May 2008 Archives
Weiss' Muxtapes #3 and #4: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Thus Far
by Jeff Weiss
May 16, 2008 4:00 PM
In case you missed it, Sach O of Oh Word touched down briefly last week, taking a break from trying to find Manuel Noriega in the Philippines (He has a mansion?) to bless the blogosphere with one of his hilariously entertaining rants. If you're too lazy to click over, the gist revolves around the assertion that Portishead and Erykah Badu have pretty much bodied all hip-hop made in 2008. Dart Adams of Poisonous Paragraphs fired back in the comments section with his claim that there have been 50 worthwhile rap records released this year and then wrote this post where he pointed out that "hip hop is far from dead, but the way we used to hear it and become exposed to it may be dead forever. If you’re not scouring the internet or the bloggerverse for that new shit then chances are you have no idea what (if any) new Hip Hop albums dropped last Tuesday."
Personally, I'm somewhere between the two. Yeah, Badu and Portishead dropped two monster records this year that pretty much sonned nearly every hip-hop full-length. But Bun B, El-P, EMC, Elzhi, Metaform, Why? and The Kidz In the Hall have all made albums that I would've happily purchased had the Internet not turned the music world into a cheap all-you-can-eat buffet. Moreover, the year has produced a bonanza (yes, a bonanza) of great singles, many of which are on albums still forthcoming (in theory).
So if you've glossed over most of what I've posted this year in hopes of the rare chance that I'll make fun of the Iron Sheik or something, the muxtapes are below. I purposely omitted songs that were on my first tape, so "Royal Flush" didn't make it despite being easily one of the year's best songs. Next time, I'll do best non-hip hop stuff for the four of you into that sort of thing. In the meantime, peep the tapes below to find 24 of the finest rap songs made by rappers that contain rapping, sometimes in rhythm, occasionally on-beat, often high. In the words of William Mulholland, "There it is. Take it."
Weiss' Muxtape #3: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Part 1
Weiss' Muxtape #4: The Best Hip-Hop Songs of the Year Part II
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This Weekend in LA: Foghat, AMC, Naked on the Vague, Robyn, Dirtbombs, Noisy People
by Randall Roberts
May 16, 2008 11:54 AM
Remember, it’s still technically bike to work week, so if you’re working the clubs this weekend and feel like saving the earth, maybe you should two-wheel it. In LA. At night. Or skateboard maybe. Or okay how about you just bum a ride from your ex?
Friday:
So this week Michael Stipe revealed some of his roots, and confessed that when he bought that Patti Smith album as a teen that changed his life, he also bought a Foghat record. Which is awesome, and we couldn’t be happier about it. Stipe was living in Collinsville, Illinois then (I grew up in Edwardsville, Illinois, which was Collinsville’s archenemy), and Foghat was everywhere. Well, if you’d like to visit the road that Stipe ended up not traveling (think about consequences had he been floored not by the Patti Smith album but by Foghat Live), Foghat’s playing at the Canyon tonight.
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South,
The Echo, May 15, 2008
Photos by Timothy Norris
Once upon a time, near the dawn of this decade, James Lavelle's Mo'Wax label ruled the record store import bins. Blackalicious, DJ Shadow, and UNKLE 12" singles in elaborate packaging fetched tidy sums for their three long, similar-sounding remixes.
Though it might be hard to place them as part of that scene now, South was indeed a member of the Mo'Wax family, with a debut album, Overused, produced by Lavelle himself. In 2006, on the unfortunately titled Adventures in the Underground Journey to the Stars, South stripped away most of the electronica elements and cast their lot with the trusty guitar/drums approach.
In theory, it should have worked wonders. In reality, they're eight years and five albums in, and playing to only a couple hundred people tonight. So something didn't go exactly right somewhere.
Tonight, live, I want to like them more. I do like them. And they've managed to bring out dozens of cute girls from two camps: Those who remember their song featured in The O.C. and the die-hards who remember them featured regularly in NME and Melody Maker. Last week at the Elbow show, Timothy Norris wondered, "Why aren't they bigger than they are?" The same could be asked about South, with whom Elbow once toured the U.S. when both had bigger buzz. I'd change it up to read, "Why aren't South at least as big as Elbow?"
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New John Mellencamp Album Unveiled with Fancy New T-Bone Burnett-developed High-Def Process
by Randall Roberts
May 16, 2008 7:00 AM
It's going to take a lot for me to forgive John Mellencamp for 2007 and that the whole Ford Chevrolet commercial nightmare. While it's true that maybe I was watching too much TV that year, that god damned “Our Country” song, which I hesitate to say out loud because it'll likely spark an earworm that will repeat in my head for the next week, ruined my life. It haunted me, made me feel schizophrenic, as though I had no control over my brain. That line, “This is our country,” repeated ad infinitum like a taunt and a stab. But you know that, because it ruined your year, too. Over and over again it came on TV and radio, seeped from passing cars and seemingly out of every gas station loudspeaker in Our Country.
That song, and that moment in history, still irks me, and not just because I drive a girly-man Volvo and not a domestic truck. It felt like a Big Brother thing, and revealed to me a truth that, given enough money/blanket access to media, a corporation, if so inclined, can pound a song into America's collective skull at will, can control our internal stereo with sheer ad-buying power. It wasn’t even the sentiment, either, that bugged me. It’s kind of a protest song, in a neutral kind of way. But still, it felt like some sort of assault. It hurt most because I actually like the Cougar, and think he's written some decent, earnest songs.
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A few nights ago I caught a late night re-broadcast on CNN about the NY Philharmonic's "historic" (read: trying too hard) concert in Pyongyang, North Korea. It struggled to explain -- through various melodramatic story lines -- how this was a moment for Art. But I kept wondering if it was actually just a moment for The Arts?
To understand the difference, I ask that you read this wonderful essay just posted by critic, musician and arts consultant Greg Sandow on a BLOG for this year's National Performing Arts Convention in Denver, CO. (The convention kicks off in early June.)
It's a bit long-winded but remember this is a BLOG not a formal printed essay -- there is a difference -- and that this is a point that has to be hammered into the brains of arts presenters and classical music aficionados in much the same way that you might struggle to explain punk rock to your grandparents.
So why am I telling this story? To introduce my thought that art and the arts aren't the same thing. Art is an activity, sometimes sublime, and also the result of that activity. By now we know - or certainly we ought to know -- that it might be found anywhere, in vacant lots, in silence and graffiti, in overheard remarks (see the poetry of Jonathan Williams, an advocate of outsider art, who died not long ago), and in popular culture. The arts, by contrast, are a set of interest groups, whose claim to glory (and to funding) is that they speak for art, which is only partly true. They don't speak for all art, and when someone speaking for the arts - by which I mean for the interest groups - says that only the arts can offer meaning in our society, we've strayed so far from reality that we might as well be jumping off a cliff. Especially if we're looking for a younger audience!Here's an example. Dana Gioa, the chairman of the NEA, gave a widely circulated commencement speech at Stamford, in which (among much else) he longed for the good old days, when art was in its glory, and opera singers like Robert Merrill could be heard on network TV. But Robert Merrill didn't have a brain in his head. I can say this affectionately, because I love opera, and Merrill can ravish me with his voice. But he had nothing to say in his singing (something that certainly was noticed back in the day), and to imagine that putting him on TV brings art in all its glory to an audience of millions is really pretty funny. Contrast what happens now, when we have pop stars like Bruce Springsteen, who write their own words and music (something Robert Merrill couldn't do), who sing about serious things, who both reflect profound things in our culture, and influence them (see for example the book about Springsteen - Springsteen's America: The People Listening, a Poet Singing -- by Robert Coles, one of our most profound and literate psychologists). And who go on 60 Minutes, talking about society and politics, in a completely serious, compelling way. Is that a step backward? I'd call it a big step forward, at least if you want art to mean something, and to help form both our consciousness and our reality.
But wait! How can Springsteen be an artist, if he's a pop musician, and therefore (horror! horror!) commercial? To me that question is based on a misunderstanding both of commerce and of art. Or at least of the history of art. My field is classical music, and you can't study its history without noticing that many great musicians of the past were commercial, including many of the great composers, or maybe even most of them. I've just been reading a lively little book - Liszt: My Travelling Circus Life, by David Lee Allsobrook -- about one of the greatest pianists of the 19th century, Franz Liszt, and his two tours of England in the 1840s. He made those tours purely for money, flacked for a piano manufacturer, whose pianos he endorsed, and packed his programs with popular opera arias and comical songs, all to please an audience that would have run away from more serious music, by the likes of Mozart or Beethoven.
...
... Why was commerce, for an artist, OK in past centuries, but bad in this one? Someone's going to say that our culture has degenerated, but I don't buy it. Things were better in the days of slavery? Should we look back with admiration at an age when women were their husbands' property, just because people (or so we think) liked better music then? Picasso knew exactly how to sell himself. Should we condemn his art?
...
... Orchestras and opera companies, not to mention big classical record labels and classical radio stations, are terrified of their audience. They're afraid to program things that their audience won't like. Yes, they do it sometimes, but they always know that some large part of their audience might not like anything new or adventurous - and that it would be commercial (that word again) suicide for them to do too much of that.
After the jump, more proof that Art can be found in the places you'd least expect!
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Tonight in LA: Ghanian Hip Hop, Blowfly and Les Nubians, Among Others
by Randall Roberts
May 15, 2008 4:17 PM
Okay, so on the surface perhaps a slow Thursday night in LA. No grand slams, it would seem, few hipster throw-downs. But I would like to present a few pieces of evidence that might provide a little nudge out the door tonight.
Item one: BLOWFLY.
Last year, I saw Blowfly open for Bonnie “Prince” Billy in Louisville when the ersatz Will Oldham performed the entirety of I See A Darkness. Oldham was the draw, of course. But Blowfly, known best for his ridiculously stoopid dirty records of the 70s, was a worthy foil to Oldham's pleasantly surly presentation. Blowfly's getting on in age, but that doesn't mean he doesn't still have very naughty thoughts. He follows Antiseen, Suckerstar, Angus Khan at the Knitting Factory.
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Newspaper industry death watch vs. music industry death watch: Why did the NY Times fire music biz reporter Jeff Leeds?
by Alec Hanley Bemis
May 15, 2008 12:00 PM
It's been a bad month or two for music industry reporters at America's major daily newspapers. You probably remember the LA Times' retraction of Chuck Phillips' story on P. Diddy's responsibility for Tupac's shooting death. Now, the New York Times has cut beat reporter Jeff Leeds.
There's a few weird aspects of this. First there's the fact that firing your music biz reporter at this moment in time is a bit like firing your campaign trail reporter during an election year. Leeds has been a consistently solid reporter on the industry as evinced by this archive of his writing. Second, only four years ago -- granted, a lifetime in newspaper land -- the NY Times snatched Leeds from the LA Times in what was considered a large scale effort to make in-roads on west coast audiences. Oh let's reminisce with this 2004 post from our buddy in BLOGging, Nikki Finke.
In the past week, the NYT captured three other high-profile entertainment/culture writers from the LAT — film critic Manohla Dargis, music business writer Jeff Leeds and architecture critic Nicolai Ouroussoff. Already in the dumps over parent company Tribune Co.–ordered layoffs, the LAT newsroom was in a bunker mentality anticipating the dampening effect the NYT’s body snatching would have on its Pulitzer-pumped national prestige. And someone needs to argue with the LAT’s bean counters that the year-old controversial subscription model for its online Calendar coverage may be sending at least some of its superstar scribblers into the arms of the enemy.The latest NYT moves on the LAT are part of a carefully thought-out campaign to make circulation inroads in the West and gain even more exposure in Hollywood. This does not come as a surprise to the LAT staff, either.
As one Calendar source rues, “We’d always heard that once it got its act together [post-Raines] The New York Times was coming to get us.”
So wha' happen? Leeds was a consistently great reporter on this beat for the LA Times. I'll admit I've noticed his pieces less in recent years. But is this because my news reading has increasingly transitioned to the web; because he just hasn't been getting his pieces published; or because he's lost his stuff?
There's been a fair amount of blogging activity about this. (Here's pieces from Finke & TheDailySwarm.) But there's been few explanations as to why?
Anyhoo, with Leeds gone readers have few reasons now to go anywhere else but Coolfer & TheDailySwarm for their daily hit of music industry factage.
Previously:
- Newsflash: LA Times ruins P. Diddy's weekend
- Chuck Phillips should not resign from being a reporter, but it would be fantastic if the LA Times resigned from being a newspaper
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Metallica and Scars on Broadway Unload at Benefit for Silverlake Conservatory of Music
by LA Weekly
May 15, 2008 9:14 AM
Metallica / Scars on Broadway: Benefit for Silverlake Conservatory of Music
The Wiltern, May 14.
By Paul Rogers
Metallica, with Flea, at last night's benefit, simultaneously filling their diapers.
There’s an irony to a benefit show for a school that aims to make music more accessible charging $200 for tickets. Yet this fund-raiser for the nonprofit Silverlake Conservatory of Music succeeded as a graphic, almost shocking, reminder of the medium’s powers of catharsis and communion.
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American Music Club, circa 2008
American Music Club’s new album, The Golden Age (Merge), begins with what seems to me two perfect Southern California couplets that capture a particular feeling and a particular breeze: "I wish that we were always high/I wish that we could swim in the sky/If we believe, we won’t fall/We’ll leave our lives and rise above it all.” It’s a hopeful introduction, a leap off a springboard and the consequent float, one that Eitzel and his band, guitarist Vudi, bassist Sean Hoffman and drummer Steve Didelot, manage to maintain throughout The Golden Age’s thirteen songs. Eitzel founded American Music Club in San Francisco nearly 25 years ago, returned in 2004 after a decade long hiatus to record their eighth album, Love Songs for Patriots. Last summer the band convened in Echo Park to record the follow-up, The Golden Age with producer Dave Trumfio. Eitzel recently spoke over the phone during the Arlington, Virginia stop on their four month European and American tour. The band will close the journey at the Echo this Friday, May 16.
LA Weekly:You were living in LA for a while this summer while you were working on The Golden Age, and I’m wondering whether any of that LA stuff made it onto the record.
Mark Eitzel: I think so. I mean, I was writing a lot in August in LA. Getting home late and having the door open all night long. My view was this parking lot [and] of this recording studio called The Ship.
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Shiny, Happy People: El-P's Weareall goingtoburninhell megamixx 2
by Jeff Weiss
May 14, 2008 4:00 PM
In truth, part of me wants to be like, "Yo, El, why don't you just chill out, smoke a blunt, take a deep breath, even if it's not going to be okay, why don't you just pretend that it will." I'm sure by now the guy's been told this one or two or 34,566 times. Yeah, the oeuvre might be a razor's-edge from being gimmicky and yeah, at this point, it seems like there's no piece of smooth sleek vinyl that El-P couldn't apocalyptically contort, no sunny personality he couldn't turn dyspeptic. It's a lot to listen to regularly, but ultimately, it's none of my fucking business. Artists should be artists and regardless of whether you love or hate the guy, it's difficult to deny that his paranoid, neo-Bomb Squad wall of sound is as innovative as anyone in hip-hop, 2008. *
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No, really, you should listen to Neil Hamburger's guest DJ slot at Dublab right now.
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KCRW Launches New Guest DJ Sessions featuring Conan O'Brien, Jason Reitman and others
by Randall Roberts
May 14, 2008 6:43 AM
Everybody has an opinion about music, especially celebrities, and KCRW is harnessing this intrinsic reality with a new online series which launches today called the Guest DJ Project. Each week, a member of KCRW's on-air staff interviews a person of note, and broadcasts the results, which so far has already yielded a number of phenomenal sessions, including John Cusack, Garth Jennings, Conan O'Brien and Saffron Burroughs. Below is Jason Reitman (pictured with host Jason Bentley), who gets big bonus points for recommending Penguin Cafe Orchestra.
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The Islands' "Arms Way," Islands' Kona Pie and The Pros of "Miscenegenation"
by Jeff Weiss
May 13, 2008 4:00 PM
Last year when Sasha-Frere Jones wrote his now-infamous piece on the whiteness of indie rock, he repeatedly included the phrase "miscenegation" to describe the cross-pollination of sound between black and white music. The diction seemed deliberate, a molotov cocktail designed to rile up the chattering classes and leave them more discombobulated than someone with melanin at a Vampire Weekend concert. It was funny in a way. After all, few things are more comical than watching a bunch of white-guilt saddled liberals squirming with difficult topics like the intersection of race, class and music as though Al Sharpton had to vet every word beforehand.
Ultimately, it was a ballsy essay with some valid points and some not-so-valid ones. Despite their obvious talent, I've quite often found myself disinterested in the more vanilla "indie groups" like The Arcade Fire, Death Cab for Cutie* and Sufjan Stevens, who Frere-Jones rightfully declared lack, "swing, some empty space, and palpable bass frequencies-in other words, attributes of African-American popular music. "But as Carl Wilson's excellent Slate rebuttal, pointed out, "indie-rockers" like "Hot Chip, LCD Soundsystem and Spoon," fuse indie-slanted guitar rock with soul, funk and R&B, to produce music so danceable that it conned my reverse-racist sense of rhythm into getting down. Not bad.
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Hot Week at Dublab: Live Neil Hamburger, Peanut Butter Wolf, Anticon, Lucky Dragons and others
by Randall Roberts
May 13, 2008 2:49 PM
Our favorite local music collective/studio/radio station/creative non-profit/record label/DJ team/inspiration to us all, Dublab, is offering an amazing schedule of talent and mixes this week. Mindblowing, actually, and we've a mind to tune in, turn on and drop out for the next few days and simply appreciate the glory that is Dublab radio. The collective, which recently switched to non-profit status, is in the middle of their bi-annual Proton Drive, a fund-raising effort dedicated to keep the Dublab functioning.
The inimitable Neil Hamburger
Sadly, you already missed Jimmy Tamborello, but check the schedule out. We're pumped to hear what Neil Hamburger has in store for us tomorrow from noon to 2 p.m., given his recent Neil Hamburger Sings Country Winners release. Ditto the rest of tomorrow, actually, with Peanut Butter Wolf segueing into Anticon's Telephone Jim Jesus and directly into the remarkable Mia Doi Todd. Thursday's Lucky Dragons set should be interesting, as well.
And there's no way we're missing the final session: Tuesday, May 20th through Wednesday, May 21st: A 24-hour no-sleep session from 10am - 10am featuring Ale & frosty.
The complete schedule follows.
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Stew's Passing Strange Receives Seven Tony Award Nominations
by Randall Roberts
May 13, 2008 8:27 AM
From Spaceland to Broadway: Stew
Passing Strange, the Broadway musical created by longtime fixture on the LA music scene Stew, received seven Tony Award nominations this morning. The show, which started Off Broadway but moved to the Big Dance in the spring, has gone on to become one of the most critically acclaimed and successful musicals of the season.
The nominations for the former leader of the Negro Problem are some of the biggies, too. Stew himself is nominated for Best Performance by a Lead Actor in a Musical, and Passing Strange is nominated for Best Musical, Best Book and Best Original Score, among others. (The entire list of nominees can be found here.)
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Tonight in LA: Le Switch at the Echo, Harvey Sid Fisher at Pehrspace and Mezzanine Owls at Spaceland
by Randall Roberts
May 12, 2008 3:37 PM
Big ass night for Los Angeles music. If you're in from out of town, you picked a good frickin' Monday to be here. Fortify with a big dinner cuz there's no cover and you can whoop it up tonight and spend all your money on booze and cigarettes.
Le Switch
Top on the list is the great quadruple bill at the Echo, during week two of Le Switch's residency. The band is on everybody's lips right now, and reports on week one were uniformly positive. Next week will apparently be acoustic based, so if you want to get a major dose of the band doing it the way they do it, tonight's the night. To boot, a few other LA buzz bands will be filling out the bill. The much lauded Division Day; the Henry Clay People of Jax Art records; and the totally impressive pop band Princeton.
At Pehrspace, joy of joys, will be Harvey Sid Fisher. Yes. Oh yes. Here:
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The Duke Spirit, Ohhlas
Troubadour, May 10, 2008
By Timothy Norris
Liela Moss of The Duke Spirit at the Troubadour. The band's new album, Neptune is out now. More after the jump.
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Elbow, Air Traffic
Avalon, May 9, 2008
Photos and words by Timothy Norris
Shortly before Elbow took the stage Friday night for the final show of their latest North American tour, someone asked me, “Why aren’t Elbow bigger than they are?” I've got no good answer for that. Although I'm a relatively recent fan to their music (beginning with 2005’s Leaders of The Free World), there's little doubt that Elbow's music is anything but top notch on a number of levels.
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The Silver Daggers were on the bill to play at the Part Time Punks' Third Anniversary show Sunday night. This is what they did for 20 minutes instead (a few of them--not all members were present):
At least if you're going to do nothing, make it interesting- see: John Cage; Kevin Smith; Andy Kaufman. This was essentially a big "fuck you" to the audience (i.e. me), to which I might say "fuck you" right back, except I'm not really that angry. I'm just kind of irritated that I wasted two passes of deodorant on going out. Those in the 21+ set who pay to see shows on weekday nights generally have stuff to do the next day, like work, and are sacrificing sleep to hear good live music and/or have a good time. This was neither.
I get what they were trying to do, really I do--that's why I think it's lame. Silver Daggers used to be a good band... now they are officially the band that made my non-existent cock go limp for 6 hours.
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When ex-Just Blaze proteges, Kidz in the Hall released their debut album, School Was My Hustle on the newly revived Rawkus Records, I didn't listen to it for a variety of reasons. Chief among them was the "Ivy League Rap" label critics ascribed to the duo of Nawledge and Double-O. Still scarred from having heard Brown grad MC Paul Barman, I figured Ivy League Rappers were the last thing the world needed, besides something seemed corny about Kidz in the Hall's insistence on trumpeting their Penn degrees and posing for their album cover in letterman's jackets.* And by all accounts, their debut seemed stuck in the "conscious" neo-Native Tongues albatross that has flapped over indie rap since Rawkus' first-go-around. To say nothing of the fact that one of the Kidz' had the audacity to bestow himself with a rap name as openly condescending as Nawledge.
But that was two years ago, an eternity in rap time. In the interim, something people persist on calling "hipster rap" has come into vogue, an inane classification that Kidz in the Hall have roundly rejected (like the Supreme Court and prior restraint.) But no matter how vehemently they deny such labels, there's a bit of truth to them, as the retro-aesthetic dominates the very funny and very good video for "Drivin' Down the Block," the jump-off single from The In Crowd, the Kidz' new record slated to drop next week on Duckdown Records. **
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The Weekend in Music: Quiet Storm Action with Keith Sweat, Abe Vigoda, Punky Reggae and The Parson Redheads
by Randall Roberts
May 9, 2008 3:42 PM
If you're looking for some nookie this weekend, as in: your special one has been hesitatin', and you've been motivatin' but there is no reciprocatin', well, maybe you need to butter up with some Keith Sweat. For example:
Tonight you can check out Hot Buttered Sweat at the Greek Theatre on a bill with the Gap Band, the Emotions and One Way.
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Hello internet users. In about 10 minutes I will be co-DJing with my friend Brian Long on his long-running internet radio show Infinite Eargasm. That is 2pm-4pm EDT, 11am-1pm Pacific. I have just drunk a single glass of red wine and am such a lightweight that the world is starting to spin just a tad slower than it usually does. In other words, this show could be extremely entertaining.
You can hear us by clicking here and then clicking somewhere else on that page. (It's the internet, lots of clicking!)
I expect to be, erm, spinning an admixture of contemporary classical music, old obscure hardcore tracks, and various other sad sad songs -- the emphasis being the flow between them, how to get from point A to point Z.
I'll try to post a playlist in this space after we're done DJing.
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Tapes ‘n Tapes
The Troubadour, May 8, 2008
By Jonah Flicker
Photos by Timothy Norris
About halfway through the first night of Minnesota’s Tapes ‘n Tapes two-night stint at the Troubadour, somebody in the audience yelled out, “Another waltz!” Though this sounds like the snarky, modern-day equivalent of calling for “Freebird” at a Sebadoh show, it’s actually not an unreasonable request. After all, it seems like half of the incredibly catchy indie rock songs singer/guitarist Josh Grier and company churn out are in 6/8 time. But that’s not the only trick up their collective sleeve.
Click here for more photos of Timothy Norris' Tapes 'n Tapes and White Denim at the Troubadour.
Tapes’ latest album, Walk it Off, sounds like it was mastered through a Big Muff pedal, perhaps due to the recruitment of producer Dave Fridmann (Sleater Kinney’s The Woods, Flaming Lips). In a live setting, this effect was amplified, as guitar, bass, drums, and keys practically buried Grier’s engaging warble beneath layers of warm, fuzzy, crunchy distortion.
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There's no L.A. date, so don't get too excited, but the video itself is pretty funny:
And oh yeah - He's going to play some dates in Europe too, though the markets haven't been announced.
Now, more interesting than his hydra constellation map is his anti-scalping plan for the tickets. Think "ticket agencies" are scum of the earth? Yeah, well you're not alone. The Waits plan sounds pretty good:
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Peter Saville explains why he won hearts & minds with his record cover designs
by Alec Hanley Bemis
May 8, 2008 1:01 PM
You've probably already seen this:
...it seemed a good moment to share it again, though, because it's a meme that has legs. Check out the new video for R&B singer Erykah Badu. (Annoyingly it's is not embeddable but you can view it by clicking over to YouTube.)
Why do album covers stick with us so deep in memory, as indelible as old photos of family and friends, if not more so? Well, this phenomenon popped into my head as I was reading Designed by Peter Saville, a book about the British designer most renown for his work with the post-punk scene of the early 80s (Joy Division, Factory Records, and OMD). As his reputation grew he began to do more and more straight ahead pop projects -- including Wham! -- and this work remains somewhat less appreciated by the hipster cognesceti. But there's no good reason for that, really. Take, for example, the cover he designed for Peter Gabriel -- a piece which, to my mind, pioneers an entirely new sub-genre of graphics: erotic typography. (A detail of Saville's cover for Gabriel's So appears to the right of this text. Note the masterful use of two different fonts side-by-side, the "S" and the "o" caught in a push/pull relation as compelling & tense as a pair of foiled lovers.)
In the early 90s, Saville and one of his partners -- partnership & collaboration being a major part of his practice -- spent a few years in Los Angeles where he produced work like that pictured to the left of this text. While he was in LA, he worked for my uncle for a brief spell. Eventually, Saville was fire because of his disdain for corporate clients; his disinclination to work during banker's hours (or even a designer's more lax 11am-to-9pm schedule); and, finally, his gross inability to fit into any kind of standard workplace environment. (I believe he was caught fucking in his office.)
In any case, I guess we should be thankful for Saville's inability to grow up. Because he is a designer who remained young -- his imagination fired by desire and interest rather than pragmatism and professionalism -- his portfolio never went to shit. It's something most of us can only aspire to. This Q&A from the book gets at his philosophy & understanding of why record cover designs can be so unique, so memorable, so poweful.
Peter Saville: On a trip to London in the early seventies, I bought a pack of soap flakes from the Biba shop -- they were packaged in art deco dark brown and beige. I thought "Why don't supermarkets sell groovy-looking soap flakes?" It was about positioning the product in the context of lifestyle. The first opportunities that came to us were a Buzzcocks cover for Malcolm, and a clothes shop for me.Christopher Wilson: Of all the badly designed products you saw around you, surely many of them -- such as soap flakes -- looked generally worse than the average record cover?
Peter Saville: Yes, they did. But you don't get much work to do when you're young, because you haven't learned how to do it yet. You certainly aren't given the soap flakes. You're given simple, disposable things to design for other young people
...
This is the most important point pertaining to my work: Malcolm and I, and to some extent Neville, were granted an autonomous zone within pop because it didn't matter. Records were not sold the way soap flakes were sold, so we were given opportunity.
But we got to do that work in service of another work -- the music inside. It was made by young people, on its way to other young people, and into their hearts and minds. That's the key thing. A soap flakes box was never addressed to hearts and minds. But pop music, and particularly subcultural pop music, is a delivery system which goes straight there. It's the single biggest influence on teenagers. Those covers could have been posters or postcards, and a few people might have quite liked them. But without the music it would not have gone to the hearts and minds of hundreds of thousands people.
I don't know if I've ever read a better articulation of why records (covers & all) are so important to me, and why I hope they survive into the digital age. Wouldn't we all be a little bit less with images like these in our lives?
After the jump, a few more words from Mr. Saville...
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Madonna to Lead Large Pilates Session at Dodger Stadium on Nov. 6
by Randall Roberts
May 8, 2008 11:09 AM
Well, at least that's what her performances of the last few years have seemed like: big muscle-flexing sessions, with music. Where's the bouncing? The joy? Still: I'll be there front and center.
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You'll have to forgive me this one. I know I'm late. Ian Cohen tossed a 7.8 to Crystal Castles' in his Pitchfork review of their eponymous debut back in March and the blogosphere had been incessantly buzzing about the Toronto duo of Ethan Kath and Alice Glass for well over a year prior. But dance music has never been my forte and besides I'd always suspected there was a hint of hipster hype to Crystal Castles' sudden rise to fame. I'd articulate concrete reasons for this, but I feel the picture above more than suffices. To say nothing of the unfortunate and hopelessly nebulous "blog-house" appellation that music journos coined to describe Crystal Castles, Justice, Simian Mobile Disco and the rest of the video-game inspired electro acts that have levitated to the top of the hype machine Most Blogged charts.
Granted, a significant portion of Crystal Castles, sounds like the mind of an ADD-addled, Atari-addicted 8-year old circa 1984, in those halcyon (or horrific) days before adderall was prescribed to every pre-teen averse to quiet time. "xxzxcuzx me" is as grating as its name, a two-minute conflagration of keyboard farts and hellish screams striving towards "existential horror" but landing closer to timorous caterwauling. As for "Love and Caring," let's just say that in ten years if they ever come out with one of those special edition deluxe re-packages of this record, I sincerely hope it comes with a bottle of Nuprin. (Ah. Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Better.)
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Shary Boyle tonight at Hammer: Visual collaborator with Will Oldham and Swan Lake
by Randall Roberts
May 7, 2008 2:51 PM
Shary Boyle at the Hammer Museum
By Casey Henry
No one has better appropriated the image of the chain-smoking single mother than Shary Boyle. Her expansive projections, featured with musical accompaniment by Dark Hand and Lamplight at the Hammer tonight, feature images of unnerving bestiality and near-mythical women both distorted and empowered. In Boyle's visual world, Woodland animals expel rainbow discharge into skipping arcs, and high school dropouts ride mythological creatures. Her 2004 book, Witness My Shame, features racy scenes of child sexuality, yet with a vomit-in-the-back-of-your-throat veracity that works without being overly sensational. You've possibly seen her work on the cover of Swan Lake's album Beast Moans, yet she's most recently perfecting her live action projections on tour with Will Oldham in a collaboration with Doug Paisley (Dark Hand). It's the kind of old-soul sort of music that begs to be illustrated by a subversive female narrator.
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Well, in case you were wavering on whether to vote for McCain or Obama, this should help you decide.
Sa-Ra's front man Taz Arnold (TI$A) wanders through L.A. dancing to a great rhythm by Daedalus.
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Oh, wow, bummer, I just found out I missed the event of the century. Don't you hate it when you miss a celebration of such massive import?
If anyone wants to take me up on my suggestion in this post's headline you can email any documentary evidence to me c/o this here BLOG. Or, better yet, make a fawning YouTube style video to your moment of fecal glory.
A reminder of how special this will make you feel, as quoted verbatim from the Diddy's viddy:
If you are what you say you are,
A superstar
Gonna have no fear
The crowd is here
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Love or hate the music, I'll argue with you for hours (if we've got beer), that the physical album cover of Radiohead's In Rainbows sucks.
And love or hate the music on Nine Inch Nails' four-part Ghosts project, I'll similarly argue (again, if we've got beer), that the artwork on that album is quite excellent. Even as a five dollar download, you got 36 individual photos that show up connected to the 36 instrumental tracks. As far as digital packaging goes, the design work on Ghosts is finally mounts an argument against those of us that remember slipping the plastic off of gatefold-vinyl and curling up with it to examine every inch while the turntable turned.
So it was with a slightly jealous heart that I looked at the box that LA Weekly's Todd Sternisha brought into the office Monday containing the limited edition $300 deluxe hard copy of Ghosts. Just a few hours after it landed though, Reznor went a step further by announcing a free download of another new album called The Slip, this one a full out 10 song LP with vocals, full production, brand new songs: the works. But let's take a look at this insane Ghosts thing first:
Two black, cloth-covered slipcases to start off with, with a big chunk of NIN-logoed metal stuck on each box.
2500 and that's all. A fair number of these got immediately turned around and offered on ebay. Ahh, capitalism!
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Why Biz Markie Should Have Known From the Get-Go That He Was More Than "Just a Friend"
by Jeff Weiss
May 6, 2008 4:00 PM
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That would be Wednesday and Thursday, October 1 and 2 at the Santa Monica Civic Center.
My Bloody Valentine's high-water mark: "Soon."
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Some Thoughts on the "Best. Politician. Inspired. Single. Ever." Also, Nazis. Also, Jesus. Also, NFL football.
by Alec Hanley Bemis
May 6, 2008 10:00 AM
Tonight I received a link to the above video from an old friend of mine who finds inspiration in politics in the same way that I find inspiration in music, art, and other less - erm - important things. The subject line of his email read: "Best. Politician. Inspired. Single. Ever." It included a link to this clip by Ti$a, a member of LA's own Sa-Ra Creative Partners.
And yes, I may just agree with him, it's an inspired single. But let's quickly remove from any description of this song nouns such as "politician" and "politics," and instead clarify what this song is: a rallying cry plain and simple. Sure it's inspired by Obama, but content-wise it has about as much to do with his politics as Toni Basil's '80s anthem has to do with Mickey Mouse:
Both singles are barely there combination of chants, nonsense, fashion and movement -- in many ways, exactly what I look & listen for in pop & dance music (as opposed to rock, classical, metal, and many other forms of music in which those attributes are usually less valued).
But, to repeat, this song is not good because it is political -- rather, it is good because it rallies us in the same way as a football stadium cheer gets one side or the other excited. It moves the blood, not the brain. It's about style.
Everyone can use a good rallying cry, now and again, and this one just happens to get all those style details right. The many celebrity cameos (Kanye West, Jay Z, Chris Brown, Travis Barker, Shepard Fairey, and Apple of The Black Eyed Peas) are relatively unobtrusive; the most obtrusive cameo is by someone that could really use the face time (LA producer & experimental musician Daedalus); and -- very important! -- the costume design is fantastic. (I can't pull off the MC's red tartan shawl with Burger King Crown, four-finger ring, and Smurf mask look, but God knows he sure can.)
And, hey, now that he's in the room, let's actually invoke God again and thank him for not making this song more overtly political.
Get it? God. Ha-ha. Thank God...
Okay maybe you don't get it. But the picture above is a good segue into a short rant on my problems with ideological art -- the reason I twitch when artists claim to be political animals. Whenever I start to think about such ideological art, I start to think about Nazis and -- being something of a contrarian, something of a professional Devil's advocate -- whenever I start to think about Nazis, I start to think about foot-in-mouth comments like this one uttered last year by Brian Ferry as reported in the UK's Guardian newspaper:
"Leni Riefenstahl's movies and Albert Speer's buildings and the mass parades and flags -- just amazing. Really beautiful". This is what Bryan Ferry, the crooner and Marks & Spencer model told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag at the beginning of the week. He also admitted that he called his London studio the "fuhrerbunker".
He of, of course, is taking about the wonders of Nazi art. I found it in part of a larger story in the Guardian titled Why Nazi aesthetics are a dangerous minefield
. (Someone let me know if I'm re-hashing it in this post. As I sit here blogging at 4am, I couldn't be bothered to read the whole thing.)
Anyhoo, blam, if you start condoning ideological art of any sort, suddenly we have to start considering images like this...
...and we have to start having considered discussions about them.
Fact is, the Nazis sponsored some truly compelling graphic design, film making, and architecture. You can try too deny this fact, but if you do so too strenuously you'll likely sound as ridiculous as Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer's well-rationalized hatred of jazz and other forms of American pop culture. You'll be able to critique it in fine details, create ornate theoretical models to back up your case, but you just won't be able to deny that the average person on the street just wants to dance to those Hot Fives and Sevens -- just as you won't be able to deny that this rhetorical everyperson is likely to be compelled by columnated buildings that borrow from classic Greek & Roman architecture and are decorated with bold red banners with clear black logotypes.
I apologize to my relatives who died in various shtetls, death camps, and other dark places for saying this. But, that said, it's fairly undeniable that one thing those (more observant) relatives would have agreed upon is my larger point...
That being? Well, our beliefs should not be summed up or supported by false idols, golden calves, really good logotypes, or exceedingly catchy songs. Not that it shouldn't include those things -- I'm no hardliner -- but when image, sound, and movement begins to overtake something ineffable like private thought well, Houston, we have a problem. All of this is a long-winded way of explaining the reason why -- throughout this most thrilling political season -- I have strenuously avoided being thrilled, refused to follow the election through the televisual medium, and refused to forward stupid fucking videos about my favorite political candidates.
Instead, I've been reading lots of newspapers.
JUST SO NO ONE IS MISSING MY POINT. IT'S CALLED READING, PEOPLE. IT'S FUCKING AWESOME AND THAT SHIT'S BEEN PROVEN EFFECTIVE AT CONVEYING MEANING SINCE MOSES CAME DOWN THE MOUNTAIN WITH A PAIR OF GOLDEN TABLETS.
Okay, maybe they were stone. As you can tell by now, I'm really bad about the details on this religion stuff.
Bible scholars, Nazi apologists, and Sunday school teachers, please feel free to post your comments. But before you do, let's all take this opportunity to learn about and listen to the authors of the new Obama rally song, Sa-Ra Creative Partnership, who -- in addition to having a name as cool as the Advanced Association of Creative Musicians -- make some pretty good tunes.
After the jump, a video of one of history's all time great rallying cries inspired by then-current events, and two cheesy EPK's about Sa-Ra.
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It's reductive to say that if you like Deadringer and Entroducing, you'll probably like Standing on the Shoulders of Giants. Then again, that's just the sort of thing you're going to get when you explicitly invite the comparison in your album title, not to mention referencing Shadow and RJD2 in your bio. I don't know much about Metaform, other than the cryptic and cloying one-sheet sent to me, where he calls himself, "a multi-instrumentalist, vinyl villain...whose anonymity, coupled with the divine knack for gleening [sic] the essence of countless genres has positioned him as an act to be reckoned with, as well as enhanced the mystery of his identity. " By my count, there are 17 things wrong with that statement, but I'll let them slide because the guy's produced a great record.
The music hews to the template Shadow established over a decade ago. Dusty samples, cinematic dialogue stitched in ("The telephone" mines Weird Science for excellent results), crackling hip-hop drums and that gauzy stoned haze ideal for users of tangerine haze. When They Reminisce Over You called it "the most complete hip-hop instrumental album [he's] ever heard." I'm not willing to go that far, but certainly along with Dilla's Donuts and Blockhead's Uncle Tony's Coloring Book, this is one of the best hip-hop instrumental albums in recent memory. Now if only Metaform can get someone to spell-check his bio he'll be just fine.
Download:
MP3: Metaform-"Crush" (especially recommended for fans of Rappin' 4-Tay's "Playaz Club")