Music of the Weeks 20+21/09

• Pixie Lott: "Mama Do" (Mercury)
• New Boyz: "You're a Jerk"
• Lily Allen: "Not Fair" (Capitol)
• Staff Benda Bilili: Tres Tres Fort (Crammed Disc)
• Darcy James Argue's Secret Society: Infernal Machines (New Amsterdam)

Colson Whitehead, Sag Harbor, and background

Forgot to mention an interesting interview with the author Colson Whitehead in a New York Times Book Review podcast (podcast link here) from a few weeks back. Whitehead, whose new book Sag Harbor is out now, talks with Sam Tanenhaus about background ("black boys with beach houses") which links to my arguments on afro punk and "indie" in the sense that personal backgoround is more complex than black and white (note his comment on "authentic black experience"). A quite obvious point, really, but nonetheless one which seems to escape some critics of "indie".

Sonic debacle

K-punk has a go at Sonic Youth and their followers, but misses the point the way I see it.

The prime argument seems to be that SY are faux alternatives to the (a) mainstream, when in reality they are squarly within the mainstream albeit another part of it. K-punk's claim is that the thought that SY represent an alternative is the "fundamentl (rockist) fantasy". Now, while I'm sure some kids (yes, kids) harbor the idea (illusion) that SY are an alternative to a mainstream they feel left out of or don't want to be apart of, K-punk's assertion is in and of itself rockist (post-Adorno) in that he claims to know why people like SY.

Whether or not SY are an alternative to the mainstream or operate within the mainstream is beside the point. I'd argue that noone really sounds quite like SY, and at the same time that SY don't really sound like anybody else. So, yes, they are an alterative. Whether within or outside the mainstream doesn't really matter.

Claiming that SY have been "making the same record for over twenty years" kind of proves that point; the records sound like SY records, nothing else. As a great band once sang: "Mr. narrator/this is Bob Dylan to me". His Bob-ness was himself part of the mainstream while at the same time nobody really sounded like him.

Still, what should be discussed is the music, and this is where I feel K-punk's biggest mistake lies. He doesn't mention it at all, apart from staking the claim that SY have made the same record over and over. That's a populist claim, a claim that doesn't say why this is so, but one that will resonate in the ears of the naysayers and irritate those who disagree.

I find it quite easy to hear a difference between Sister and Rather Ripped. The first is more abrasive, the second smoother. But what it boils down to the songs, the tunes. Both records have good tunes in buckets, and while they sound somewhat different, the classic SY elements are there; Moore's chiming guitar sound, Shelley's pounding and staccato-like drumming, Ranaldo's longer tones, and Gordon's growl, wheter voice or bass. That K-punk can't tell the difference I suspect is down to his hang-up on the mainstream/not mainstream divide. That he doesn't like them I won't hold against him, I'd just wish he'd argument on the basis of the music instead.

Good post by Matt Ingram (welcome back!) on the same issue.

The printed word

In a move to counter the decline of printed music writing *, tomorrow will see the release of a fanzine-inspired magazine simply named FAN (wordplay, indeed), to which I'm a contributing writer. My first conrtribution concerns Arfican-American punk and "indie" rock, in some ways a commentary to the argument that modern rock has become the domain of white middle class boys/men. It's true, admittedly, but then again most areas in culture, popular and not, are dominated by white middle class boys/men. I attempt to argue that that's no reason to forget the contributions to punk rock from people with different backgrounds, and that using background as a sort of meassure of quality is problematic, to put it mildly. Anyway, here's the cover of the above-mentioned magazine.



* Since the question's been put to me; yes of course that line was intended to be a bit tounge in cheek.

Miranda Lambert's "Dead Flowers"

The new Miranda Lambert single was released last week (and today world wide), at least digitally (iTunes link). Not sure what to make of this yet. It's certainly no "Famous In a Small Town" or "Guilty In Here". The consensus, though, seems to be that using "dead flowers" as a metaphor for a relationship passed it's prime is beneath a songwriter of Lambert's talent. Agreed.

Music of the Weeks 18+19/09

• Sonic Youth: The Eternal (Matador)
• Wussy: Wussy (Shake It)
• DJ Paul: Scale-A-Ton (Scale-A-Ton/Hypnotize Minds)
  
• Pretty Reckless: "I Really Fucking Love You" (single, unsigned/Uniersal?)
• Gallows: "Black Eyes" (Grey Britain, Warner Bros.)

Singles Jukebox

One of my favorite features of Stylus Magazine, an online music and pop culture zine that closed down just over two years ago, was the Stylus Singles Jukebox. I discovered last week that the feature has been relaunched as a separate website/blog, which you can find here (or by clicking the pic). Many of the "old" contributers are frequently in the panel, including Matos and Frank Kogan.

EMP wrap-ups

More thoughts on the EMP Pop Conf '09 from the interweb.

• Robert Christgau
• Oliver Wang
• Carl Wilson part 1 + part 2
  

Plus, Matos has posted his paper here.

Music of April/09

I keep effing up the weekly updates, so I'm starting a-fresh as of now. Probably won't help, but here we go:

• So So Glos: Tourism/Terrorism (Green Owl) (Yeah, still digging this)
• UGK: UGK 4 Life (Jive)
  
• Conor Oberst and The Mystic Valley Band: Outer South (Merge)
• Grizzly Bear: Veckatimest (Warp)
• Revolutionary Ensemble: Beyond the Boundry of Time (Muteable Music)
• The Baseball Project: Volume 1: Frozen Ropes and Dying Quails (Yep Roc)
• Japandroids: "Young Hearts Spark Fire" (Unfamiliar Records)
• Peaches: "Talk to Me" (Beggars)
• Sonic Youth: "Sacred Trixter" (Matador)
• Girls Can't Catch: "Keep Your Head Up" (?)
  

Charles Mingus birthday broadcast

All day today at WKCR. Highly recommended.

Shiver me timbers, or piracy and record sales

The validity of the recent BI study that claimed pirates buy more music is being questioned by Maura @ Idolator and cohort Eric Harvey, and rightly so. The soon to close Dotshop, a connoisseur's internet shop of sorts, may well be in the right when they claim that they are victims of illegal filesharing.

Thing is, though, I have in fact bought more music because of the availability of free music on the internet, from the simple cause and effect that more music has been more easily available for me to hear before I buy the damn thing. Now while I do not claim to be a typical consumer, whose to say I'm only one in a million? Furthermore, most music fans I know prefer the physical LP or CD to mp3/FLAC/what have you, but this is a banana skin on par with the Nixon "qoute"; I don't know many people and other people may not give a toss or two about what format they listen to, much less how they obtain it. Those people do in fact hurt sales.

Thankfully, the likes of Spotify and their increasing libraries of music may make illegal filesharing for the sake of "getting a taste" increasingly redundant. They are the listening posts of the future, me thinks.

First reports from EMP Pop '09

Ned Raggett steps up to the plate (1+2+3+4). Haven't read anything myself yet, but thought I'd post a link here anyway.

EMP Pop '09 - who's blogging?

The EMP Pop Conference kicks off this Thursday, and I know KEXP 90.3 will blog about the goings-on, but if anyone else are doing any form of writing or updates on the thing, I'd appreciate it if you let me know. Btw, Twitter won't cut it, but if there's nothing else...

Coleman to curate Meltdown '09

Got an e-mail from a friend that alerted me to this. Hmmm, London in June. Why not?
More from FACT magazine.

Music of the Week 13/09

• Abdullah Ibrahim: Senzo (Sunnyside)
  
• The-Dream: "Rockin' That Shit/Thang" (Universal)
  
• The Thermals: "When I Died" (Kill Rock Stars)
  
• The Brakes (aka. brakesbrakesbrakes): "Ancient Mysteries" (Fat Cat)
• Bat For Lashes: Two Suns (Parlophone)
  

Blender no more

X-gau's thoughts on the fall of Blender.

RAPHAEL SAADIQ @ LA BELLEVILLOISE, PARIS (30/01/09)

Received this video from Saadiq's show in Paairs in the mail box the other day. Thought I'd post it here.

Edit: Video removed as it messed up the lay out. You can watch it and a few others here.

Music of the Week 12/09

Slight change of format in the hope I can get things rolling on a regular basis. The basics are the same: music I've enjoyed during the past week, sans write-up, just putting it out there.

• Bat for Lashes: "Daniel" (Parlophone)
  
• Death: "Politicians In My Eyes" (Drag City)
• Henry Threadgill (Sextet): Just the Facts and Pass the Bucket (1983, About Time) & Subject to Change (1985, About Time)
  
• Yeah Yeah Yeahs: "Heads Will Roll" (Polydor)
• David Byrne: live in Oslo, 19.03.2009
  

Death - "Politicians In My Eyes"

I wrote a piece on a closed forum yesterday about the incredible proto punk-band Death (no relation to the metal band), and this morning there's an article on Popmatters using almost the exact "headline" as I did. Oh, well. I'm not accusing anyone. The forum is "invite only", so it may be a case of "brilliant minds think alike." Articles about the band have been written a few times already these last few weeks, in the NY Times, the Guardian, and Stereogum to name a few.
Now, Death. A mid-seventies three piece from Detroit who played an energetic blend of P-funk and Stooges-type rock. The meme that has been going around is that they are precursors to the Bad Brains. In some ways that may be true, especially considering the wailing voice of the singer. But the frenetic bassline, skittering drumming, and accentuated guitars in the verse part of "Politicians In My Eyes" (from 1975) sounds more like something the Minutemen would play a few years later, though the refrain and coda is more in line with the "rock-ier" sides of Funkadelic (I've been told that they shared a studio with the Detorit branch of Funkadelic, which may explain some of the influence) and proto-punk bands like Rocket From the Tombs. Hear for yourselves below.



The compltete recorded output of Death, a mere seven songs, was released by Drag City earlier this year as ...For the World to See.

Wilson, Colbert, taste & Dion

In case you missed Carl "Zoilus" Wilson's appearance on the Colbert Report last week the whole episode can be seen here (the interview with Wilson is in the final part of the show).