September 2009 Archives

Today's Fresh Air features an interview with Nick Hornby, the patron saint of music nerds. His 1995 book High Fidelity is the most acutely observed study of people's relationships with music, and how they can get in the way of real relationships, that I've ever read.

Since then, Hornby's written a few more novels, with diminishing returns. Books like How to Be Good and A Long Way Down had their moments, but they seemed unfinished, with missing back stories and sketchy characters that made them seem about two hundred pages too short. The breezy accessibility of High Fidelity comes across in later books as a skimming of the surface. Based on the reviews I've read, I get the sense that his new novel, Juliet, Naked, seems to be something of a return to form. Hornby's gone back to the world of obsessive music nerdity, and that's always been his strongest suit (see the Nirvana side story in About a Boy). So I'm in. Again.

If you can get past Fresh Air host Terry Gross's annoying interview style and her tendency to chuckle warmly at her own joke-like utterances, I recommend giving this interview a listen.

I tried something a little different today. I listened to Contemporary Christian Music (CCM) on my way to work, and then I listened to more of it on my way to and from lunch. Now I'm a Christian (not always a perfect Christian, and certainly not one of your Pat Robertson/Kirk Cameron types, but I try my darn-doodly-darnedest to live by my faith), but I found myself getting a very odd feeling as I listened.

It was a creepy feeling, a little like shame, sort of like guilt. I don't know exactly why I started feeling this way, but it may have had to do with the fact that the music I heard was genuinely and uniformly dreadful. I heard the Christian version of a Bette Midler ballad, the Christian version of a Smash Mouth jock rock anthem, and the Christian version of whatever it is Coldplay does. It was a simulacrum (a copy of a copy for which there is no original) of the modern sounds the kids can really dig. And the message for each song was exactly the same: Letting Jesus into your life will make everything awesome.

It's a fine message to tell young Christians, and the sugary pop helps the medicine go down. But what makes good messaging doesn't make great art. If it did, I'd like billboards more. And although I could see where this music helps people in the way that Precious Moments figurines or Thomas Kinkade paintings make people feel better, I was very much the opposite of moved.

See, what I like most about faith is the messiness of it -- the idea that there's a bar that's been set for us that's incredibly high. The idea that we should see everyone else -- everyone else (including Pat Robertson and Kirk Cameron) -- as a child of God. We are going to try and reach it, we are going to fall short, and through the grace of God we'll summon the strength to keep trying. Life isn't always going to be awesome, and God offers a way through. The songs I heard were from people dancing in the end zone, and I guess I'm just not a dancing in the end zone kind of guy.

I suppose I'm asking too much of Contemporary Christian Music, especially the kind that's being aired coast to coast on K-Love. Of course, I ask a lot (too much?) of Contemporary Secular Music too, and I don't get creeped out when it doesn't deliver; I just leave it for someone else. So by all means enjoy. I'll keep looking.

Meanwhile, here's a song about faith and its attendant joy that I do get behind. Go figure. Sonny Terry & Brownie McGhee.

I Shall Not Be Moved.mp3 

So I went ahead and did it -- I purchased Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band for the third and (I'm assuming final) time. OK, the first time was a birthday present in 1980 and the second time was a used copy of the CD in the late '90s, so this marks the first time that the Beatles actually received any Pepper money directly from me, but you get the idea.

I had mixed feelings, mostly due to my general lack of audiophilia. Years of exposure to amplifiers, crash cymbals and earbuds have left me with a constant ringing and a sense of hearing that's about as sophisticated as my sense of taste (mmm... PBR...). I couldn't imagine that these songs, which are practically part of my genetic makeup, could ever sound fresh to me again. But after all the raves across the board, I had to give it a go.

Having a Saturday afternoon to myself, I set about the task. I poured a cup of coffee, cued up the CD, and just sat there, listening. For the first time in decades, since the days when I'd sit in my room with my headphones on, I just sat and listened to this record. I didn't even read the little booklet that came with it. And what I heard was pretty darn impressive.

There's a clarity of sound that I had never heard before. Each note of McCartney's bass was right there, every drum fill that had previously rumbled under the surface was now discernible (and surprising in their complexity). I swear I could pick apart each voice in the harmonies, each instrument in the orchestral swells in "A Day in the Life." It was like I was hearing it in 3-D, almost able to walk around in the sounds.

Or was it? I played it for it for Mrs. Q ("You don't think I'm going to sit here and listen to the entire Sgt. Pepper record, do you?" But she did.), and we went back and forth about the sound. She agreed it was "crisper", but she wasn't quite convinced that it was the great leap forward that I had experienced. So yesterday we got out the trusty old vinyl pressing and did a little A/B listening. It was an interesting experience -- had our vinyl copy not had a bit of surface noise (understandable for a 30-year-old pressing), we realized that they would have been very comparable indeed. Essentially the new CD restores the clarity of the original sound, which had been tragically lost on the 1987 CD pressing. 

The Beatles remasterings are long overdue. Future Beatles fans will have an artifact more befitting the group's legacy (and its heartening to remember that there will be future Beatles fans). And for those of us who believed that we had internalized every note of the Beatles' music, these discs perform a valuable service -- they make us listen leaning forward.

1. Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band.mp3

I've been poking around quite a bit on the Crawdaddy website, which has a cool interactive dealie where you can look through their initial 1966-68 run. It's pretty instructive for a lot of reasons, but most notably it's a fascinating glimpse into both the earliest days of rock criticism and the response from the music industry.

Crawdaddy is generally said to be the first attempt to seriously review rock music beyond the Tiger Beat level. It was founded by Paul Williams (not this guy) in zine form, with a typewriter, a mimeograph and a desire to take the new sounds seriously. Actually, the first issue features reviews that begin, "This is a pretty cool song" and "I'm not sure what to say about this one," so it took a while to really get its gravitas on, but it's a pretty noble effort for a kid.

Because Crawdaddy was based in San Francisco, there's a lot of attention paid to Jefferson Airplane and the Steve Miller Band, and it makes me wonder what would have happened if Williams and Jann Wenner had been based somewhere else. Rock as we know it would surely have been changed if they'd been in New York (more Velvet Underground) or Detroit (more Stooges). Or would they have just focused their attention on the hippie jammery wherever they were, if for no other reason than to serve as a counterpoint to the more gonzo Creem.

Looking these issues over, another thing that becomes immediately clear is how quickly the record industry got behind this new rock journalism. Within a year, Crawdaddy went from being a 10-page homemade zine to 52 pages long and chock full of groovy looking ads touting the latest releases from Columbia, Atlantic and Elektra. Commerce can only keep its big bazoo out of art for so long, it seems (or is it the other way 'round?). Not that that's entirely bad; rock wouldn't have progressed in the same way if there hadn't been a market, and by serving as Boswells to the rock stars of the day, the early journalists provided a clearinghouse for the new sensibilities.

What it also did was secure the groups that now define the Sixties as the next links in the chain. Groups like the Grateful Dead and Santana became canonical; Moby Grape and the Quicksilver Messenger Service, for whatever reason, didn't. (The Monkees were just plain screwed.) As these scrappy young publishing start-ups became bigger business over the years, the rock journalism they proffered had a lot to do with determining the canon that emerged throughout the 1970s and into the early '80s, at which time MTV and hip hop stole a lot of rock's hegemonic mojo. (Not to be confused with Rick's Hegemonic Mojo, a failed prog outfit from the Tacoma area in the mid-'70s. A real shame what happened to them.)

I maintain that the canon that was established in that time is unlikely to be added to in any significant way, just as the emergence of Down Beat and The Jazz Review coincided with the heyday of the post-bop era, leading to a canon of jazz albums that is all but impenetrable for younger artists. The last rock album to make it in was OK Computer in 1997; before that it was Nevermind in 1991. The end of rock history? I may be on to something; anyone know a good literary agent?

Well, the newly lobotomized [re]drive is slowly being repopulated, and I'm finally starting to feel the creative juices flowing again -- just long enough for me to stumble across this article by rock critic Denise Sullivan. In it, she expounds on the cliched nature of rock writing, most notably our over-reliance on words like seminal, countrified, and stripped down. Wait, not only do I have to try to describe something as ephemeral and personal and occasionally deeply moving as music, using the cudgel that is the English language, but I also have to avoid cliches while I'm doing it? It's enough to make you want to quit trying altogether.

Of course, she's absolutely right, and it's only going to get worse.

Not too long ago, I read this article, suggesting that we are all writers now. With everyone either blogging or tweeting or at least commenting on articles on websites, we use the written word more than ever. And although the 140-character limitations of Twitter offers a fascinating opportunity for people to convey thoughts wittily

The shift from crafted journalism, with its naggy editors making you use semicolons and cutting out all the swears and whatnot, to the blogosphere may mean that more people are typing their thoughts, but it isn't doing a lot for the act of writing. When I started talking to Herr Fresh about starting up this blog, one thing we both said was that eLarceny needed to be about writing above all -- you know an outlet for our creativity and teen angst and such. There are a few really good examples of people who are trying to do the impossible, trying to put art into words, but too many music blogs are like their political cousins. A couple sentences about how something sucks, and then a link. It keeps things moving, I guess, but it's not why I'm doing this. Writing needs to be a process that's about more than just getting words out. It needs a little sculpting, and it needs some degree of thoughtfulness. I may not always get there, and I may fall back on a few cliches from time to time, but you don't become a better writer by not writing (at least that's what I used to tell my students when I assigned them homework). So that's why I'm doing this.

Besides, it's not like anybody's reading this, right?

Anyway, happy birthday to Bruce Springsteen, who is 60 today. 60 is the new 40. I'm 40, which makes me either 20 or like 26.666, depending on how this new math works. So when Springsteen is 80, I'll be 60, but I'll really only be 40, unless Baby Boomers decide 80 is the new 40, in which case I'll still be 20. All of this may be a plot to keep me from buying beer. Here's the birthday boy doing a, uh, seminal version of "I Want You" by Bob Dylan, who is 45.333 by my reckoning.

I Want You.mp3

I'm in a state of mourning for my trusty external hard drive. Well, when I say "trusty" I really mean "nine-months old, so actually not specifically too trusty," but you get the idea. It only held music on it, so most of the files are on are replaceable (and the ones that aren't were files that, uh, were, shall we say, never really mine to begin with). Still, it's an annoyance, and it's strange not having my little musical buddy at my right elbow at work.

The goal was to have all my music on one gizmo and a place to put new stuff as I acquired it. But somewhere along the way, one little file somewhere got corrupted. The disease spread and before you know it, the [re]Drive didn't even know who I was anymore. My attempts to interact with it were met with angry clunks and hoots. Prognosis: Negative. It was time to take drastic measures. As I write this, a sympathetic professional is attempting a lobotomy on it in hopes that it may one day reenter society as a productive member.

So, lessons learned. In the future, I'll take better to preserve those precious memories on back-up discs. That is, of course, if I'm ever able to open my heart fully to another gizmo again.

If the lobotomy isn't successful, we'll be putting the [re]Drive to rest. But either way, it won't be the same little musical buddy it once was. Our relationship will likely be changed forever. So either way, guess I'll mourn you 'til I join you, [re]Drive.

New Burying Ground.mp3 

Bad albums are made every single day. Bored studio hacks, overeager teenagers, delusional lunatics, Fred Durst -- it's expected that they'll all barf up a pile of musical horror from time to time. But that's not what this column is all about. How Bad Could It Be? is dedicated to the legendarily awful records by artists who should know better. We're not talking your Kevin Federlines here; this is serious.

Just about anyone who's been around a while will make one of these. Blame it on hubris, the gnawing fear that fashion has left you behind and you'd better start rapping post-haste, or more likely substance abuse, but there comes a time when, apparently, the muse abandons everyone. Or so the story goes.

But really -- how bad could it be? Were these famous failures justly vilified, or were Dave Marsh and Lester Bangs just having a bad day? In Part 2 of our series, we'll look at one of the 1980s most classic cases: The Clash's 1985 Cut the Crap.

The period after 1982's Combat Rock was apparently fraught with the usual tensions that can plague a band after a while, especially after commercial success comes a-knockin'. Drummer Topper Headon was sacked after his heroin addiction got the better of him, and Mick Jones was fired not long afterward, for alleged prima-donnery. No problem, though, right? After all, they still had their two coolest members, Joe Strummer and Paul Simonon! Let Mick Jones go make his wuss-pop with General Public, and the Clash will just go roaring on! Punk Power! Smash the State!

Except that it all went horribly, horribly wrong. Strummer used off-and-on manager/pot-stirring enthusiast Bernie Rhodes as his songwriting foil, and Rhodes's punk dogmatism means there's a lot of yobbo chanting, which is then smothered with drum machines and synths that are, to put it charitably, of their time.

So how bad could it be?

It's every bit the mess that virtually everyone (except maybe Rhodes) contends it is. The already dated ransom-note typography on the cover tells the story. Cut the Crap has been virtually scrubbed from the group's official history, and it's hard to blame them. Attempts at critical re-evaluation have led some to say that single "This Is England" is a bright spot, but that might just be a refusal to admit that a genius like Strummer could have stumbled this embarrassingly (although to be fair, the schism took a toll, as did his parents' death around the time). Jones got the last laugh with the relative success of Big Audio Dynamite, and their partnership was briefly renewed for Number 10, Upping St. There were stirrings of a possible reunion just before Strummer's tragic death in late 2002, offering the potential for a far more glorious epilogue than Cut the Crap.

We Are The Clash.mp3 

Well, tomorrow's the big day. The Beatles reissues. The moment audiophile Beatles fans have been waiting for since EMI barfed up the first round of CDs over twenty years ago. Apparently the old master tapes were digitized, remastered and buffed with a fine chamois. New details are allegedly revealed, including the appearance of a fifth member named Ron who played the marimba on every Beatle track and has been unheard until now.

How do I feel -- Excited? Twitterpated? Overwhelmed? Underwhelmed? Regular whelmed?

Frankly, I'm having a hard time working up a good head of steam one way or the other. The thing is, I'm not sure I trust myself and my not-especially reliable ears to notice a big difference. I've heard the mono versions of the Beatles' releases (although not in this new spit-shined form) and I can tell that there's stuff there that's not on the stereo version, but my sense of hearing is overall about as refined as my sense of taste, which can barely tell champagne from Pabst.

In addition, the Beatles were one of the formative events of my young life. I've internalized their music so thoroughly that it takes a lot to get me to hear it in a new way. Remember when that Let It Be Naked disc came out, and the gloopy Phil Spector strings were finally removed? My stupid brain filled them all in anyway every time I heard it.

Plus Mrs. Qualifier sings along with all the songs, so some of the nuance gets lost there. She does, however, own the Japanese pressings of four early records (on vinyl), which were pressed in true stereo, unlike the "Electronically Reprocessed" nonsense that was foisted on the US. That's one more reason I married her.

I'm afraid that I'd have to sit there with the sucky old 1987 disc and the new remaster in the CD changer, A/B-ing back and forth to hear the changes like when you get new glasses and keep lifting them up to see things worse, then better, then worse again.

But the Beatles do this to me over and over again. Some new repackaging will come along (Love, the Anthologies) and all of a sudden I'm back to obsessing over the little details that made the Beatles my primary course of study when I was 14. If nothing else, I regain my sense of awe over the craftsmanship that went into their songwriting, arrangement and recording.

So I guess I'm going to start with one disc, probably Sgt. Pepper, and see if I can really hear it all in a new way. Either way, I'll always have Sergio Mendes and Brasil '66.

2. With a Little Help from My Friends.mp3

I don't go to websites like World Net Daily or Free Republic because I have the sense God gave a billy goat. As I hit middle age, I'm working very hard to avoid things that angry up the blood, and reading jerky tirades about Nazi socialists and death panels and fake birth certificates is a fast-track to the Zipper Club. Steering clear of wingnuts? Check.

Similarly, it's best to avoid Toledo-based current events websites like Toledo Talk and Swamp Bubbles, each a wretched hive of scum and villainy in its own way. Places like these are home to crackpot conspiracy theories, a haven for that ever-charming Toledo-style racism, and a venue where dimwits of all stripes feel empowered to post on a regular basis. (Toledo Talk posters also talk about restaurants a lot, making it the lesser of two evils, but I still can't visit either of those sites without wanting to shower afterward.) So thanks, but no thanks.

But now I've come to realize that there's yet another threat out there, and it may be even more pernicious than either of those. I'm talking here about sites that I actually agree with and the Outrage Machines that they are.

There's a pastor in Arizona who prays that Obama will die and go to hell. Poke poke poke. Are you mad yet? Poke poke poke.

Drawing Hitler mustaches on people is now considered viable political discourse. Poke poke poke.

Members of the United States Senate, once the most deliberative body in the world, are now refusing to deny the existence of death panels. They also aren't willing to declare that Obama's actually a citizen. Poke poke poke.

Poke poke poke. Are you mad yet?



How about now?

It was Otto von Bismarck who compared laws and sausages, and the news coverage of health care reform has been like having a camera trained on a sausage factory 24 hours a day. If you can stand it, you have a stronger stomach than I, my friend.

And the thing is, we're in the silly season now. Congress has been on break, and there's not a whole lot actually going on. The 24-hour news cycle is still rolling along, though, and they've got a big stupid gaping maw to feed. So their Fox yappers will yap, Media Matters and Crooks and Liars will get the Old Kozmic Righteous Indignation Blues again, and guess who ends up in the Zipper Club? That's right, The Qualifier, that's who.

So no. I'm declaring a news blackout until further notice. Somebody let me if Whitey finally blows something up, but other than that I'm on vacation. And I'm going to listen to a lot more Duke Ellington. That guy'll never steer you wrong.

In a Mellow Tone.mp3