Moistworks05

2008-05-07T14:15:00.006-04:00

NOTHING IS EVER LOST OR CAN BE LOST MY SCIENCE FRIEND
Liars
They Threw Us All in a Trench and Stuck a Monument on Top
Mute : 2002
[Buy It]

When I was a kid, drawing was my thing. I started in grade school, first copying pictures out of comic books, then making up my own. But even after I began to draw my own figures, I didn't stop copying - meticulous re-creation appealed to me for reasons I still can't articulate, and photorealistic drawing became my primary creative outlet through middle school and high school. I worked in many different media in art class, but given my druthers, I always worked in pencil or ink; I loved sharp contrasts of light and dark, and I loved the level of control over line and weight these media allowed. In high school, visual art was something I constantly received praise for, and, having been reared on achievement-based praise and thus addicted to it, I pursued it with all the fervor that a rebellious and prematurely world-weary teen could muster. There was an annual contest staged by the public library in which art students drew different hisotiric buildings around town, and the winner would received one hundred dollars. (My first architectural drawing effort, which I drew in 1995 or 1996, as a sophomore or junior in high school, is pictured at the top of this post.) I won this contest multiple times, and it began my first "freelance" career, as people who had emotional investments in various houses and buildings began to hire me to draw them. This petered out pretty quickly, as I was too invested in "partying" to handle a bunch of commissions. But I remember being in art class, often stoned, and spending the entire period assiduously stippling a shadow or etching a branch, displaying a dedication to something beyond hedonism that was uncommon for me at the time, and presaging a systematic sensibility that would come to define my later artistic output. Riding a wave of praise and really not knowing what else to do with myself, I enrolled in art school after I graduated from high school, and made it through one year before dropping out and beginning a career as a writer. Even as I was getting into writing, I never dreamed it would come to so fully supplant my drawing, which had been so crucial to my identity and self-esteem throughout my formative years. Now, I paint, and sometimes I doodle abstractly, but it's been a decade or so since I've tried to create one of my old, meticulously shaded, photorealistic drawings. This is a talent I was given and have let go to waste. At least, this is what I tell myself when I'm feeling blue in general, about lost things in general. In better humors I assure myself that as long as I'm expressing creatively, the form that energy takes is beside the point - that nothing is wasted - and I tell myself that my drawing skills are simply latent, waiting to be engaged. In this I feel rather like a smoker who says he could quit at any time, but doesn't want to. That these skills may just be latent, not gone, is not much of a comfort to me when I consider that I've let them slide into latency for years. Today won't be the day I reclaim them - as usual, I've got to write. When I think about my drawing, I find myself thinking about other skills I've acquired, then let languish - what they were worth, whether they're lost or simply lapsed, what is wasted, whether or not this is sad.

LOST TIME
Health
Health
Lovepump United : 2007
[Buy It]

E.g. - from my late teens until my mid-twenties, in a protracted transition between art-school-drop-out and *gulp* professional writer, I worked full-, then part-time as a projectionist at mainstream movie theater. This was actually a fantastic job for a writer: every couple hours, there was a half-hour window where I had to start the various shows on our six screens, and then, barring any technical problems, I would have a long block of free time, alone in the cozy projection booth (which was not the squalid closet we see in movies but a big ring-shaped hallway around the entire top of the building, with a hatch leading up to the theater's roof which was perfect for cigarette breaks). I loved it in that booth, it was dim and quiet and somehow amniotic - the low whirr of the projectors, the hovering beams of light - and best of all, totally private. Sometimes I would work a 12 hour shift, and at first, I spent all my down time devouring books (this was after I dropped out of college and began to reclaim myself from the deep mesmerism of suburbia and public education, and also reclaimed my childhood love of reading). Later, after I began to write for zines and local papers, I would spend that time writing my reviews, making money from newspapers while I was on the clock at the theater. It was pretty ideal for me at the time. But beyond the privacy and the good workspace, I loved interacting with the machines themselves. I liked having all this arcane knowledge. I knew how to build a movie, which arrived on six to eight reels and had to be assembled onto a horizontal platter with end splices. I knew about cue tape and aspect ratios and maskings and film gates and lenses and emulsions and maltese crosses. I liked presiding over the moviegoers seated in the darkness below, liked that they were waiting for me to create a world for them, sometimes looking up toward the booth, anxiously trying to catch a glimpse of the man behind the curtain. There is an undeniable feeling of power in being a projectionist, of presiding over this very private experience, of being the only one in the building capable of putting the picture on the screen. I loved threading the film through the projector, which involved running a Rube Goldburg-complex series of loops through pulleys and sprockets and rollers, and it got to the point where I could do this in one minute and sixteen seconds. But I don't do projection any more. I wonder if I'll ever get to use this skill again, and why every innate talent or learned skill I possess feels at once like a blessing and a demand. What am I losing right now? I need to play the guitar more. I need to draw more. I need to write more fiction, and play basketball. I need to get back to my old blog that's been dormant forever, and I need to start making masks. I need to finish this one video and I need to brush up on my Spanish before I forget it all. I need to get a thumb in every hole in the dike, but I don't have enough thumbs.

LOSING MY TASTE FOR THE NIGHTLIFE
Arthur Russell
Another Thought
Orange Mountain Music : 2006 (originally released in 1994)
[Buy It]

As I got out of the movie theater business, I got into the barista business. At this point, I write for most of my living, but I still work once or twice per week as a barista - I like working with and being around coffee, it's good for me to make a little of my money with my hands instead of my brain, and having yuppies talk down to me keeps me humble. I also think it feeds my self-image as something of an outsider - the whole romance of the "contributing editor at national magazine by day, lowly prole by night" thing. It keeps me in touch with the impotent rage of the service class. And if threading a projector sounds complicated, it's got nothing on making good espresso. Projection is a stable algorithm, you complete certains steps and the magic happens. Espresso-making is unstable, every variable - tamping pressure, grind consistency, atmospheric quality, extraction time, etc etc etc - interacts complexly with every other variable. There's tons of room for human error and if one variable shifts, you have to shift them all, so making espresso is less an algorithm than a series of negotiations and compromises as you try to find the sweet spot where it's chalky and bitter but not too chalky and bitter, with a nice blonde color and a nice thick crema on top, at a good volume and with smooth composition. It's something you start learning with your brain but finish learning with your hands, and like writing, you never perfect it - it's a lifelong learning process. Or it can be. There's going to come a time, probably sooner than later, when I'm not a barista any more. And I wonder what it means to me to be a "good writer" if that means writing has to gradually overtake all of my other interests and skills. These skills may have sifted out of my life, and my fondest hope is that even if my brain forgets, my hands will remember, that all of this is latent but not lost.

GONE
M83
Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Ghosts
Mute : 2004
[Buy It]

I know, it's overexposed. But we can stand to read it again:

"One Art"
by Elizabeth Bishop

The art of losing isn't hard to master;
so many things seem filled with the intent
to be lost that their loss is no disaster.

Lose something every day. Accept the fluster
of lost door keys, the hour badly spent.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

Then practice losing farther, losing faster:
places, and names, and where it was you meant
to travel. None of these will bring disaster.

I lost my mother's watch. And look! my last, or
next-to-last, of three loved houses went.
The art of losing isn't hard to master.

I lost two cities, lovely ones. And, vaster,
some realms I owned, two rivers, a continent.
I miss them, but it wasn't a disaster.

--Even losing you (the joking voice, a gesture
I love) I shan't have lied. It's evident
the art of losing's not too hard to master
though it may look like (Write it!) like disaster.

2008-05-02T12:09:00.001-04:00

REELING
Stew
The Naked Dutch Painter and Other Songs
Image Entertainment : 2002
[Buy It]

JEEZ LOUISE
Zumpano
Look What the Rookie Did
Sub Pop : 1995
[Buy It]

Gift horse, mouth: I bitched about spring in my last post and got a week of rain and chill in return. But now the weather may be turning. There's a chance that it'll be the springest spring that every sprang, as the homeless guy muttered to himself as I passed by him this morning. In that spirit I offer two happy pop songs, as befits the springiest spring etc. Though they are quite different--one is Canadian, for godsake--here are five things that the two songs have in common.

1. Both are relatively recent. This is intentional. Last week's selections were all from jazz and popular singers of thirties, forties, and fifties. When my wife read that earlier post, she said, "People will think you're 70," which hurt my feelings as I am only sixty-seven.

2. Both are songs by artists who have gone on to bigger and excellent-but-not-necessarily better things. Stew created the Off- and then On- Broadway musical "Passing Strange," which ensures that more people will know that he is one of the most accomplished (this is a fancy way of saying "best") psychedelic/soul songwriters of the century. Carl Newman, Zumpano's lead singer and main songwriter, went on to form New Pornographers. As it turns out, I prefer the old pornography.

3. Both are indie. I guess. Or are they? See Alex's long, excellent post of earlier this week to resolve the issue. He did the heavy lifting; this post hides behind uplift and light. But if you want to consider the question "What is pop?" to go along with "What is indie?" feel free. Or, better, yet, return to Alex's post and take part in the ongoing colloquy. It is a highly demanding adult conversation that I will not replicate, even in part, here. It seems like the wrong setting. (A friend who read a draft of this post hinted--and then came right out and said--that the process of gushing about pop songs is inherently juvenile. "Teenagery," she said. Maybe. Sourpuss!)

4. Both are perfect. That's why you may find yourself experiencing pleasure when you hear them, or (if you already know them) experiencing both pleasure and the memory of pleasure. They are like girls who are so beautiful that they don't have a bad angle. In fact, I will now irresponsibly and teenagerishly declare that they are the only two songs of the last fifteen years where I wouldn't change a note. For comparison purposes, here are the number of notes I would change in a few other songs:

"The Song is the Single": 3
"Endicott": 2
"Generation Landslide": 3
"Nicotine and Gravy": 8
"Albatross": 1
"Badge": 7
"Umbrella": 3
"Small Stakes": .5
"Jambalaya": 82

5. Both are above.

2008-04-30T13:53:00.002-04:00

GIMME INDIE ROCK
Sebadoh
Homestead 7" : 1991
Available on: III (Reissue)
Domino : 2006
[Buy It]

A few years ago, I spent a few weeks fact-checking at a magazine called Elle Girl. One thing I remember about those weeks is being asked to check an album review which began, more or less, as follows: "How in the world did an indie band like Dead Boy Confessional manage to end up on two soundtracks, a Doritos ad, and Hot 97, all before they'd released their first album?"

I went to the editor and said, "Well, they managed it because they're signed to Atlantic, and have the full resources of our media-industrial complex behind them." And the editor said, "no, no - indie doesn't mean independent. Indie's an aesthetic, and Dead Boy Confessional are the indiest band around."

That Friday, I asked the undergrads in my Writing About American Music class about it; as I recall, they agreed with the Elle Girl editor, unanimously.

LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER
Great Plains
Slaves to Rock'n'Roll
Self-released (cass.) : 1985
Available on: Length of Growth 1981-1989
Old 3C : 2000
[Out of Print]

LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER
Great Plains
Live at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh 5.22.85
Old 3C : 2005
[Buy It]

The other night, my friend Franklin and I schlepped out to Maxwell's, in Hoboken, to see two old, reunited indie bands - Great Plains and Big Dipper. Both bands had appeared on Homestead's Wailing Ultimate compilation (which had also served as a lot of people's introduction to Dinosaur Jr., Death of Samantha, Salem 66, Volcano Suns, Squirrel Bait, Naked Raygun, and Big Black). Great Plains was a Columbus band, led by the irrepressible Ron House (who went on to front Thomas Jefferson Slave Apartments). Big Dipper, a Boston band which included Bill Goffrier (who'd fronted the great Lawrence, KS band, the Embarrassment), and the former bassist and guitarist from an early incarnation of the Volcano Suns (a band fronted by Mission of Burma's drummer, Peter Prescott). There were many other connections: Before it was an aesthetic, "indie" was something close to an ideology - small, geographically centered, and no more or less incestuous than, say, the N+1 crowd. Big Dipper had recorded an epic song called "Ron Klaus Wrecked His House" -

He had a party
He had a band
And a thousand loving friends
He had his reasons
Or so he thought
This should be where the story ends:

Ron Klaus
Wrecked his house
Down on Indiana Street
Ron Klaus
He wrecked his house
Now it's lying at his feet

He threw the doors
Out of the windows
And the windows out the doors
He brought the outside
Into the inside
And the ceiling to the floor...

- and Franklin, who is also a musician (as well as a music writer, and erstwhile philosophy professor) - whom I'd met when I interviewed him for my fanzine, almost twenty years ago - used to cover Great Plains songs with his old band, Nothing Painted Blue:

LOVE TO THE THIRD POWER
Nothing Painted Blue
2 song 7" : 1994
Available on: Emotional Discipline
Scat : 1997
[Buy It]

Maxwell's is a tiny club; you're never more than a few feet from the musicians, and that night, everyone in sight seemed to be a musician: One band finished playing, and the folks who'd been standing beside you climbed onstage. (Climbing on stage isn't a big deal at Maxwell's, where the stage is about six inches from the ground.) Yo La Tego's Ira Kaplan and Georgia Hubley stood towards the back (YLT's history with Maxwell's goes back 25 years or so); their bassist, James McNew, played a short opening set. (YLT, too, has covered Great Plains songs.) Another friend of Franklin's had flown in from Portland for the occasion, and was thinking of flying in again, in July, to see the Feelies. I'm 35, and it's not often that I get to be the youngest guy at the show, but with a few exceptions, I was the youngest guy at the show - which felt, more or less, like the nicest, noisiest, smallest high-school reunion you could ever imagine. Ron House sang "Letter to a Fanzine" - the song included on that old Homestead comp. - which might have served as something of a generational cri de cour, twenty-some years ago, if more than a few thousand people had heard it (if memory serves, the lyrics were cribbed from an actual letter to a fanzine):

I I like everything that comes out on 4AD -
You like everything that comes out on SST -
You like almost everything that comes out on Homestead -
I like everything I get in the mail for free!

LETTER TO A FANZINE
Great Plains
Naked at the Buy, Sell, and Trade
Homestead : 1986
Available on: Length of Growth 1981-1989
Old 3C : 2000
[Out of Print]

LETTER TO A FANZINE
Great Plains
Live at the Electric Banana, Pittsburgh 5.22.85
Old 3C : 2005
[Buy It]

- and Bill Goffrier sang "Ron Klaus Wrecked His House" with Ron House standing five feet away, in cargo shorts and a pullover:

RON KLAUS WRECKED HIS HOUSE
Big Dipper
Craps
Homestead : 1988
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

RON KLAUS DEMO'D HIS HOUSE
Big Dipper
Unreleased Demo (w/drum machine!) c. 1988
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

Big Dipper broke up in 1991 or so, after releasing a mediocre, major-label album which resulted in a total loss of indie cred whilst failing, utterly, to penetrate the mainstream (a common enough, pre-Nirvana predicament). Great Plains hadn't even tried to break through to the mainstream - once, they'd pressed a single which never went on sale at all. (You had to write Ron House a letter in order to get it; if he liked it, he'd send you a copy for free.) "How many bands can you name that are consistently unafraid of allowing their songwriting reach to exceed their musicianly grasp," Franklin wrote, in his liner notes to a Great Plains compilation which was released eight years ago (and is currently selling for ninety-nine bucks per used copy, on Amazon). "As they put it in 'Before We Stop To Think' - 'We would write our songs slow, then try to speed them up/We would write our songs soft, then try to make them tough.' This is a pretty fair description of four-fifths of the music that's made the last two decades worth living through, and a better introduction to Great Plains' honest ambivalence about themselves (and the whole punk-rock making enterprise) than anything I could say."

This seems right to me, and I don't see the profit in following it up with a thousand words about indie then, indie now, semantic drift, and my own sense of what we may or may not have lost along the way.

YOU'RE NOT PATSY
Big Dipper
The Waiting Ultimate
Homestead : 1987
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

Instead, I sent a draft of this post to a handful of friends, and asked them to provide their own definitions of "indie," in hopes that it'll encourage further discussion in the comments, or elsewhere. Here are the replies, as of this morning:

As in the new millennium catch-all that is the term "indie rock?" I mean, it's a huge field, but when we're talking a specific, sort of defined sound that syncs with that term alone, I think of (often bland) bands like Tapes'n'Tapes, the National, the Arcade Fire, etc. As far as a shared aesthetic, I'd say it's generally straight-ahead guitar music with a few meticulously considered deviations (recently horn orchestrations and Americana influences) that inhabits that sort of middle space between mainstream rock and the experimental underground. In other words, it's pop music for people who define themselves in opposition to pop music."

- Andrew Phillips, music editor/writer

The way I see it there are two kinds of genres - genres that represent living subcultures and genres that are purely marketing constructions (examples of the latter might include 'folktronica', 'IDM', 'electronica',... genres that no musician really claimed while the terms were first being bandied about, more as umbrella terms than as descriptors of unified movements, although then next-gen musicians sometimes claim these terms for their own, these media-created terms that described no living movement at their inception can actually birth a subculture that really *is* aligned around them). So those type of genres have two faces or phases that occur at different moments. Whereas genre-terms I regard as more meaningful-- things like punk, hip-hop, indie, genres that describe living subcultures where the terms are propagated by the musicians and THEN picked up by the media, which have lifestyle accoutrements and organic social dimensions etc..,, these also have two faces or phases, but they unfold simultaneously. So "indie" viably means two things: the fundamental one is music that is recorded outside of the major label system (& this category is very confused now b/c so many "indie" labels are structured so much like major labels and/or have commercial ties with them, and b/c unlike in the late 70s/early 80s when arguably American indie rock was born, there wasn't the massive touring and commercial infrastructure for indie rock that exists now, which made the term less shaky and more meaningful, with bands genuinely just finding their own way around the major label system not settling for this institutionalized subcurrent to it that exists now...plus with the current shakiness of the label system, categorizing a band by their label-affiliation is making much less sense than it used to.) & so the other thing that 'indie' means now is mainstream, record industry bands who emerged from this organic indie scene, who appropriated certain very visible musicological strains of it, and who are "indie" in the same way that a mainstream band can be "punk", we can say they are a punk band and while being mainstream violates every tenet of organic punk-movement culture, people will know what we mean. I guess the bottom line you're asking which of these definitions is the "right" one, and I think they're both right... what can I say, I'm a descriptivist at heart."

- Brian Howe, poet/critic

Indie is short for "independent." There are four major labels: EMI, Sony BMG, Universal and Warner. If a label ultimately answers to one of those four companies - if one of those companies has the power to make direct decisions about what the label does, or signs its paychecks--then it has a dependent relationship with that company, and the artists affiliated with it aren't "independent" either. That's a definition, not a value judgement, although it sometimes has value judgements attached to it. And it's a very useful tool for understanding where certain recordings and artists and labels fit into the economic matrix - what resources they have available to them, etc.

"Indie rock" has a generally understood meaning, largely associated with what a bunch of guitar bands on independent labels did in the '80s and '90s. It is, in fact, a subset of rock released on independent labels - an aesthetic that got its name from its economic circumstances. But the reason it got its name that way is that the idea of deliberate financial independence from a few large companies was, and sometimes still is, an important part of the intention and meaning of a lot of "indie rock" artists' work. To claim that a band can be "indie" without being financially independent of the major labels is to pretend that industrial capitalism does not exist.

- Douglas Wolk, author/critic

The way I see it, "indie" is a definable genre, not just a declaration of limits vis-a-vis the market (since, after all, there are tens of thousands of variously rebarbative musical units far less market-friendly than anything that can be labeled "indie"). If punk is descended from the Stooges, indie is descended from the Modern Lovers. Both subgenres come down from '60s garage rock, but indie takes the introspective, romantic, self-conscious, self-doubting road. Indie is usually friendly, catchy, and openhearted enough that it seems as though it should be accessible to all and therefore mass-popular in that old AM-radio way, but in fact it represents a formerly centrist aesthetic that's been pushed out to the fringes by a bunch of large historical forces. Its self-doubt, a crucial element, also tends to limit its appeal, and I'll let you guess what demographic unit feels sufficiently secure to countenance it. When something that sounds indie makes it to the big show, it's usually either because a freak weather pattern broke its way, or else because an indie wrapping coats something slick and shallow. Indie is a lot like the kind of American novelists who are kept in print by the French. Jim Thompson may speak to the soul of the nation, but Americans would generally rather read James Patterson.

- Luc Sante, writer

Wait - I thought the "indie" aesthetic being referred to was actually the "alternative" aesthetic; "alternative" more aptly referring to, say, Nirvana on Geffen, whereas "indie" would have referred to Nirvana on Sub Pop. Or is "alternative" now a sanctioned Billboard category like Country and Western? Anyway, as Tom Frank aptly put it around fifteen years ago in THE BAFFLER, "Alternative to what?"

Indie, anyway, does appear often to be a marketing term (albeit an intrinsically fraudulent one) referring more to a certain flavor of product issued by the majors (whether labels or studios) than to independently produced and released works. As far as the aesthetic it espouses or implicitly promises, it seems generally to be a tepid one, at least by my lights (same with the average "indie" movie).

(I think, incidentally, that the idea may be spreading to publishing as well -- look at Soft Skull's acquisition by Counterpoint. They're really acquiring an attitude, not necessarily just a backlist.)

I have to confess to being somewhat disturbed by your students' unquestioning absorption of the corporate line in this instance, particularly since it's music in which they, especially, have historically had a stake. The carelessness with the language is surely opportunistic for the record companies, but inexcusable in students charged with the task of thinking critically. We're in Orwell territory here; If "indie" doesn't actually mean it, then "organic" doesn't have to either, and we can all easily extrapolate from there.

- Christopher Sorrentino, novelist

My heart wants to side with the indie-economic-model hardliners but my head says that, semantically, that fight is lost: "Indie" has been redrawn by common usage just as "alternative" was before it - the most common musical strains in an oppositional subculture crossed out of that subculture, and the label crossed with them. "Indie" now connotes such a hodgepodge of economic, social and aesthetic associations that it is irrelevant. We can be rueful about that over beers, but that's about all.

So everyone please abandon ship on the word "indie" just as happened with "alternative." The principle of autonomy doesn't have to go with it.

Then again, considering that the four major labels are at the moment losing their hegemonic power like oil tankers spilling crude into the sea, maybe that's not currently the most compelling battle. If your main paycheck is coming from your songs being sold to commercials and TV shows, but you're on a non-major record label, are you still meaningfully economically independent from large entertainment
conglomerates? And as critical as we want to be of popular-culture economics, the indie/alternative subcultures have had their share of pathologies and snobberies that might warrant as much a "good riddance" as a sentimental tear.

The bigger question is whether the autonomy of the "indie" movement from mass entertainment was in fact as sociopolitically progressive and artistically liberating (not the same thing) as people attached to it believed in the 80s/90s - the populist question. And even if it was, as the major labels flounder to redefine themselves, what does true independence in the age of digital reproduction look like? What might "selling out" be?

Maybe the expiration date of the word "indie" provides a good, temporarily unlabelled moment to look at things anew.

- Carl Wilson, author/critic

Apologies for being obvious, but Indie used to mean 'not on a major label' - and the DIY attitude that that implied - and that was the only time we all knew precisely what it meant. When the major labels sniffed money, and bought the bands, it couldn't mean precisely that anymore - perhaps the word should have been more strictly applied at this time: "you were Indie yesterday, but since you signed that contract, you're now Modern Rock" - so it came to refer to the type of music which embodied that spirit, or was at least influenced by it, whatever the profile of the label.

"...with the current shakiness of the label system, categorizing a band by their label-affiliation is making much less sense than it used to."
Hits the nail on the head, and true for a long time.

And now Indie, or Alternative, is a "branding tool" that annoys. But those who still use the word in conversations (rather than marketing meetings) are generally understood to refer to music made regardless of the mainstream, for the love of doing it, regardless of technical perfection, profit etc.... or any combination of the above. I can't speak for those who use it in marketing meetings, but I assume they refer to that, but also to another meaning, which as with all sales terms is a slippery catch-all concept, comprising everything from "people with goatees and tattoos who are, to our delight, happy to make money" via "The spirit of the Kids and their Nike revolution" and "What's New" to "That music I may or may not like that will make me money".

One is a devil-may-care philosophy, the other its commodification - sorry: I can't think of a less Cultural Studies word right now! (Commoditization may be more up to date in Business School.)

Maybe Alternative Music nowadays is like Alternative Medicine?

- Wesley Stace/John Wesley Harding, author/musician

The first entry cited in the OED comes from a 1928 edition of the NY Times: "Indies, independent producers of pictures." More to the point however is a 1945 Billboard heading: "Indie diskers new collection ache for publishers royalty." What's relevant is the association of the term with vendors rather than with artists themselves. Additionally, there is the English idiomatic use which refers to scruffy but apolitical music as far back as Happy Mondays and Stone Roses. The term is now used internationally in this manner to class music as a broad commercial category. I think the term is helpful in the U.S. for drawing a line between groups who are oppositional (punk, free jazz) and groups who are totally cool with making it (indie). It's worth mentioning, however, that "indie rap" still seems to describe a fairly cohesive venue for intelligent, countercultural music (J Live, The Coup). But I think the elliptical return of the early citations is relevant: film and music, in a standard bid for commercial synergy, converge somewhere around the end credits of most romanticized youth dramas (Garden State's anointment of The Shins being only the most obvious example). As it stands now, indie means operational freedom from social consciousness; it's about as atomized and self-interested as the Victorian Novel. Actually, we can go slightly further by noting the current coincidence between Jane Austen films (affirming the virtues of marriage and estate ownership) and the commercial fiefdom of indie (affirming the virtues of Urban Outfitters and Apple). Both, I think, offer the consumer a provisional show of "hardship" (or authenticity) before moving on to an easy retirement.

-Blake Schwarzenbach, musician/professor

my "alternative" OED, different than the usual overground edition cites "in-die" as opposed to "out-die" ie to die on the inside generally defined as selling fewer records than everyone believes you should have and/or having driven a seemingly popular or commercially viable style or approach into mercantile disrepute versus "out-die" to die on the outside to sell more records than is seemly or good for the state of your carbon footprint and/or soul in the larger sense of such things hence the paradigmatic in-die band would likely be big star -- taking beatle-esque pop hooks, attractive hair, hetero love motifs and settling into underperforming "cult" inner-death (i.e. no one else really cares) status while paradigmatic "out-die" band is certainly the rolling stones -- who dragged oppressively morbid delta blue fetishivism and drug-death-spiral somehow through four decades and counting of overdog arena-selling "outer-death" (i.e. we're all appalled to have to witness their dollar-soaked decrepitude)

a simple measure of the difference is often the function of a cover song -- out-dying cindy lauper propelling in-dying jules shear number onto the charts vs. in-dying galaxie 500 or yo la tengo burying out-dying kinks or george harrison tunes in the "in-die pantheon"

one of the paradoxical cases is the velvet underground, long understood as the "ur-in-die" band but they were actually out-die -- leveraging john cage dissonance, cellos, homosex motifs and bad singing into some shred of popularity and lasting fame -- yet the innumerable bands adopting them as a model have achieved treasured "in-die" status (i.e. gloriously no one cares)

(meltzer would have taken this and run for fifty pages, whereas I have to get to work)

-Jonathan Lethem, novelist

We're curious as ever to know what you think... In the meanwhile here's one, last song by Big Dipper:

A SONG TO BE BEAUTIFUL
Big Dipper
Craps
Homestead : 1988
Available on: Supercluster : The Big Dipper Anthology
Merge : 2008
[Buy It]

2008-04-28T15:04:00.004-04:00

CROSSOVER MIX
mixed by Brian, April 2008

Today on Moistworks, eleven songs for the price of one! (That price, as always, is a cool zero dollars.) I made this mix for a friend who listens mostly to indie rock but, after a late-night, drunken, five-person dance party where I handled tunes, asked me for a mix of dance music. Making a dance mix for a diehard indie rocker who maybe wants to cross over feels like a mighty responsibility; you might have the urge to load them up with Trentemoller but you're wiser to go with the absolute hottest crossover jams and pepper it with a little dancey but more song-oriented stuff. That's why I squeezed Hot Chip's "Ready for the Floor" on here even though it's a little too slow at 125 bpm: between indie rock and dance music, Hot Chip is the perfect gateway drug. I really enjoy making these amateur mixes, I would totally DJ if I had the equipment, but that stuff is expensive and I don't have it. Still, I can make decent mixes at home with freeware, which is still fun. When I stumble over that perfect crossfade, it's thrilling (and when I don't, it's no big deal because I'm just mixing tracks at home). Some of these tracks are so fucking good you feel heroic just for choosing them ("Darko" remains unstoppable). If, like me, you'd like to make some mixes but don't have the cash for fancy gear, I highly recommend TrakAxPC for PC users: easy to use freeware with great functionality for its cost of zero, which you can download here. Watch the five minute tutorial and you'll be up and running in no time.

To download this mix, which will come up as "LUCIA MIX" on your machine, just right click, save as, and extract the mp3 from the zip file. And let me apologize in advance for the transition from Le Tigre to Luomo, it's kind of a mess but for some reason I liked the messiness and decided to keep it. Tracklist is as follows:

01 Bonde do Role: "Marina Gasolina (Peaches Remix)"
02 Booka Shade: "Darko"
03 Junior Boys: "FM (Tensnake Remix)"
04 Vitalic: "No Fun"
05 Hot Chip: "Ready for the Floor"
06 Gui Boratto: "Beautiful Life"
07 Le Tigre: "Deceptacon (DFA Remix)"
08 Luomo: "Really Don't Mind"
09 Out Hud: "One Life to Leave"
10 The Knife: "Pass This On"
11 Thomas Brinkmann: "Words"

2008-04-24T13:06:00.010-04:00

SOME OTHER SPRING
Billie Holiday
1939
Available on : Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia
Sony : 2001
[Buy It]

SPRING IS HERE
Frank Sinatra
Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely
Capitol : 1958
[Buy It]

SPRING WILL BE A LITTLE LATE THIS YEAR
Sarah Vaughan
Sarah Vaughan in Hi-Fi
Sony : 1949
[Buy It]

APRIL IN MY HEART
Billie Holiday
1938
Available on : Lady Day: The Complete Billie Holiday on Columbia
Sony : 2001
[Buy It]

A friend of mine called and left a message. I was having coffee with another friend, and I called her back when I was done. "Hi," I said.

"Yeah," she said. "I guess."

"Nice weather," I said. I hadn't meant to say anything about the weather. This friend and I are well beyond small talk, and she had other matters on her mind: she was going through a breakup, maybe, or steeling herself to head back into a relationship that had given her more misery than happiness over the past few years. But the sun was bright and the air was clear and there was actually a bird chirping in the tree just over my head. I didn't look up, but I wouldn't have been surprised if it was a cartoon bluebird.

She sighed. "It seems nice," She sighed again. As it turned out, it wasn't that she didn't want to talk about the weather. It was that she wanted to talk about the weather as a villain. "The weather only makes it worse," she said. "It's like the world is mocking me."

I laughed. That seemed like a preposterous thing to say. On the other hand, when I turned the corner, there was a firework of brilliantly colored flowers in someone's front yard and a little boy chasing a dog on the other side of the street. A minute later, a convertible sped by, driven by a man in his forties, I'd guess, who had a young woman beside him. I didn't mention the flowers or the boy or the man in the convertible. The woman was beautiful, which I didn't mention either.

We spoke for a few minutes. She asked me to call her back when I was home. "It's too noisy outside," she said.

"Okay," I said. When I hung up, I didn't put my headphones back in, which is what normally would have happened. Instead, I listened to the day. It wasn't noisy at all, though the people sitting on stoops and leaning against fences were smiling audibly. Maybe that's what was she was hearing. The convertible had parked on the next block. The man and the woman were still sitting in the car. His hand was on her thigh, inching upward. They were laughing.

When I got home, I called her back. She wasn't home. While I waited for her to return the call, I went to find some songs about the nice weather, and I discovered that the vast majority of songwriters agree with my friend. More often than not, the American songbook sees spring as a cruel trick perpetrated on sad people. The older the songs get, the more certain they are of this theory. Billie Holliday's "Some Other Spring," written by Irene Kitchings and Arthur Herzog, Jr., is the best of the bunch, and one of the most direct:

Sunshine's around me
But deep in my heart
It's cold as ice
Love, once you found me
But can that story
Unfold twice?

Spring's deceit--or at the very least the oppressive nature of nature during the season of rebirth and beauty--is also the subject of "Spring is Here," a Rodgers/Hart composition that has been recorded by Ella Fitzgerald, Nina Simone, and others. Frank Sinatra's version appears on "Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely," whose bleakness begins with its title and rarely lets up:

Spring is here--Why doesn't my heart go dancing?
Spring is here--Why isn't the waltz entrancing?
No desire, no ambition leads me,
Maybe it's because nobody needs me.

Neither Billie Holiday nor Frank Sinatra would have been happy to see the guy in the convertible. Sinatra might have snapped off one of the car's side mirrors and beaten the guy with it. Slightly more optimistic is "Spring Will Be a Little Late This Year," Frank Loesser's song, which here is sung by Sarah Vaughan and holds out hope that internal happiness is merely lagging behind the weather:

Spring will be a little late this year
A little late arriving, in my lonely world over here
For you have left me and where is our April love old
Yes you have left me and winter continues cold
As if to say that spring will be a little slow to start
A little slow reviving that music it made in my heart

My friend hadn't called back. I looked out the window and wondered if there was any visible difference between a sunny window in April and a sunny window in September. If trees were in view, you could tell time by their leaves. If people were in view, you could guess the month based on their clothes. But what about their faces? There was one older woman in a heavy sweater, beaming; she would have been in spring even in September, or November. That's the argument of Billie Holiday's "April in My Heart," which is a precise counterweight to "Some Other Spring" and all the rest of the false spring lyrics:

There's snowflakes in the sky
And geese are flying high
But it's April in my heart again
The devil got his due
Love's holiday is through
Love and I have made a happy start again
Through leaves lie on the ground
The world just turned around
It isn't fall at all you see
It's spring that I have found

There's frost in Central Park
At five it's almost dark
What's the difference
When you've heard love's sweet amen
There's snowflakes in the sky
And geese are flying high
But there's April in my heart again

The phone rang. My friend was calling. I picked up. "Hi," I said.

"Hi," she said. "Took a walk. Feel better."

"Really?" I said.

"Yep," she said. "Though it could fade any second. I'm going to get off the phone and sit outside while I can still bear it."

We hung up. About ten minutes later, the sky darkened and it started to rain. I didn't call my friend to see if she was sitting outside in the rain. I'm guessing it pleased her, in some small way.

2008-04-22T12:57:00.004-04:00

DARKNESS
David Lynch
Catching the Big Fish
Penguin Audio : 2006
[Buy It]

Six Men Getting Sick (Six Times)

INTERPRETATION
David Lynch
Catching the Big Fish
Penguin Audio : 2006
[Buy It]

Rebbids

INDUSTRIAL SYMPHONY NO. 1
David Lynch
Catching the Big Fish
Penguin Audio : 2006
[Buy It]

Industrial Symphony No. 1

2008-04-15T13:24:00.002-04:00

TAXMAN DUB
Israel Vibration
Israel Dub
Ras : 1996
[Buy It]

IS IS & THE IRS
Life Without Buildings
Live at the Annandale Hotel
Absolutely Kosher : 2007
[Buy It]

POOR PEOPLE MUST WORK (CARL CRAIG REMIX)
Rhythm & Sound
Sessions
K7 : 2008
[Buy It]

I like to pay taxes. It is purchasing civilization. - Oliver Wendell Holmes

Fear is the tax that conscience pays to guilt. - Howard Aiken

The only thing that hurts more than paying an income tax is not having to pay an income tax. - Lord Thomas Robert Dewar

In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop when you get down to the skin. - Austin O'Malley

If Thomas Jefferson thought taxation without representation was bad, he should see how it is with representation. - Rush Limbaugh

Rich bachelors should be heavily taxed. It is not fair that some men should be happier than others. - Oscar Wilde

If you make any money, the government shoves you in the creek once a year with it in your pockets, and all that don't get wet you can keep. - Will Rogers

When there's a single thief, it's robbery. When there are a thousand thieves, it's taxation. - Vanya Cohen

What at first was plunder assumed the softer name of revenue. - Thomas Paine

The purse of the people is the real seat of sensibility. Let it be drawn upon largely, and they will then listen to truths which could not excite them through any other organ. - Thomas Jefferson

Government's view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. - Ronald Reagan

quotations culled from About.com

2008-04-11T11:12:00.012-04:00

MONEY (THAT'S WHAT I WANT)
Paul Revere and the Raiders
1964
Available on : Mojo Workout!
Sundazed : 2000
[Buy It]

I NEED SOME MONEY
John Lee Hooker
1960
Available on : Hooker
Shout Factory : 2006
[Buy It]

MONEY NEVER RUNS OUT
Cannon's Jug Stompers
1929
Available on : The Best Of Cannon's Jug Stompers
Yazoo : 2001
[Buy It]

DIRTY MONEY
Clipse
Hell Hath No Fury
Re-Up Gang : 2006
[Buy It]

MY BABY'S JUST LIKE MONEY
Lefty Frizzell
1951
Available on : Life's Like Poetry
Bear Family : 1994
[Buy It]

SHE TOOK ALL THE MONEY
Frank Black
Bluefinger
Cooking Vinyl : 2007
[Buy It]

LOVE OR MONEY
Prince
7" Single
Paisley Park : 1986

MUSIC FOR MONEY
Nick Lowe
Jesus of Cool
Demon : 1978
[Buy It]

This week has been all about money.

It's tax season, but it's more than that. I have a friend who came into some money. I have a friend who was seized by terror at the thought that she doesn't have enough money. I have a friend who lost money in a bad deal. I have a friend who found some money on the sidewalk. I spent most of a morning and part of an afternoon sitting in a gray chair in a bank lobby, conducting various transactions on behalf of myself and my money. These are just incidents, and they don't coalesce into a philosophy. Money thwarts philosophy, or rather it requires the simultaneous operation of many philosophies. Money is life. Money is death. Money is freedom. Money is a prison. Money is the root of all evil. Money can't buy you love. Money changes hands. Money changes everything.

This week, being all about money, is also about jokes about money. People have been telling them to me all the time. "Joke" might not be the right word. Grimly comic statements about money, let's say. "If I had a nickel for every time I've spent a nickel," one friend said, "I'd break even." Another friend tried to make a withdrawal from an ATM, only to find out that her card had been frozen. "Come out of there, you cowards," she said, pounding on the screen. I told them both one of my favorite jokes about money, which is a Johnny Carson joke. Abraham Lincoln goes to a nightclub. He hands the doorman a five-dollar bill. "You trying to bribe me?" the doorman says, offended.

"Bribe?" Lincoln says. "No, of course not. That's my ID."

There are profound things to say about money, but most of them have already been said in the songs above. Paul Revere and the Raiders say some of them in the mock-bitter spoken introduction to Berry Gordy's "Money." John Lee Hooker, who was performing a version of "I Need Some Money" before Gordy reinvented the song, says some of them in his reclaimed version. Cannon's Jug Stompers imagine a world where money flows like water. Clipse investigates the link between financial and sexual control. As does Lefty Frizzell. As does Black Francis. As does Prince. And Nick Lowe's just singing for his supper.

As thinking is free, please list any and all thoughts about money after listening to these free songs on this wonderful blog where writers write for free.

2008-04-10T14:26:00.003-04:00

BONES TO PICK
Bellafea
Cavalcade
Southern Records : 2008
Out in May : Pre-order currently unavailable : watch http://www.myspace.com/bellafea for forthcoming details

LAZY SUICIDE
Megafaun
Bury the Square
Table of Elements : 2008
[Buy It]

SOMETHING LEFT TO SAY
Roman Candle
The Wee Hours Revue
V2 : 2006
[Buy It]

ONLY PONY UNICORN
Juan Huevos
MC People Magazine
self-released : 2007
http://www.myspace.com/juanhuevos

HALF OF MY KINGDOM
Alina Simone
Everyone is Crying Out to Me, Beware
54º 40' or Fight! : 2008
[Pre-order It]

Hey gang. Is it nice where you are yet? Spring has officially sprung in North Carolina. It's sunny, in the seventies, pollen sifting down like mist. At least, this is how it looks through my window. I'm inside, shackled to the computer. I love spring but it's such a busy time of year, for everyone, seems like. I know I always have a bunch of extra stuff to deal with in the spring. Taxes, for one thing. Also, the lease schedule I've gotten on usually has me moving in May. So it's a time of year I associate with institutional forces impinging upon my space -- the IRS, landlords and realtors who run my life behind the scenes suddenly lunge into the open, and assail me directly. I've been trying to get a post up all week but life keeps getting in the way. Alex is buried too, and Ben's been pulling our weight. Today is no different, but I wanted to get something up, so I'm going to continue my post on local music from a few weeks ago. I don't have time to write a lot, but I'll say a little about each.

The Mountain Goats' John Darnielle, who appears on the forthcoming new Bellafea record, has been quoted as saying that Heather McEntire is the kind of stage presence you only encounter a few times in your life, and he's right. This new recording from Bellafea bottles up her explosive guitar style better than previous releases, but you still gotta see it in person to get the full effect.

When alt.country band DeYarmond Edison disbanded, they split into two groups, Bon Iver and Megafaun. Megafaun represents the group's more experimental side, although they wed their musique concrete and resonator drones with rickety back-porch blues.

Roman Candle has had some tough breaks-- they've essentially released this album twice, only to see their label immediately fold both times. Honestly this kind of Southern rock is not usually my cup of tea, but there are exceptions - I adore the Band - and Roman Candle is one of them. Their melodies are so direly infectious, and their production so pop-cunning, that I've been hooked on these songs for years. Hopefully they'll land on a label that knows how to handle them properly soon.

Juan Huevos has been a dear friend of mine for years. I've watched him evolve from a saving-hip-hop backpacker with a transgressive streak to a party-and-bullshit/nerd-rap/electro-fiend with a sensitive streak in his amplified transgression. His shows are full of choreography and he can warm up even the least rap-friendly crowd with sheer charisma. This dude's been on his grind for years and it's time for him to pop.

Alina Simone splits her time between Brooklyn and Chapel Hill. She has been an accomplished singer/songwriter in the vein of PJ Harvey or Cat Power, but her new record is on some next-level shit: it's an album of covers of the Russian cult musician Yanka, who circulated her fiery folk-punk songs on cassette tapes that were never officialy released. Simone, born in Ukraine, has found her ideal source material in Yanka - nothing she's done to date has this much growl and bite.

2008-04-03T12:01:00.027-04:00

QIDRECHINNA (I AM DESTINED TO LOVE)
Abdel Gadir Salim
Blues in Khartoum
Institute Du Monde Afrique : 1999
[Buy It]

YA WANNA BUY A BUNNY?
Spike Jones and His City Slickers
1949
Available on : Greatest Hits!!!
RCA : 1999
[Buy It]

PINBALL WIZARD
Elton John
Tommy: The Soundtrack
Universal : 1975
[Buy It]

VALENTINE AND GARUDA
Frank Black and the Catholics
Black Letter Days
Spin Art : 2002
[Buy It]

YOU'RE THE REASON OUR KIDS ARE UGLY
Conway Twitty and Loretta Lynn
1978
Available on : The Definitive Selection
MCA Nashville : 2005
[Buy It]

SEE THE BIG MAN CRY
Charlie Louvin
1965
Available on : Greatest Hits
Import : 2004
[Buy It]

When I was seven, I went through my parents' records and played all of them. It was a pretty standard mid-seventies set: Beatles, Beach Boys, Supremes, James Taylor, Carole King, West Side Story, maybe one or two Jimi Hendrix records. I remember sitting cross-legged in the living room and listening to Smokey Robinson.

I am using this memory as a shield against sentimentality.

Today is my older son's seventh birthday. Last week, my younger son turned four. My wife and I will throw them parties, take pictures, wish they had fewer toys: the usual. It's strange to have kids, especially kids who are becoming people, and it is also the most natural thing in the world.

I am using this truism as a shield against sentimentality.

There are few memories that still survive from 1973, when I turned four; even 1976, when I turned seven, is mostly a blur of Jimmy Carter's gigantic teeth and TV commercials celebrating the bicentennial, principally through low rates on car loans. Still, I remember clearly the first time I heard Jim Croce's "One Less Set of Footsteps," when I was the age of my younger son, and how frightened I was. I also remember hearing the Ohio Players' "Love Rollercoaster" in 1975, when it was all over the radio, and trying to get the blinds on one of the front windows to move in sync with the guitar part. So I don't want to underestimate the degree to which my sons, even if they're not identifying themselves by the music they like, are identifying music that they like. My younger son seems, so far, to favor soundtrack music and classical music, neither of which made a tremendous impression on my older son when he was that age. When we watch movies, my younger son will start humming the score and say, "I like this music." Later on, he will hum it again. My older son prefers songs with simple melodies and complicated lyrics. He repeats the lyrics to himself later. The earliest examples of this, which date from when he was two or even younger, are Ian Dury's "Sex and Drugs and Rock and Roll," Captain Beefheart's "Tropical Hot Dog Night," Frank Black's "Valentine and Garuda," and the Rolling Stones "Let It Bleed." I'd be playing them at home or in the car and he'd perk up, and ask me what they were, and smile, and laugh, and ask for them again. There are enough exceptions, of course, that these cease to be rules. The younger one got completely hooked on the Hives' "Tick Tick Boom." The older one loves Buddy Holly. The younger one has, for the last twenty nights in a row, forced me to put him to bed with a copy of "Born in the U.S.A." playing in an old cassette machine that is very similar to the one I had in 1976. The older one, at three, choreographed a modern dance set to Elton John's version of "Pinball Wizard." He later taught it to the younger one, who added a few flourishes of his own. Both of them worship Michael Jackson and AC/DC and Spike Jones, which only means that they are part of the human race. And both of them are obsessed to the point of joy with "Qidrechinna," a song by the Sudanese pop singer Abdel Gadir Salim.

Soon they will get older, will cease to experience that joy, or else they will conceal that joy from me and my wife. That day's not too far off. Until then, they're little, and their appetite for the world is large, and so I'm going to wish them a happy birthday by posting a quartet of songs that they love, and then a pair of songs that they don't know. Both are country songs, because it's a genre they don't particularly like, and I am a sadist. I am using sadism as a shield against sentimentality. One of them is Loretta Lynn and Conway Twitty's "You're the Reason Our Kids Are Ugly," which distills the chaos of domestic bliss into low comedy.

Besides that, all of our kids took after your part of our family anyway.
Oh they did, huh? What about the one's that's bald?
Well, I guess you might say they took after me.

I am using low comedy as a shield against sentimentality.

The other is Charlie Louvin's "See the Big Man Cry," in which a man spies on his estranged wife and the child who does not even know him. Many married men have imagined circumstances that would separate them from their wives--falling in love with others, losing the war of attrition against boredom and self-hatred. But being separated from children is an atrocity, and Louvin mines it for maximum horror:

I followed them to the pet shop window the little boy stopped to see
He looked up at her said if I had a daddy he'd buy that puppy for me
See the big man cry mama that's what I heard him say
See the big man cry mama he looks like his heart will break

I am using horror as a shield against sentimentality.

I am not, as you will notice, posting Harry Chapin's "Cat's in the Cradle," though I will admit that Verities and Balderdash, the album on which the song originally appeared, was one of the records in my parents' collection, and that I probably took it out and played it once or twice. I am not posting it because, well, I am still holding the shield against sentimentality, though it's quaking a little bit when I think of my sons, littler than I ever remember being, dancing around the living room to "Pinball Wizard."

2008-03-31T13:42:00.005-04:00

For today's experiment in aleatoric mp3 blogging, I'm going to be posting in REAL TIME. This means that everything I'm writing about will occur within the same time frame during which the writing occurs. Like, right now, I'm sitting at my desk, or rather kind of perched (I have a weird habit of perching in my chair when I write), it's raining outside, I just reached up a straightened a stack of CDs so that it's flush with the corner of the desk, I can hear a bird singing intermittently and rainwater washing through the gutters.

I'm writing in REAL TIME because to do otherwise would compromise the experiment, which pertains to my relationship with my iPod's shuffle function. You see, I've gotten into the habit of putting my iPod on shuffle while I drink my coffee in the morning. Only recently have I realized that in doing this, I've started to view my iPod shuffle as kind of magical, part lottery, part oracle. I count on it to offer me the song that I absolutely need to hear, and when it doesn't, this seems to bode ill. Right now, Hot Chip's "Ready for the Floor" is the song that I have to hear at least once per day (and usually, twice in a row), and while I could always dial it up myself, it's somehow more satisfying when my iPod chooses it from the - hold on, let me get it out - from the 8,965 songs it contains.

When I spin the wheel of fate and "Ready for the Floor" comes up, I feel like it's gonna be a good day. Likewise, sometimes my iPod shuffle will produce nothing I want to hear, which usually signals a bad day (this makes sense - when music isn't turning me on at all, it's likely that I'm having a bad day already). On particularly bad or good days, I find that my shuffle seems to be trying to tell me something - some warning or premonition - and this is when my iPod becomes something oracular, mp3s cast into a shallow pool like bird bones.

Today - in REAL TIME - we're going to put my iPod on shuffle, listen to the first five songs that come up, and think about what they might mean through an oracular lens. I'm pledging to you right now - no re-shuffles, no omissions. I hope this doesn't wind up embarrassing for me.

*crosses fingers* noKennyChesneynoKennyChesneynoKennyChesney...

Actually, hold up - I'm realizing that we're going to have to impose a few conditions for this to work. They are as follows:

1. Sometimes, shuffle gets lazy and places two songs from the same album in close proximity. Since Moistworks never posts two songs from the same album in one day, if this should occur, the second song from the same album will be skipped, and the one following it will take its place.

2. A great deal of music on my iPod is watermarked or otherwise copy-protected. If I share this music, the FCC will send ninjas to my house to shove jewel cases under my fingernails. Any watermarked songs that come up in the shuffle will be skipped.

3. After doing Moistworks for a couple years, I've posted an awful lot of songs, and there is a chance that something I've already posted will come up in the shuffle. As this experiment does not wish to compromise end-user satisfaction with the Moistworks brand, these songs, too, will be skipped.

4. I'm torn as to the question of whether to omit skits and short interludes. I was going to say yes, but these things are often important in the oracular sense, and so I think we'll allow them.

OK! That's all settled. Let's get down to the experiment. I'm pressing the shuffle button... now.

GET OUT THE STATE
Spoon
Soft Effects EP
Matador : 1997
[Buy It]

Hmmm...this is a sweet song, although bitchin' fuzz guitar isn't exactly what I'm after first thing in the morning. Listening to Spoon also makes me feel a distant twinge of anxiety now - I was lukewarm on their most recent album, which everyone else seemed to love, and while I think about half the songs on it are really good, I never came around on the other half, which I thought cheesy and overcooked. Whenever I fall drastically away from consensus like that, I wonder if my taste is malfunctioning or something. This wasn't a divisive album, it was roundly adored. Whatever, though - as an oracle, this is spot on, as getting out of the state is something that occupies my mind more and more often lately. "I've been waiting here for so long / And I'm on the curb with everyone." I have to be careful about listening to songs like this in the morning - nothing can pull me out of the moment, all day, like thinking about where I'm going instead of where I am.

RAINBOWARRIORS
Cocorosie
The Adventures of Ghosthorse and Stillborn
Touch and Go : 2007
[Buy It]

Aw, I love this song. The lyrics are ridiculous but supremely oracular; they actually sound like pronouncements from Delphi at times. Again, though, this is a dangerous morning-song for me on days when I have a lot of work to do. If I was doing my normal morning reading-and-shuffling thing instead of this post, I'd probably be reading my Carlos Castaneda book while I listened to this, a combination bound to abstract me to the point where writing about music would be impossible. Music like this can pull me out of the routine order of the day, which is a great place to be, but is not conducive to getting "stuff" done. Right now, hearing it, I'm getting that feeling of, "well, maybe I could just finish this post tomorrow, plug the guitar into the sampler and drone out for awhile right now." This transaction is what I call "losing the thread," and while it's probably more like finding one, it's not the thread I need to find to produce work and make money. Better move on quickly.

THE MORE YOU IGNORE ME THE CLOSER I GET
Morrissey
Greatest Hits
Decca : 2008
[Buy It]

I'll be honest - by this point, I'd normally be rapidly scanning through my shuffled queue, looking for some nice rap or techno. Or maybe I'd give up on shuffle entirely and put on some ambient music. This song might hold my attention for a couple minutes on a bright spring day, but today it's gray and chilly and wet. It hits my ears with a clunk - it's fine, but I've never particularly loved it, and it has no real traction in my life at this moment: happily partnered up, the situation Morrissey describes seems very remote to me. I feel a little betrayed by my iPod right now, a little let down - iPod, don't you know me at all? After all these years?

DON'T WANNA BE ALONE
Devin the Dude
Waitin' to Inhale
Rap-a-Lot : 2007
[Buy It]

Two things happen in rapid succession here - I get excited that it's a Devin the Dude song; I'm disappointed that it's this one. This soppy R&B jam plays fine in the context of the album, but doesn't do much on its own. It seems a logical follow-up to the Morrissey song, and, as such, I can't really identify with it right now. But wait a minute - is there a message here? A lesson? Should I be preparing to be alone? Is that what you're saying, iPod? Can't say I like where this is going. Let's see if things look up with number five.

FROM BLACK TO BLUE
Yo La Tengo
And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
Matador : 2000
[Buy It]

Oh, goddamn it.

2008-03-28T10:06:00.014-04:00

MEAN WOMAN BLUES
Jerry Lee Lewis
1964
Available on : Live at the Star Club, Hamburg
Bear Family : 1989
[Buy It]

MEAT MAN
Jerry Lee Lewis
Southern Roots
Mercury : 1974
[Buy It]

ROCK AND ROLL (WITH JIMMY PAGE)
Jerry Lee Lewis
Last Man Standing
Artist First : 2006
[Buy It]

Last night, I saw Jerry Lee Lewis play at Town Hall in New York. Lewis is seventy-two, but he has seemed at least that old for decades -- I remember watching him on Michael Nesmith's "Elephant Parts" in 1981, and he looked ancient even then, stiff behind the piano and vaguely sepulchral until he opened his mouth. At Town Hall, he was in decent spirits and in decent voice, and his piano playing was entertaining, but to use words like "decent" and "entertaining" to describe Jerry Lee Lewis is like saying that Jesse Owens moved okay in old age: depressing. I'm not sure he was depressed, and I'm sure most of the crowd wasn't depressed, but the universe might have been. For starters, there's the obvious problem of playing songs about teenage rebellion and lickerishness when you're within sight of death. People were screaming for "High School Confidential." Why? The songs that as a younger man drew on a not-yet-earned world-weariness, which include many of his country hits, worked better, and the earliest case of this, "End of the Road," which also happens to be his first record ever, worked best of all. His singing took control of the melody rather than the other way around, and the crowd withdrew slightly from appreciating him as a nostalgia act. Which was, of course, most of the trouble. The man a few rows ahead of me who waved his arm above his head for an hour solid knew all the songs, but to him they were all the same: they were Jerry Lee live, and that was enough. And the girl a few rows behind me who came with her parents kept running to the front of the house to try to take a picture of the Killer with her cell phone. She was eleven or twelve; forty years ago, you wouldn't have sent a girl that age toward Jerry Lee without great reservations.

The most conspicuous absence of the night wasn't youth or vigor or even libido--Jerry Lee seemed to get it up fine for "Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On." What was missing, above all, was competition. On "Live at the Star Club, Hamburg," from 1964, Jerry Lee made a point of systematically destroying each of his rivals for rock and roll primacy: leading (and often humiliating) the Nashville Teens, the Killer declared lightning war on Elvis ("Hound Dog"), Ray Charles ("What'd I Say"), Carl Perkins ("Matchbox"), Little Richard ("Good Golly Miss Molly"), and others. The album's opener, "Mean Woman Blues," took the Roy Orbison hit and beat what can only be described as the living shit out of it. That fire burned inside Jerry Lee from the beginning of his career, and never went out. Jealousy drove him to such a great degree that he was the only real choice to play Iago in Jack Good's visionary, if unhinged, rock production of Othello, Catch My Soul. Alex has posted about the show before; all I'll add is that Jerry Lee hardly heeded these lines, either straightforwardly or ironically:

O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; It is the green-ey'd monster, which doth mock The meat it feeds on

Catch My Soul wouldn't be the last time that meat was served. "Meat Man," from 1974, has been read as a dirty song about oral sex, and it most likely is:

I got jaws like a bear trap
Teeth like a razor
Got a Maytag tongue
With a sensitive taste

But it's also a song about oral sex in some very specific places:

I been down to Macon, Georgia
I ate the fur off a Georgia peach
Plucked me a chicken in Memphis
Mama, I still got feathers in my teeth

Mack Vickery wrote the song, and maybe in his version, the visits to Macon and Memphis are ways of tracing the paths of unattainable idols--and, while he's there, notching some conquests. But Jerry Lee's version has to be read, in part, as an explicit domination of Little Richard and Elvis. Two years after that, in fact, Jerry Lee showed up at Graceland, drunk and packing, demanding to see the King. The Jerry Lee that came to Town Hall last night was still pumping the piano, but the context has changed greatly. Most of those contemporaries who stoked his fire are dead, and the ones who aren't dead aren't stoking his fire anymore. If there was a competition, he has won simply by surviving. His most recent studio album was a festschrift of sorts on which he collaborated, without animus, with several other aging rockers. It was called Last Man Standing, and even though he was seated for the entirety of last night's performance, the point is taken.

2008-03-26T14:36:00.004-04:00

HELP
John Lennon
The Complete Home Recordings
[Unreleased]

HELP ME
Ray Sharpe w/the King Curtis Orchestra feat. Jimi Hendrix
Atco : 1966
Available on: Blues & Soul Power
Atlantic : 2003
[Buy It]

HELP THE BEAR
Ted Taylor
Atco : 1966
Available on: Blues & Soul Power
Atlantic : 2003
[Buy It]

WATCH THE DOG
Sandy Gaye
Moonshot : c.1969
[Out of Print]

DO THE HAWG
Eddie Kirk
Volt : 1963
Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968
Atlantic : 1991
[Buy It]

PASS THE HATCHET
Roger & The Gypsies
Sevem B : 1969
Available on: The Instant & Minit Story
Charly : 2005
[Buy It]

SKIN THE CAT
Jimmy Merchant
Bo-Mar : ?
Available on: Shakin' Fit
Candy : 1992
[Out of Print/Download it here]

SPILL THE WINE
Live
Eric Burdon & War
Eric Burdon Declares "War"
MGM : 1970
[Buy It]

WRAP IT UP
Sam & Dave
Stax : 1968
Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968
Atlantic : 1991
[Buy It]

PATCH MY HEART
The Mad Lads
Stax : 1966
Available on: The Complete Stax-Volt Singles 1959-1968
Atlantic : 1991
[Buy It]

CLOSE THE DOOR
The Holmes Brothers
State of Grace
Alligator : 2007
[Buy It]

. . . . . . . . . .

WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM MY FRIENDS
John & Sean Lennon
The Complete Home Recordings
[Unreleased]

2008-03-24T14:19:00.002-04:00

IN CHURCH
M83
Dead Cities, Red Seas & Lost Souls
Mute : 2004
[Buy It]

Yesterday, I set foot in a church for the first time in over a decade. My younger brother just graduated from college and took a job in California. He's leaving next week, and while I'll miss him, I'm very glad for him - he's been needing to get away from this place for a long time. My mother, feeling understandably sentimental, asked me about a month ago if I would go to church with them on Easter sunday, so we could be there together as a family one last time before Andrew heads out to the West Coast. When she asked me, her eyes were downcast and her voice quavered. She was nervous. She knew she was asking me to do something I would not want to do.

WILD PACKS OF FAMILY DOGS
Modest Mouse
The Moon and Antarctica
Sony : 2000
[Buy It]

At first, I said "no" outright. I explained again my issues with institutions, and particularly my resistance to the institutionalization of the spirit. My father said, "Think of it as something you would be doing for us." In that light, I reconsidered. I told them I'd think about it. A couple weeks later, when I saw my parents again, they didn't mention it. They knew that trying to get me into church was like approaching a skittish deer - it had to be done with caution, or I'd bolt. I knew this was important to my parents. A major element of of my initial resistance was the element of guilt-tripping tacit in the way my mom asked me to go, which I know she didn't intend, but which manifested in her body language anyway. I have always been a prideful, haughty young man. Those who would assert their will upon me - cops, politicians, bosses, religious zealots, and sometimes, even parents - are my enemies. But once they asked, they didn't ask again. Absent this pressure, I told them I would do it - I would go.

MIRROR SPEAKS
James Blackshaw
The Cloud of Unknowing
Tompkins Sqaure : 2007
[Buy It]

As I shaved that morning, I looked in the mirror and thought, "I am getting ready for church." The words turned to ash in my mind. I couldn't really square them with my reality. I wondered if I were about to betray myself on some fundamental level, or if I were making much ado about nothing. In fact, I was just going to see my family in an environment that is meaningful to them. That's something I could get my head around. Still, I flipped into "observer" mode. I don't know about you, but I have a little switch in my brain that I can flip to remove myself from social situations. (I recognize the artifice of this idea - I mean that it is a psychological mechanism by which I can feel this way, even though I'm still playing my part as a social actor.) It's a mode I enter into when I go to write about live music or events - no longer a participant, I become a disembodied eye, floating through space, noting and recording data. This is my favorite kind of writing to do, because I think it's the kind I'm best at, and because I enjoy being in that state - a lightness attends it, and a sense of solitude that I cherish. Sometimes it worries me that I find myself slipping into this role - the observer, the amanuensis - more and more often in my everyday life, as my "real world" unfolds between my ears. But maybe that's just my calling in this world. Some of us go about the messy business of living so that others can write about it.

BECALMED
Brian Eno
Another Green World [remastered reissue]
Astralwerks : 2004 [originally released in 1975]
[Buy It]

I felt calm as I pulled into the church parking lot. I'd set my intention to wreath myself in a shield of good energy that could be hardened in the blink of an eye, should anyone attempt to exert control over me. I was there for my parents, but I had no intention of of justifying myself to strangers who claimed some stewardship over my soul. But flare-ups of anxiety had plagued me, periodically, over the preceding weeks. The event loomed with great drama in mind. Would I freak out? Would I make a scene? Would I be flooded with panic or rage? Would I walk out halfway through the service, embarrassing my family? Most terrifying of all, would I feel something - some stirring, or pull toward the religion I'd made a definitive escape from so long ago?

TOTAL SEXY CHURCH
Panther
14 Kt. God
KRS : 2008
[Buy It]

In fact, none of this happened - the event was rather anticlimactic. My parents attend what you might call a "progressive church." It used to be Baptist, but dropped the affiliation years ago, when the Southern Baptist Convention was getting too scary and malevolent for any sane, compassionate person to have truck with. People were dressed casually, in polos and open-throated dress shirts; there were rows of modern office chairs instead of pews; the building more resembled a convention center than a church. I sat amid rituals that felt at once familiar and strange, trying to understand where they might possibly connect with what I personally regard as profound spiritual experience.

MUDDY HYMNAL
Iron & Wine
The Creek Drank the Cradle
Sub Pop : 2002
[Buy It]

What struck me most about the service was the music. On stage (yes, there was a stage), when I arrived, I saw a piano, a violin, a couple keyboards, a bass guitar, an electronic drum kit. Most of the instruments were taken up by casually "churchy" looking people, although the bass player was a young guy in a hoodie and a knit cap with a brim, turned rakishly to the side. My parents' church doesn’t do hymns - they do "praise music," a modern version of Christian song that strives to make hymns into pop music, in a gambit to freshen up the church's stale image and lure in the young. I understand what they're going for. But it strikes me as disastrously wrong-headed, and gets at the fundamental reason why the organized religion of my parents is not for me. The thing is, the old songs are just a lot better than the new songs. Even the most turgid, moralizing old hymn seems to me to have more power than this "praise music" dross. Praise music is characterized by uplifting platitudes, and to address one's creator with platitudes seems to me to verge on the blasphemous. I know we can all use a little cheering up these days. But the spiritual experience is not, to me, a blandly happy one. Songs of redemption, songs of praise, sure - but where are the songs of misery and ruin, of desperation, of terror and ecstasy? Where are the songs that make the soul tremble in fear, as it should in the presence of its benefactor? I felt not a stirring in my breast as I listened to this Christian version of the worst that 80s pop had to offer, with its splashy electric tom fills and lite-rock bass flourishes.

ARTICULATE SILENCES PART 1
Stars of the Lid
And the Refinement of The Decline
Kranky : 2007
[Buy It]

Maybe this music does something for other people that it doesn't do for me; I can't say. The paths to the presence of sprit are many and diverse (that I truly believe this, while the Church believes exactly the opposite - that there is only path for the righteous to tread - is another reason that I can't be involved in it). But I wonder if this music is, in fact, a bulwark against the sort of extreme spiritual experience that most Christians I know don't seem to prize, preferring instead the humming emotional flatline of suburban life. I can't hear anything of God in a song that sounds like an ad jingle; that sonic context immediately flips my listening mode to one of skepticism, guardedness; I become wary of what I'm being sold. This is putatively spiritual music that seems designed to cork up any of the fissures through which spirit might emerge. It made me feel empty, and seemed a metaphor for how the church works as a whole - a sterilization of the spiritual wilderness. God can't get a word in edgewise amid all the chatter. To me, the most profoundly spiritual music has no overtly spiritual content, since moralizing is the work of men who presume to know the mind of the god. The music that helps me come into the presence of spirit curries a vast, deep, still silence; a hole in the layers of social and organiazational interference that keeps a soul away from itself, through which the voice of god might begin to speak. Proverbs leave me cold; a quivering soundwave decaying in the air fills me with an awe that can verge on divine supplication, cues up a reverent and wordless dialogue with the world that feels like prayer. This is a wild, visceral, personal experience that cannot be institutionalized. My spirit is a garden that I have to tend alone.

2008-03-21T11:26:00.000-04:00

KILL IT KID
Blind Willie McTell
Atlanta Twelve String
Atlantic : 1949
[Buy It]

Someone once asked me if the reason I wrote was that I couldn't sing. "Sometimes it seems like you'd rather be a singer," she said. "But you do your best." I rolled away from her and faced the other way in bed. It hurt my feelings: not the part about why I wrote, but the part about not being able to sing. If I had been smarter, or quicker, or happier, or older, I would have said that she had hit the nail on the head, gotten up, put on a record, gone back to bed, and done my best. That record would have been "Kill It Kid."