Beats the shit out of me. The video's just as weird (what does a tiger have to do with...anything?). But regardless of all that, the song is pretty fucking great. I love the syncopated guitar, and that synth run at the end of the chorus is divine. Is it the greatest song ever written? Nah. But it's exactly what I was hoping I'd find when I started this column, a song from out of nowhere that grabs me.

Interesting note about Rebbie, she was groomed for music stardom just like the rest of her siblings, but she bailed on all that to get married when she was 18 and move to Kentucky. Like most people who grow up in abusive domestic shitshows, she could not wait to get out of there. Rebbie's dad, Joe, whose punches led Michael to develop the moonwalk in order to avoid being hit so much, not only objected, he refused to walk her down the aisle. Rebbie and her husband had three children, and stayed married until her husband's death of cancer in 2013. All of this suggests that Rebbie was a very smart woman with a good head on her shoulders.

Anyway, Centipede is a jam, a surreal disturbing jam.

Score: 7

THE NUMBER ONE


You like candy? Of course you like candy. Everyone loves candy. Even if it's empty. Even if it makes your teeth falls out and causes type 2 diabetes and mood crashes. This song isn't a pastry. It isn't a donut or a cake. It's Fun Dip. It's flavored powdered sugar you shovel down your throat with a stick made out of solid sugar that you eat after you run out of the powder. Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go (I tried not to type the words; I feel stupid typing the words) is gloriously, deliriously empty. It is a never-ending pleasure that quickly sickens. It's impossible not to enjoy. It's impossible to be moved. It's too catchy, too perfect, not to have been a hit. It's too devoid of anything else to do anything at the top of the charts besides sit there. How do you evaluate something that is simultaneously inescapable and effervescent? You put it right in the middle, the statistical average of a 10 for form and 0 for content.

Score: 5.

Monday, April 22, 2019

Bandcamp: All Cats Are Grey

I've found more interesting, un-hyped, flat-out enjoyable music through Bandcamp these past several years than through any other music-related outlet. As a place to discover new music, it knocks all the algorithmic-curators and critical places out of the park. The fact that it also generates money for musicians, and (as far as I can tell) is able and willing to cover stuff irrespective of what other noise and PR is out there, makes it the most vital music thing on the internet, if not the planet.

That's why it's worth talking about everything I hate about it.

There's only one thing, really. The music writing on the site is boring as hell. There's no humor, no irreverence, no critical perspective (all music is good and all music contains the exact same amount of goodness. The music exists in a hell of arbitrary equality. It feels like the editors could substitute everything on their front page for something different, and they would write about the music the same way.

At its worst, Bandcamp combines the worst aspects of PR and criticism in a self-contained ouroboros. The only difference from the other ouroboros is that their ouroboros is different from the others. AT its worst, the writing on Bandcamp feels more like someone trying to sell you something than someone exploring the music. The writing isn't art; it's a real-estate broker showing you a house.

Here's one of this week's "essential releases" (note the advertising jargon--the promise of necessity that can't possibly be met). I chose this one because it's the one I liked the best.



There's a couple of paragraphs about the album. Weirdly, the names Bjork and Angelo Badalamenti don't get mentioned once (the first song is a dead ringer for both). Mostly, what we get is a writing that is indistinguishable from hype: 

  • Constantly in Love feels like a step forward for Matthildur into a more fully realized sense of herself as a solo artist—a voice, in other words, that cannot be ignored. 
  • And Gothic drama is something Sólveig Matthildur’s latest, Constantly in Love, is rich with.
  • Her pop songwriting skills are on full display—this would have been a huge hit for 4AD or Projekt in the late ‘80s or early ‘90s.
  • The tension necessary for that high drama, these tales of the plangent and often ugly need at the core of desire, is well-established, through curling vocal layers (“Tómas”), pulsing beats (“My Father Taught Me How To Cry”), and chord changes that feel like the bottom of one’s heart dropping out when attempting to vocalize a crush (“My Desperation”).
The reason I call it hype is because the music doesn't measure up to any of this. First off, I think the biggest hit for 4AD around that time was either the Pixies, or Breeders, or I don't know, Belly? I get the comparison (it's goth, or Goth), but "huge hit" seems like a weird claim to make. Secondly, I don't really hear anything pop, or "chord changes that feel like the bottom of one's heart dropping out". I hear a fine, but kind of boring, goth album. It combines elements of Cocteau/Bjork vocals with Coldwave tropes (snares that go snap, an excess of reverb on the vocals, icy synths) that is ultimately less than the sum of its parts. Every influence I hear here is taken from an artist who went further, emotionally and musically, than Matthildur goes here. And because it's written about here as the second (third? eleventh?) coming of goth, I, the listener, come away from a perfectly fine album--nothing special, but nothing horrible--with a feeling of disappointment. The writing makes claims that the music can't live up to. There's no place for the writer to say, most of this album sucks but track three is great. Or shows a lot of potential, we'll have to see what happens. Everything is flawless. Everything is worhty.

Unable to judge music because it is all equally good--or more accurately, each artist exists in its own bubble of itself, unrelated to any other--Bandcamp focuses on biography and genre, i.e. who made this music and what does it sound like. The result is band descriptions that feel like they were generated by a random generator bot that somebody fed music genres into.

New Zealand Female Singer-Songwriter Music On A Grand Organ.
Avant-garde Protest Music with Hindu Philosophy.
A hip-hop collective that "cross wires" Memphis rap and Cyberpunk.

This is all virtually meaningless. As I once said to a local guy who told me he sounded like John Prine, it's easy to sound like John Prine. Anyone can sound like anything. The question is can you write like John Prine (spoiler alert: he couldn't come close). I remember another local guy saying his band sounded like The Housemartins. They did, but without any of political content or soulful singing. I think the first song was about wanting to walk a girl home after school. I asked whether the singer was a pedophile, a virgin, or both.

The biggest problem is that it assumes the genre is an end in itself. Looking for Cosmic Americana Music Made in Africa? You're sure to love this new band? It's a cliche to say you like "all kinds of music." But I'd rather hear someone tell me they like all kinds of music than tell me how they're into Filipino Techno Folk, or whatever.

The point is who cares what a band fucking "sounds like," or what their influences are. I want to know if they sing from their fucking soul, if the music can stop me in my tracks, if it can make me feel less alone in the world, if it can redefine my ideas about what constitutes sound/music/existence. I want to hear something that doesn't sound like anything I've heard before. I want to hear something that sounds like the best, most ultimately realized version, of something I've heard a million times. I want lyrics that hit me so hard I swoon, that give me a way to describe my life that feels more accurate and true. I want lyrics that are silly and make me giggle. I want a guitar solo that sounds awful and wrong the first time I hear it, and the seventh time I hear it, it sounds like a comet blazing a trail though the atmosphere of Jupiter.

But moments like that are rare. They certainly don't come along every day, or five times a week, as Bandcamp would like me to believe. Hey, I'm glad to know that, as today's Bandcamp headline announces, here are Ten Bands Keeping The DIY Scene In Portugal Loud, Edgy, And Alive. I'd be surprised if more than one of them was worth a shit. Here's the first one. You tell me.



I get that Bandcamp has a business to run, mouths to feed, etc. But it is on its way to possessing a great deal of power. As a result, it has the chance to do something that is rare in the history of music criticism. Bandcamp has an opportunity to offer high-visibility music writing--that is to say music ideas/opinions/arguments--that aren't compromised by the fear of jeopardizing its revenue sources. Because it isn't dependent on advertising from labels and artists, Bandcamp could offer sustained criticism & analysis of contemporary music in an arena of total freedom. Instead, it has, so far, chosen to offer mere spectacle. It commits the worst sin of contemporary music criticism. By focusing so exclusively on what is happening "right this second," it communicates that all music is ephemeral and ultimately worthless. You can hear about an incredible album one day, and then never hear anything about it ever again. In its rush to sell you another product, to tell you about the hot new thing (but don't worry, it still sounds recognizably like other things you already like), contempo-music-crit devalues the very things it's supposed to be valuing. In its desperation to sell vast quantities (or any quantities! please! just buy something!) of music, it does away with notions of vast qualities of music.

In the Bandcamp POV, nothing is everything, and everything is nothing. It's impossible to imagine an album of the day that is disruptive, that calls the other music around it into question, that exposes it as compromised, that provokes a furious response in the writer--that forces the writer to pick a side, about anything. Disruption is bad for business. And in its critical tone, its (absence of a) stance, Bandcamp resembles nothing so much as a dislocated version of all these beige buildings surrounding us. If you want burgers, you go to Beef O'Brady's. If you want coffee you go to Starbucks. Hey, I heard we might be getting an In-N-Out Burger soon. Everything here is exactly the same. It's just a question of what shape it comes in. Viewed this way, Bandcamp is (to this point) not much  more than the artisan design--your-own pizza slice across the parking lot from the big corporate chains, attempting to sell its different approach as a substitute for freedom.

Friday, April 19, 2019

Doom Mix Vol. III - Doom Trip Records

hey it's friday and all the week's new music is here that everybody's talking about but not enough everybody's are talking about this and what do you mean you don't know about doom trip and the doom mixes? there's more ideas in this cassette/bandcamp-digitalis thing than a year's worth of college radio (except for KFJC b/c they're rad) and a year's worth of hip-hop radio (except for 103.3 in atlanta the motherfucking PEOPLE'S station). this is the third doom mix. it's the best doom mix (i think, so far, at least, it's early, why are we forced to contextualize the fleeting present against the obesity of history). i've embedded the whole thing, but if you've never heard of skyjelly i say go to that track first. no wait. listen to the whole thing. for the rest of the day. no wait again. listen to it for a week and let's have a goddamn revolution.

The Number Fortys: John Waite - "Tears"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

Tears as in the salty water that pours out of your eyes, not tears as in rips something in half. It's John Waite's follow-up to his #1 hit Missing You. We talked about it when this series encountered Sheena Easton; it's a 7.



This is not a 7. It's an incoherent, vaguely misogynistic piece of crap. Of all the girls I've had at my knees / You're the only one who could bring me to these tears is the opposite of romance. Hell, it's the opposite of human decency. It's quite possibly the worst compliment you could pay someone.

John Waite didn't write the song. It was co-written by a guy who replaced Ace Frehley in Kiss (Kiss is terrible; their music is a 0--Kiss is in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame Inc., an act which is like inducting Bill O'Reilly into the Objective Journalist Hall of Fame). The lyrics are the blabbering of a not-very-bright-person confused why the object of their...affection?...desire?...That's giving it too much credit. The guy wants the girl to have fucky-wucky time with and they'd rather do the fucky-wucky with someone else, someone who's not a babbling asshole. It's a tough conceit for a song, when you're glad the girl left the singer, but that's what we have here.

You turned another's thumb / And he makes your wrongs seem right / Out on some different wavelength / Somehow he brings you more

I don't know what it means to "turn another's thumb." But here's some free relationship advice. If you think the girl you're pining for is wrong, and incapable of making good choices, maybe they're not the person for you. Also, the fact that you are crying tears is not a good reason for the object (a really appropriate word here) of your desire to get back together with you. Tears are a reason for a parent to give you a hug, not for a girl to get down on her knees for you. Just because someone loved you, or did the humpy-bumpy with you, does not mean they are required to continue loving, or humpy-bumping you. You haven't been betrayed, or misled. The person just isn't into that anymore. And it's extremely possible that it's your fault, not theirs.

Later he call her "a killer on the streets," which  means either she murders homeless people, or is really good at being a prostitute. Again, not the best compliment to give someone.

But what about the music, you ask. Tell me what you think about the music. Yeah. Sure, man. Stop yelling.

The music is generic, unmemorable mid-80s arena rock. It's like a soulless version of Boston or something. It aspires to classic rock without ever being classic or actually rocking. It's bad.

It's a 1.


THE NUMBER ONE


Two weeks for Billy. I can't hear this song without thinking of this old Mr. Show sketch, probably because there was a time in my life when I didn't have cable or internet and one of the five DVDs I owned was the first season of Mr. Show. Anyway, this one is funny enough to make me okay with Bob Odenkirk's,..uh. Central-Asia-face? This might be the 100th time I've seen this sketch, and I still, in a room by myself, busted-up laughing when he shouted "Soon! Soon! You're a balloon!"


Hell on earth, indeed.

The Number Fortys: Dan Hartman - "We Are The Young"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.



What's this "we" shit, old man?

Dan Hartman was 34 when this came out. It was the follow-up to I Can Dream About You, his previous single that had reached #6. That song is a glorious piece of 80s soul (it's a 10), and there's a hell of a backstory about it. Hartman was commissioned to write a song for a movie called Streets of Fire (the movie is a 4; Diane Lane is a 9). Those guys in the video sing the song in the film, but Hartman had a stipulation in his contract, which he exercised the fuck out of, that it be his voice on the soundtrack, and if they issued the song as a single, that it be his voice on the single.

It was a savvy decision on Hartman's part. He got a major hit out of it at a time when he desperately needed one. The only problem was the video for the song didn't feature Hartman, it featured the band from the movie.  Here's the video that MTV played the shit out of. That is not, I repeat, not, Dan Hartman in blackface. Those are the guys from the movie.


So most anyone who knew who Dan Hartman was in 1984 would have (quite reasonably) assumed that Dan Hartman was a good-looking young black man who could dance his ass off. I have no memory of MTV ever playing We Are The Young (a year later, we would be told we are the world, we are the children), but if they had I would have been pretty confused.

None of this would have mattered if We Are The Young was a great song, but it most emphatically is not. It's actually an uninspired rip of the beat from Shannon's Let The Music Play (that song is a 10 btw). It shamelessly panders to what advertisers call "the youth demographic." However, it does, in the line Every street is an arcade of dreams has one of the few Top 40 lyrics that could have reasonably come from a Walter Benjamin notebook.

Dan Hartman had been kicking around music since the early 70s. He wrote/sang/did nearly everything on The Edgar Winter Group's 1973 Top 10 hit Free Ride. The song itself is an 8, but this performance is a 10.


Dan Hartman was a gay man who spent his entire life in the closet. He died of AID-related causes in 1994.

THE NUMBER ONE



In other parts of the world the song was European Queen or African Queen (no idea if there was a Korean Queen), but in North America, they went with Caribbean Queen. It's fine. Billy was born in Trinidad, and he co-wrote the song, so it's not as problematic. You know this song. I know this song. The bassline is straight-up Billie Jean. The song is catchy. It's fine. Billy is about to have a long stretch of hits. It's a 4.

But ______ Queen was something of a comeback for Billy. He had a couple of hits in 1976-77, and I would not be doing my job as a music connoisseur (I spelled that so badly the first time that spell-check suggested concessionaire) if I didn't share this great piece of 70's soul from Billy Ocean. This one's a 9. Enjoy.

Thursday, April 18, 2019

The Number Fortys: Steve Perry - "Strung Out"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

As this series heads towards the end of 1984, it's worth noting here that a 1983 Gallup Poll of people between the ages of 13 and 25 named Journey as their favorite rock band. I wasn't in that demographic yet, but my favorite cassette was Purple Rain at this time, followed closely by Def Leppard's Pyromania. I was living at my aunt's house in Brockton, Massachusetts; she had MTV and two daughters a few years older than me. The oldest one was a talented artist, and the Little Red Corvette she had absent-mindedly drawn on one of my book covers got me serious cool points in my new elementary school.

We don't usually do auto-bio stuff in this blog, but I've got some space to fill because the song I'm supposed to write about here is bland trash. I'm not being a snob. Mr. Perry's previous solo single, "Oh Sherrie" is great (it's a 7), my favorite thing he ever did, including his work with Journey, a band who's induction in the Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Inc., as far as I'm concerned, pretty much invalidates the existence of a Rock N Roll Hall of Fame Inc.


Strung Out isn't a song about heroin addiction, or is it? (it isn't). It's unmemorable light-rock, so unmemorable I feel weird giving it a score. How do you score something that barely exists? How do you score a piece of music that feels like it wasn't made to do anything? It's like giving a reading assessment test to a pig. Like, what's the fucking point?

But this column aspires to revel in, and subvert, the idea of quantifiable data, so the premise requires us to give a score. Strung Out is a 1.

THE NUMBER ONE

Stevie holds on for a third straight week (one week longer than Let's Go Crazy so fuck everyone in America in 1984). This brings us back to an idea this column has provoked: Which is worse, a shitty song that you can't remember (like S. Perry's), or a shitty song that you can't get out of your head (like S. Wonder's).



We've already approached the awfulness of this song from a couple of different angles. This week let's do they lyrics. The verses list reasons why Stevie did not call the person, which implies that these are reasons why you would normally call someone. The song's premise is, in a hacky songwriter way, playing a romantic game that goes back as far as Shakespeare. It's the old, people normally woo in overly romantic ways, but I am going to pitch my woo without any romantic adornment at all, thus signifying the steadfastness and authenticity of my love, a love that, by not being tied to any occasion, will show indirectly that it can weather the passing of time better than those other extravagant woo-pitchers, which actually makes ME the romantic one.

It's bullshit of course. Because, as pro music critics have been falling over themselves for the past decade-plus to triumphantly point out, people can, being aware of what authenticity looks like, actually perform it. Of course, most pro music critics, being the kind of straightforward simple people they are, then conclude there must not be any such thing as authenticity, or at the very least, it isn't relevant in evaluating a piece of music. Which is a stupid idea of course. There is a difference between Leadbelly's blues music and the blues music of, say, New York Knicks owner James Dolan. Or, to continue the Leadbelly connection, there's a difference between Nirvana's version of In The Pines and this one.


Because this blog sometimes aspires to be, on occasion, a kind of corrective to contemporary pro-music-crit, I'll go ahead and explain the difference. It isn't authenticity on a simple, objective level. Neither Kurt or John Sprocket explicitly lived the experiences they sing about (neither's daddy was a railroad man killed a mile-and-a-half from here being the most obvious example). A work of art can't be authentic, it can only feel authentic or not feel authentic. And because that is totally, completely subjective, it means that we can argue about it. The problem comes when we argue about the first part (Bob Dylan was actually a middle-class jewish kid from Minnesota, and not a rail-hopping hobo--therefore his entire musical output is a LIE) when it's only the second part that's important (Blind Willie McTell is one of the most powerful, moving songs about slavery and its perpetual stain upon the American landscape and consciousness). The first conversation is boring. The second conversation is...well it's a little less boring.

So Stevie Wonder. Yeah. Here are things that, in the context of the song, are considered totally normal reasons why you would call someone:

- It's the first day of spring.
- To sing someone a song.
- To announce their "wedding saturday within the month of june" (this is known in the poetry world as trainwreck of forced meter).
- I am high and it's summertime (to be fair, I would love to receive this phone call).
- Because there is a "harvest moon to light one tender August night."
- Autumn breeze.
- Falling leaves.
- Libra sun (whatever that means).
- It's time for birds to fly to southern skies.

Compared to those things, I think calling to say "I love you" makes way more sense. That seems like a totally normal, sane, not-at-all-disturbing reason to call someone. The others, not so much. I suggest you call someone (or I guess text them, or DM them, b/c it's not okay to call people on the phone anymore) today and tell them "I just called to tell you about the Libra sun," and see where that takes you.

Score: 2. I decided to add a point this week on account of the bizarre lyrics. It gives me something pleasurable to focus on next time I hear it.


Wednesday, April 17, 2019

The Number Fortys: Romeo Void - "A Girl in Trouble (Is a Temporary Thing)"

In The Number Fortys, we review whatever song was sitting at #40 on the Billboard charts. We began in the first week of January 1984, right around the time this writer became cognizant/obsessive about music, and will continue until we get bored. The seeds for the idea came from Tom Breihan's Number Ones column over at Stereogum. However, we here at k-postpunk believe that the bottom is more interesting than the top (and obscurity is more interesting than either). Also, if you want to read the Number in the title as meaning "more numb," I think that's totally understandable at this point.

Oh cool. We get to talk about Romeo Void. And yeah, we're dealing with Romeo Void's most commercial song from their brief stint on a major label, but Romeo Void were one of the finest bands to come out of the SF punk explosion/aftermath, steering a propulsive Gang of Four-ish art rock that was cool as hell.

Let's enjoy the smooth beauty of this week's song for a few minutes before we get to the story of Romeo Void. As major label polished songs from post-punk bands go, A Girl In Trouble is pretty damn fine. 




We don't do a whole lot of narrative storytelling here. If you made it here, you obviously know how to use the internet, and can find all that stuff yourself. But in doing a little research about the band's history--because I'm a fan and I wanted to know more--I decided their story needed to be told, and it will be told through stories from lead singer Debora Iyall.

I'd come down to the Bay Area a few times to see Patti Smith. Then I got a fortune cookie that said 'Art is your fate -- don't debate.' So I applied to the SF Art Institute. After seeing Patti Smith, I still had it in my mind that you had to be skinny to be up there [on stage], but after going to the Mabuhay ... you just do whatever you want, be whoever you want, just make it happen. My approach was always that I had something to say, I had a point of view. I remember seeing Penelope from the Avengers at the Mabuhay Gardens and thinking, I can do that. I have something to say.

Even though I was going to the Mab so much, I also had criticisms: Everyone was leaning against the wall wearing black. I guess we were considered New Wave, but for me Romeo Void was a reaction against the regimentation of everyone having to be bleached blond and everything being about despair and no future, when I thought the do-it-yourself thing should encompass all the different kinds of emotions, and all the different colors. ... I was proud of being American Indian, so I purposely never bleached my hair blond.

I was told by our culture that I would never be a full human being because of my size. Aggression was in high value at the time, and there was an aggression just in me being a singer, because I didn't fit the mold.I wasn't ever really a rock 'n' roll gal; I might've been listening to Erik Satie or Billie Holiday! we played a college in Santa Barbara, and there were all these blond people crowding the stage, and I thought 'These are the people who hated me in high school!' When you grow up being 'outside' -- because I wasn't white, and I was fat, and always a bit of a free thinker -- it was strange. It was like, 'uh-oh, I must be doing something wrong -- they like me!

Their independently released EP blew up, propelled by Never Say Never. If you've never heard it before, it's one of the smartest, funniest, coolest songs of its era, or any era. Here it is:




The major labels came coming, and the story took a decidedly fucked up turn. There's a story out there that the label told her to lose weight and she refused.


Howie sold us from 415 to Columbia Records, and they were like 'Who's this fat chick?' They decided that was as far as it was going to get, and pulled their support. 
The very next town we got to after they made that decision, there wasn't an A&R person there," said Iyall. "[There] was no local person there, there were no interviews and in-stores arranged as they had been. All that just ground to a halt.

That would have been right around the time this song reached #35. Without support from your label, you're pretty much dead in the water. Romeo Void broke up shortly thereafter. Debora Iyall made a solo album a couple of years later and then went back to poetry and teaching. The band reunited to play shows in 1993 and 2004, and she began making music again in 2009.

A Girl In Trouble is a glimpse of what could have been. A fiercely intelligent, empathetic, feminist vision in the heart of the Top 40. Listen to the lyrics. Listen to the music. The song even features one of the few 80s saxophone parts that doesn't make you cringe. To quote one of Debora Iyall's best lyrics. "You don't get it? Rain on you and the world disappears."

Score: 9/10.


THE NUMBER ONE


Iyall's story is one version of punk. She sees someone on stage throwing their intelligence and anger at the world and realizes there's an outlet for their own intelligence and anger. You can do it too was one of the most powerful messages of punk. And one of the most insidious, as it quickly gave permission for testosterone-fueled white boys an outlet for their anger (most of them missed the intelligence part), esp. their anger at people they considered to be not-like-them. But for a while there, people saw punk as a challenge to do something different. Before it became the most conformist, dogmatic genre in music, it was the least conformist, the least dogmatic.

You're wondering what punk has to do with this Stevie Wonder song? I was having lunch last week with a friend, and the place had a Stevie Wonder playlist on the--not radio, I guess whatever music dissemination format the restaurant was using. Anyway, I knew this song was coming up in the blog's future, and eventually (the service was, uh, lackadaisical--it's fine), this song came on and I got the chance to make it a working lunch.

While it played for what seemed like an eternity, I thought about the Sex Pistols. There a scene in The Filth and The Fury documentary where Johnny Rotten talks about covering the Small Faces and changing the words from I want you to know that I love you baby / I want you to know that I care to Rotten's version I want you to know that I hate you baby / I want you to know I don't care. He talks in the doc about how ridiculous the original was, and how just by changing a couple of words you make it interesting. It made me think about how much more interesting this Stevie Wonder song would be if you changed it to I Just Called To Say I Hate You.

But Stevie wouldn't do that, would he? And that's as good a definition of the "punk impulse" as I could ever come up with. There's all these emotions and feelings that dominate our lives, but we can't talk about them in public. That was the case in the late 70s, and that's kind of become the case now. There's no room for anger/despair/humor in mass culture. While the Stevie Wonder song played in the restaurant, the very sweet, gay, person of color working there was dancing and smiling as he listened. I thought about my version of the song, what his reaction would be if I changed it to hate, how it would ruin his moment. It might even confuse him. A lot of time when I make jokes like that, people's initial reaction is shock and discomfort. We hold so many things sacred these days.

Anyway, Wonder's song is garbage. I don't care who enjoys it. There are other things to enjoy. Sometimes our desire to enjoy something means co-existing with bullshit. All you have to do is walk the streets on Valentine's Day to see that.

Score: 1.