Fame, it’s not your brain

I apologize for the recent lack of activity. appears should be back to normal on Monday, November 2.

In the mean time, I have an article up on Dolorous Haze about Ayumi Hamasaki, music videos, and fame, by far one of the most fun essays I’ve had writing in a while. I’m a huge fan of the site and all the talented writers involved with it, so it’s an honor to be featured there; special thanks to Ray for his impeccable editing skills.

My Rolling Stone, my self

I never thought I would like the Rolling Stones, but I do. I listen to “Gimme Shelter” when I pick up around the house, “Emotional Rescue” when driving my car, and “Moonlight Mile” as I fall asleep. Snatches of albums here and there because I can only tolerate them in doses, mixed in with artists less Crypt Keeper-esque. My journey down the 500 Greatest Albums of All Time (begun in June ‘09) has been less an indication of my capabilities to tolerate anything and more a reflection of where I happen to be in life; sometimes I think I subconsciously seek out songs that say something to me, that I can relate to, but then I like “Sister Morphine” a lot and I can’t relate at all. I started to skip around a bit, but I got through #500-450 and I only rated one album 5/5 (Def Leppard’s Hysteria – it’s personal). Elton John’s Elton John (1970), Mott the Hoople’s All the Young Dudes (1972), and The Drifters’ Golden Hits (1996) came very close, though. But my real point is: this list needs to be updated. Any list is expired by the time it’s published, but if the magazine had waited even two years to put it together, we’d be looking at a completely different list. Or maybe not. Rolling Stone is stubborn like that.

But right now, none of those songs are my favorite. My favorite is a dumb song about lost ambitions by some Norwegian band that I will overplay and in two weeks will be lucky to moderately tolerate. But my rate of musical consumption makes it easy to know that in a few days, I will have found my new favorite song and probably the three or four after it, too. So I know I’ve hit something when I listen to an album for three weeks straight, four weeks straight, five weeks straight… Lester Bangs once wrote that our relationship with recorded music is the search for that “priceless moment” when you truly believe that a song can (or has) fundamentally change(d) you (I realize this is like the third time I’ve quoted this, but as interesting a read as Bangs is, he is tragically unquotable). But then Bangs was also kind of dense, never accounting for his own inability to not just experience those moments, but hold on to them; constantly doubling back on himself, ripping apart albums based on the cover art instead of the music, making inappropriate, sexist remarks about women…he was kind of a jackass, really. But he was a good writer, when he was good (I disagree, of course, about his stance on the mythic superstar. I live for that stuff. Or at least, I used to) and I do still agree about the whole “restless pursuit” business.  And like him, I think it’s only natural and probably best to write things in the heat of the moment, instead of waiting months or years to write about it, which is why I think music criticism, unlike other media criticism (except maybe video games), has a very rapid shelf-life. Movie blogs are chock-full of writers who view and then ponder classic cinema, but that approach doesn’t work very well for aspiring music writers. Pity.

One of my favorite things to do recently has been to read old reviews from music magazines as I travel down the Greatest Albums list. I think a lot about the differences in criticisms between mediums as I scour archives for analytical pieces, which is increasingly scarce when there’s just so much music it’s necessary to weed through all the crap and by the time people get around to finishing that, there’s not much time to discuss what any of it means. I guess movies aren’t like that. One dude with one keyboard can write an entire album and post it on MySpace before breakfast but even the crappiest, low-budget movies takes a team of people and a studio to distribute it, and so people will always take movies more seriously than they will music. Pitchfork posts twenty-five album reviews a week and that’s just indie stuff (except, of course, for the pop albums they deem special enough to award a review – which, by the way, this week was Duran Duran’s remastered Rio. Duran Duran! Now irritating in quality stereo).

But even so, today Lester Bangs would probably not get hired by Rolling Stone and would just be another blogger, maybe with a few thousand extra hits than other popular blogs, and would spend his life in that self-imposed aloneness he enjoyed so much without having to worry about leaving his house just to buy records – Amazon! Because his style was only special in that it was new, and albums like Elton John and All the Young Dudes no longer sound “new.” Even that Leighton Meester song that came out three days ago isn’t “new” anymore.

But the magazine format isn’t just no longer new, it’s inconvenient. Most of them are monthly (Rolling Stone is bi-monthly), yet still insist on printing news sections that are already old and review blurbs as if anyone reads those things to actually get advice on which albums are worth listening to. A subscription for Rolling Stone now only costs $25.94 for two years; that makes each issue worth $0.49. But not only is Rolling Stone almost cheaper than a roll of toilet paper, it’s also outdated and extraneous; it’s cliche to point out that MTV has stopped playing music, but it’s just sad to point out that Rolling Stone doesn’t write about music.

It would be redundant to dwell very long on the issue of females vs. males on the covers (suffice to say, Sean Penn wasn’t licking an ice cream cone with his Milk co-star) as the charge is as old as Rolling Stones‘ freshly printed news bits; Internet publications like Idolator have pretty much eliminated the relevance of that section. The cover stories are well-written, but the topics are questionable and the magazine often delves into subjects it has little business exploring, i.e. I1075’s “100 Agents of Change” article, some sort of self-congratulations to its inflated arrogance and skewed priorities. The top ten features Steve Jobs, Kanye West, Bono, and Tina Fey. In addition, readers are supposed to believe Sri-Lankan rapper M.I.A., Sacha Baron Cohen, and freaking Radiohead have changed the world more than figures who search for cancer cures and are attempting to resuscitate the electric car. Why is Andy Samberg or Judd Apatow (#14!) on this list at all? One has been responsible for an SNL-skit that deserved nothing more than a polite chuckle, and the other has managed to reinforce and laud the lazy, stagnant  man-child as charming, noble, and inspirational.

The Internet is changing the way music criticism and journalism is being done and Rolling Stone clearly refuses to get on the bandwagon. Music magazines have always been the primary source for musical criticism and journalism as a whole, and their reputations aren’t without credit: the authors are usually extremely dedicated music fans who not only love what they’re doing, but write about it in genuinely interesting, innovative ways (again, the cover stories, when they’re not spending six pages summarizing the central conceit in Gossip Girl). But nobody is buying these magazines anymore, and with the availability of music on the Internet, not a lot of people are reading about music in general. In terms of criticism, its job has always been to steer people to places that are worth their time and money, but it takes ten seconds to download an entire album now; it’s faster for kids to download an album and skim the tracks than read about it. Music criticism should focus on the new reader, the dedicated, sometimes obsessive, music fan who enjoys reading about music, but probably does so after listening to a piece of work to find a starting ground for discussion or to enjoy new insights he or she didn’t notice before (hence the shift from deciding whether something is simply good or bad, and focusing on what it’s trying to accomplish). There’s no use appealing to the casual reader, as he or she has probably stopped reading a long time ago. In addition, music blogs and places like Pitchfork are setting the standards on free and giving readers access to enthusiastic niche communities that Rolling Stone puts a halt on by appealing to the largest demographic possible (keeping sales up: a tough job).

On the flip side, there will always be a need for big names like Rolling Stone because the quality of the writing is infinitely better than the average music blogger and provides intimate access to artists and events that people who blog from home will never have, no matter how enthusiastic they are.  Of course, there’s a distinction here between criticism and journalism; Rolling Stone will always be around in some form because of the quality of their work in journalism. The key is expanding the analytical writing and dropping the US Weekly-esque photo caption sections (guess what other magazine Jann Wenner owns) and micro CD reviews, born out of fear that the Internet is killing our attention spans (remember that failed new design of Spin that looked like a tabloid?)  – shouldn’t the media set the standard and not kowtow to it?

The Internet is music criticism’s new playground and Rolling Stone would be smart to take better advantage of it. Opening borders to other cultural mediums (television, cinema, etc.) is all well and good until you forget what the point of your publication was in the first place. I don’t mean to sound as nostalgic as this entire Baby Boomer magazine is apt to be, mostly because I don’t think it ever had a Golden Age or flourished in a past decade; this magazine has cruised through fairly straight waters until recently. As for me, I will keep forging ahead. I will read the reviews. I will skim the blogs. I will scan the music glossies, no matter how much they annoy me, not because of what’s in it, but because of all that’s left out. I will think about it. I will write about it. I will keep searching. I’m like a musical sea diver, looking for that priceless moment in a list of music that’s supposed to be the greatest of all time, though the list is pretty much entirely  American/English artists and all I’ve really learned so far is that I still hate grunge, Public Image Ltd. is not a rap group, and the Rolling Stones are on this list a lot. Can’t wait until I have an excuse to keep listening to them.

Donkeyboy gets ambitious

I’m afraid of using names like a-ha in my opening sentence in case I lose a few readers, so if you’re afraid reading further might endlessly loop “Take on Me” in your head, you might want to check out now. But I’m less prone to judge musical outfits based on country of origin (in fact, one of my favorite bands is Swedish and I think we can all agree that “Velkommen til Medina” is catchy) and after hearing their debut single, the song you really won’t stop humming is Donkeyboy’s “Ambitions.” It’s the type of song ABBA would have written if Benny and Bjorn were actually Neil Tennant and Chris Lowe: purposeful pop, with hints of regret before the decisive act even takes place. It’s a stunning debut single made loopy by the fact that it stayed at #1 on the Norwegian charts for twelve consecutive weeks while the band remains irritatingly low-key before the release of their album. It makes me wonder if they’re riding the wave out as long as they can before we find out the rest of their repertoire consists entirely of Smiths covers.

There’s nothing inherently different about “Ambitions,” though I’m compelled to voice a sidebar for personal situations; like any teen anthem, it’s both acutely hopeless and poignantly anticipating. The music video features a cast of characters from different age groups who suffer from a disease that occurs when one gives up his or her ambitions, but the party in the woods for the social drifters who are wilting faster than their rashes can cover them is reminiscent of preteen escapades and rowdy dorm parties. Losing one’s ambition can occur at any age, but the video seems to illicit more sadness towards the young, who never got a chance at all.

The text of the song is a bit deceiving: there seems to be two “yous” in question and both sort of flip-flop during the chorus. The “you” can either be a sarcastic look at the ability one has versus the motivation to utilize it, or a call to let someone more deserving step in. Though a sort of trite homage to 80s Euro-pop, the song itself denotes none of the earnest enthusiasm of the decade. It’s more miasmatic than merry, setting the droning, repetitive beat to a future of repetitive days like all the ones before and after it: sparse, simple, increasingly empty. It’s the kind of troubling, scratchy one-liners you stumble upon in a teenager’s diary that continue to haunt you after you’ve shrugged it off. After all, maybe you just settled, too.

♫ Official Site

Lights’s “The Listening”

Lights / The Listening / October 06, 2009
01. Saviour / 02. Drive My Soul

The distant chime of an ice cream truck. Glittery eye shadow. Childhood naivete. Welcome to the world of Lights, a planet where unicorns lap at silver rivers, first crushes are eight feet tall heroic giants with all the answers, and death is something that only happens to grown-ups. The Listening, cloaked in a mythical world of synths and dreamy keyboards that play hide-and-seek with the vocals, feels as invincible as its ethos. The entire record is an homage to forts and capes made out of blankets, a sort of fragile toy capable of shattering at the slightest mention of adulthood. Lost and not a little precocious, the entire record rests on the presumption that you will put on your thinking cap and use your imagination for the earnest show-and-tell and story time of the songs; at snack time, I’d eat the cookies but probably stay away from the Kool-Aid. Nap time to follow.

Though there are a few missing pieces akin to the blank features on Valerie Poxleitner’s face, these very grand, Swiss-cheese statements aren’t meant to find their missing counterparts within, but instead, adhere to the listener’s inner child, a sort of “Hey, what kid didn’t get made fun of?” approach that succeeds only because the lyrics are just vague enough to fit myriad experiences. Poxleitner’s vocals, hardly polemical, almost strain with the endurance to sound more like a twelve year old; unpolished, scratchy, and heavy on the nasals, it’s as if that desire to become a “little girl / without the weight of the world” isn’t just a heartfelt wish, but the driving credo behind The Listening’s kiddy manifesto. From whimsy to the scorn spurned by an unresponsive crush (“Why’d you have to go and turn to ice?”), to the muddled rebounds of second chances (“Second Go”) and the Saturday night video game marathon of “Quiet,” where she’s content to resign the disc to “no tragedy, no poetry / just staring at the sky.” She’s young, she’s super in love, guys, and that’s where she’s supposed to be.

But the transience is broken by “Pretend,” the album’s central conceit shattered by the reprise, the disc’s only mature track, a bare, piano solo where the lyrics sound downright depressing and voice less nostalgic desire than festering regret. “It would be nice to start over again / before we were men,” she remarks. In that case, just head back to track one. Ice cream trucks, glitter, unicorns, streamers on the handlebars of a pink bicycle; The Listening is a woman in a perpetual girl’s world. No boys allowed.

♫ Official Site
♫ Buy The Listening

Girls in the men’s room: BoA’s androgyny

I’m not saying girls dressing up like guys is anything new (nor vice versa), but when super-feminine waif BoA’s new single is still touting the same fedoras, three-piece suits, and all-male dance cast, it’s worth reiterating a notion I skimmed while gushing over “Eien.” At a time when popular Korean girl groups like SNSD, 2NE1, and 4minute are wrapped in layers of techno-colored wardrobes and purporting to sell tough girl images while skirts get shorter and suits come tailored in revealing short-shorts (and I would be making a completely different point if it wasn’t so obvious that they weren’t choosing any of it themselves and instead, kowtowing to image consultants and gender standards), BoA gets a short haircut (that isn’t pixie, or twee), a three-piece suit (that wouldn’t look attractive on anyone, and looks a size too big), and gender-neutral choreography (that has never showed off her talent better).

Hip-hop may still be a man’s game, but BoA has never been playing it better. A determination to keep her overseas Japanese urban reign has produced some interesting choices, among them “BUMP BUMP!”, her new collaboration with VERBAL. The music video initially caught my eye because it uses the same effect that Koda Kumi’s “Physical Thing” does wherein the edges of frames are dark and blurred so it seems the only light comes from a cheap camera flash, creating a keyhole view. This technique is often used in brooding music videos, a sort of updated film noir that’s supposed to let you know something seedy, sexual, or sinister is occurring. “Physical Thing” played up the stereotype, alluding to bodies littering a room but never taking the lens off Kumi, all the while watching her perform sexually suggestive gestures with wine bottles and grapes. But the effect in “BUMP BUMP!” is absolutely G-rated to the point where it’s almost dull; at least in “Eien” there were multiple settings. “BUMP BUMP!” takes place in one room with two masters of their craft doing nothing much but dancing, singing, and goofing around.

I’m deeply interested in the point behind this particular evolution: Appeal to a wider audience? Highlighting craft over image? Deliberate separation from younger, more stereotypical idol-esque pop groups? Interestingly, there was a completely different marketing strategy with the U.S. release of “I Did it For Love” at the same time the costume change was occurring across the ocean. In any case, no complaints about the turn around here. If at all successful, it will at least provide immunity from the pesky Japanese media who ignore whatever women are actually trying to do to field questions on relationship status, parenthood, and ex-boyfriends at charity events and promotional parties with which men don’t have to deal. I just wish I could dig the song as much as I do the concept.

Billboard vs. Oricon, Round #1

I find it increasingly bizarre that the Black Eyed Peas are still #1 with “I Gotta Feelin’.” Twenty-six weeks after they debuted with “Boom Boom Pow” and moved in to replace themselves and that song still hasn’t gotten any less annoying (like, oh my gawd!). The Hot 100 is a bit sketchy to use as a comparison, having no real Oricon equivalent, but it’s the closest we’ll get before delving into those pesky genre dividers. But the Oricon Top Singles has a completely different turn over rate which tells us a lot about the fickle music choices of the Japanese. Westerners may spout cliches about constantly looking for the next big thing, but it seems to apply less to individual trends than the names behind them. In Japan, the opposite seems to hold true: #1 singles no longer hold the spot for longer than a week or two before the next single takes it place. But forget about hoping boy bands or idols will just go away; unless there’s a scandal involving drugs or a sudden death, you can be sure to find the same names still charting every three months or so.

While this may say more about the importance of the single in Japan than in America, where iTunes and radio play are really the only markers of track popularity (though the prediction about the death of albums increasingly point to the return of the single’s dominance), it also speaks to the larger conundrum of consumer interest. The longest #1 on the Oricon singles chart was Shiro Miya and the Pinkara Trio’s “Onna no Michi” in 1972, which reigned for sixteen weeks. Although data on these things are a bit tricky to find (so please correct me if I’m wrong), the most recent best selling single was Southern All Star’s “Tsunami” in 2000 which stayed at #1 for two weeks, was kicked out by B’z for one week, and then returned to #1 for three weeks. Three weeks! Even Mariah Carey’s “One Sweet Day” managed to stay sixteen weeks at #1 in 1995.

In Tom Ewing’s Pitchfork roundup “The Decade in Pop,” he says, “The appeal of pop, for me, is that its definition of effective keeps changing. [...] The constant dance of “what’s great” and “what works” is what keeps me a pop fan: It’s as close as art comes to sport.” Although we can debate which artists have the means to steal the spot, with its constantly shuffling #1s, it seems the Japanese sport of pop is a lot more exciting.