November 2009 Archives

Pardon my rantiness. This has been bugging me all day.

Not just because it's the fifty-blue-millionth article I've read about the rebirth of vinyl since I had to close my vintage vinyl shop, but because of the following sentence:

Reminiscent of Blue Note albums from the 1950s and 1960s, the cover features a photograph of a woman sprawled on a white shag rug with a come-hither look, albums strewn about.

Now go back and look at the picture again. Never mind, here it is:



I don't know how many graphic designers there are out there reading this, but maybe you can tell me how this resembles a Blue Note album cover. Maybe this one?



Or perhaps this one?

Or maybe the author is thinking of this one...

OK, I've clearly belabored this point, and clearly the David Sedaris LP is an homage to easy listening albums of the 1950s and '60s, not the bold and stark lines of the classic Blue Note covers. But that this type of laziness is all too typical when people who don't know all that much about music try to drop references into their writing. And I'm sure the attitude around the Times newsroom was "Ah, it's just an old-timey record reference that no one's gonna get. They know what we mean. Now let's get back to writing about Oprah."

It's an attitude that's pretty typical when it comes to music, though. The New York Times would never dream of suggesting that The Crucible was about the same as The Seven Year Itch, even though they both appeared on Broadway in the 1950s. But coverage of music is more about what Lady Gaga wore, what Adam Lambert's been up to (or down to) and how the business of selling music is in dire straits (except for vinyl, apparently, which is making wheelbarrows full of money for everyone). Fact checking is for closers, and music just isn't a closer anymore. Oh well. Here's a commiseratory piece by Art Blakey. It was recorded on the Blue Note label in 1958. Wait, let me check on that.

Yep. Blue Note. Was that so hard?

01 Moanin'.mp3

Critics hated them. Fans tried to ignore them. Sometimes even the artists themselves disowned them. But really, how bad could it be?

Today, a roots-rockin' icon gets his synth on. Chaos ensues. Presenting Neil Young's Trans.

The year was 1982. The Commodore VIC-20 was changing the way America did business. Soft Cell's "Tainted Love" was bringing a high-tech sheen to the pop charts. And the Big Lebowski was trapped in a video-game world he never made. The computer age was officially upon us, but at what cost to America's heretofore most precious resource -- aging hippies?

Most artists from the previous generation just retreated into their bean bag chairs, updating their sound just enough to ensure airplay and a key slot at the next Us Festival. Not our Neil, though.

Never one to shy away from a challenge, Neil Young took the digital challenge by the lapels and slammed it up against the pinball machine, producing what is arguably the most baffling LP in his catalog of bafflement, Trans. The strummy acoustic guitars and granola-infused warblings of Young's previous successes are largely replaced by bleepy-bloopy synthesizers and robot-man vocoders. Harvest put him in the middle of the road, Young famously said, so he headed for the ditch. Little did his public (or his new label Geffen, who would later sue Neil Young for not making Neil Young records) know that he was headed for a ditch... in the future.

Long-time fans were, at best, puzzled. They liked Neil Young at least in part because he didn't sound like this. Sure, the recent string of by-rote guitar rock albums (Re-Act-Or, Hawks and Doves) weren't doing him any favors, but no one wants to mellow out and smell like Otto's jacket while listening to the freakin' Human League, man. Dennis Hopper must be turning over in his grave.

But putting aside the trappings, Neil Young is one of rock's great mavericks. These days he's expected to shake things up, to follow his muse, to be kind of dismissive of his fans. How bad can Trans really be?

Well, the years have been kind to Neil Young (his music at least), and time has forgiven many of his excesses. Today, Trans has a bit of a cult following among electronic fans and die-hard Shakey apologists willing to look at Young as something other than a denim-jacketed museum piece. Working in a new medium seems to have forced Young to attempt different melodic approaches, which led to some pretty winning songs ("Transformer Man," "Little Thing Called Love"). Of course, not everything works: "Computer Cowboy" is a silly attempt to move a hippie Western mythos into this new cyber-venue, and "Hold on to Your Love" sounds like he let the Casiotone do the writing.

To this day, though, Neil Young expresses a perverse joy in the idea that people have had such a hard time wrapping their heads around this record. And really, are are any joys more infectious than perverse joys?

04. Transformer Man.mp3  

Jazz is dead. Jazz is not dead. Jazz is in a persistent vegetative state but can communicate its needs through a series of blinks. The debate rages, at least to the extent that anyone who loves jazz actually rages anymore. Simmers? Fumes? Semantics!

The point here isn't whether jazz is dead. Jazz musicians continue to make great music. The audiences might be getting smaller and grayer (like Yoda), but the music itself can't die out as long as people are still playing it. (Lame representations like the one at left can't help, though.)

The problems are many, though. First, the jazz canon has already been established, and nothing is ever going to upset the (roughly) Armstrong-to-Parker-to-Davis-to-Coltrane-and-out hegemony that Ken Burns chronicled for PBS in 2001. So young fans who want to get into jazz feel obliged to start with the basics and build from there. And there's so much to acquire from the 1950s and '60s alone that most people will simply never get to what happening right now.

In addition, jazz, like classical music or novel writing, become a scholarly pursuit. And if there's one thing people love, it's things that remind them of school. There's an elitism, then, that goes along with jazz, a feeling that people might see your collection and judge you. Armstrong (check), Blakey (check), Coltrane (check), Connick? I cast thee out!

If I may tell tales out of school, by the way, I can say that jazz musicians are often their own worst enemies. Your average punk bands get their start playing for the door; jazz musicians often demand guarantees. I know of one group who expected to be paid for rehearsals. I don't often side with club owners, but I don't blame them for not wanting to take a $500 risk on a Tuesday night in Toledo, Ohio. That's may be different with the younger musicians -- and it's going to have to be if they want to keep this music alive.

As I've suggested before, rock music is likely headed in the same direction. We're coming up on ten years out from Ken Burns' Jazz, and it's not hard to imagine a Ken Burns Rock 'n' Roll miniseries coming soon to a TV near you. The final volume will cover the "Alternative Revolution" from 1989 to the present. You watch.

Ben Allison_07_Jealous Guy.mp3

Both Mrs. Qualifier and I had the day off today, so we decided to take in a leisurely breakfast at a local eatery. We got to talking about the Counterbalance project going on now over at eLarceny, specifically our take on the Beach Boys' Pet Sounds. I was quite surprised to learn that while Mrs. Q is a great fan of the lads from Hawthorne, Pet Sounds isn't one of her favorites. Her reason? It's a guy record, she says. An angsty, mopey guy record. It's sort of what I alluded to in our Counterbalance, but coming from her it's a far less, uh, complimentary appraisal.

It led to a very interesting conversation about how men and women respond to music, and it got us wondering what the Top 100 Albums of all time might look like if only women rock critics were polled. (Women rock critics, mind you; otherwise the soundtrack from Don Juan De Marco would probably be #1.) Mrs. Q suggested that women who really care about music don't want mopey; they want biting. That's why they'll give Dylan a pass for his more bitter statements, and it's why I suspect Joni Mitchell's Blue would rate quite highly on such a list. (She also says this would explain a surprisingly high placement for Alanis Morrissette's Jagged Little Pill.)

Food for thought as Fresh and I ponder the greatest albums ever made. And if there are any female critics happening by, be sure and weigh in.

I can't really afford to travel much, and my leisure activities consist mainly of sitting on the edge of my bed and staring at the floor. So why was I reading Travel and Leisure online? I forget exactly, but there was a great article there about a cruel fact of life with which we all must cope: background music in public places.

"But, Qualifier," you may ask, "you like music! And you love public spaces! So how can you call a combination of these two things cruel?" The main problem is that music is being used as another tool for marketing, and I always say that marketing is the lowest form of communication. Stores that want to be hip use music to "brand" themselves, to serve as a dog-whistle to those in the know that this store is one of you. Hearing the Arcade Fire or Andrew Bird at the Gap tells you that this a place where you belong (if you're one of those indie-rockers I've read about in Paste). Hearing Blink 182 at Hot Topic reminds you that you're edgy and totally punk rock. Hearing Lady Gaga at Forever 21 tells you that you're a 14-year-old girl (or that Dateline's Chris Hansen is waiting for you at the food court). We're a long way from the plinky strings and chipper vocals that we've long associated with the Muzak of the elevators and dentist offices of our youths. I almost miss it.

Of course, it's not all bad. When it hits just right, a good song in a public place can be pretty awesome. The late, lamented Value City 'round these parts used to play anything from early-'70s Stevie Wonder to "Rock the Casbah," making shopping for discounted shoes a joy. The fun, though, stemmed from the idea that it was almost completely random. Value City wasn't branding itself as hip, and I didn't feel marketed to. That makes all the difference.

It's probably me. I suspect I care about this stuff more than most people. But I always say that music that designed to relax me is like people who are trying to cheer me up -- it generally has the opposite effect.

Last weekend I was at the local Barnes & Noble looking for a birthday gift for my brother. Cloyingly poignant piano music, the kind you'd expect to hear in a quaint little candle shop, was playing, and I was starting to freak out. I wasn't seeing anything right away that jumped out as the perfect gift, and as the minutes wore on, the poignant piano music was becoming like the soundtrack to some taut family psychodrama. I began to think that I couldn't find the right gift because I don't really know my brother at all and my life was an empty husk of sadness and... oh wait, here's a good one. Screw you, piano jerk!

It's everywhere, even outside the stores now, and for those of us who'd prefer not to hear Celine Dion at every turn, it's like having a sulfurous stank released in the middle of your shopping/dining/walking experience. I'm staying positive, though, waiting for the chance to hear the unexpected joy of the right song at the right time. Maybe Eno had the right idea when he wrote Music for Airports, which was designed specifically to be ignored. Here's an excerpt from a  recent recording of the work performed by Bang on a Can.

1-2.mp3

Fresh just commented on my earlier Wonderwall post, asking who my favorite Monkee. It's a good question, and one that I used to ask on all my first dates. That could explain why I had so few second dates. Especially when, obviously, only one answer is correct.

Mike Nesmith.

Since I answered Herr Fresh's question, I've been working to Nez's solo catalog, and it's pretty darn enjoyable. Nesmith gets a lot of credit for bringing country influences to rock music In fact, there's some scuttlebutt that he may well have joined the Byrds during their Sweetheart of the Rodeo phase. To wit:



Of course, you can't believe everything Frank Zappa tells you (apart from the bit about eating yellow snow -- don't do that), but the sheepish grin on Mike's face as Frank lets the cat out of the bag speaks volumes. Had the world had turned just a little differently and this actually happened, he'd be mentioned in the same hushed, reverent tones usually reserved for Gram Parsons. Nesmith had a lighter touch as a songwriter, as evidenced by his "Different Drum," which was a hit for Linda Ronstadt's Stone Poneys in 1967. Nesmith re-recorded it for his 1972 album And the Hits Just Keep on Comin', which I think showcases him at his hippie/folksy best.

Different Drum.mp3

Andy Whitman's always provocative blog has a link to a recent article on the conservative Weekly Standard site by Andrew Ferguson. The article, ostensibly a review of Bob Dylan's Christmas record (and possible future How Bad Could It Be? candidate) Christmas in the Heart. I won't link to the Ferguson site, but Whitman excerpts the nub of the gist over here.

To me, it's not so much a review of a Dylan record as it is a review of Bob's fans, who he suggests are little more than mindless followers who justify and rationalize even the most egregious missteps of their idol. Can't argue with that -- five times a day I face toward Hibbing and chant "If Dogs Run Free."

Along the way, Ferguson takes time to attack Dylan for basing his music on folk tunes, for having lyrics that occasionally fall short of the mark, and for lacking the sophistication of Hoagy "Yabba-Dabba-Dabba-Dabba-Doo" Carmichael. (OK, Hoagy wrote a few other songs as well, but if we're going to start judging an artist on his low points, then the gloves come off. I will also submit Ferguson's 3rd grade book report on Treasure Island and an email he sent to his wife as proof that he is, in fact, a terrible writer.)

Conservative dogmatists like Andrew Ferguson really shouldn't try to serve as contemporary cultural commentators. It's just not their thing. Dylan, for example, bugs them because he did so much to foster liberalism in the '60s, so they're going to make him a target regardless of his quality of work. And if Ferguson can't hear the beauty in Blood on the Tracks, he has no business having ears, much less critiquing music.

I suppose the corollary is true too: liberal dogmatists would be ill-equipped to accurately comment on conservative artists. But conservatives make crap music. There, I said it. Prove me wrong. (Ted Nugent? Rick Wakeman?)

By the way, there's much in Ferguson's tone to suggest that there's more than a bit of envy involved, a thought that's bolstered a bit by the revelation that he's something of a failed musician himself. Telling.