Pearls To Swine

Well, I've hit a few unfortunate snags in distributing my recently-completed full-length, Rogues Gallery, so the masses frothing with anticipation (ha!) will just have to hang on a bit longer.

The good news is that in the meantime, here's a digital 7" pour gratuit to whet your appetite. "The Bug Man", a track off the LP, is the toe-tappin' tale of a sociopathic exterminator, while the B-side, "Tarred Memory", started as a simple folk tune but was quickly swamped in so many overdubs it'd make Kevin Shields blush. Nonetheless, it's a relentlessly fun track.

So please, go download the sumbitch, pore over the artwork, and pass it amongst your friends. May it bring a little joy to your auditory organs.

Is it spelled "poorism" or "pourism"?

Update in the Indie Bono-ism department: Swedish songbird Lykke Li has jumped on the bandwagon to Uganda. Evidently, what the world needs now is yet more fashionable white people going slumming on their fans' dime. At least one ugly angle has been wrenched out of this con job - donations towards the trip (organized by the noble folks at Invisible Children) are no longer going through a website in which Pitchfork editor Chris Kaskie is an investor. One less eschelon in this Ponzi scheme.

To reiterate: by all means, lend whatever support you can to Invisible Children, but do so directly instead of investing in this ridiculous indie rockstar Make-A-Wish field trip.

Souvenir Parts 3: Guys With Guitars

Continuing a look at the albums that logged the most spins on my stereo over the Aughts.

2002:
Fugazi, Red Medicine
XTC, Drums and Wires

As the first few pages were torn off the 2002 calendar, my mood was gradually improving. I'd spent the winter listening to records that were series of bloody gut-punches from start to finish - Big Black, the Jesus Lizard, and especially the Birthday Party's live album. It had helped sooth my uglier moods, but it was a strictly passive activity: I was without a band & living in a one-bedroom where I daren't plug in any instruments for fear of upsetting my alkie wife-beating neighbour. Stuck noodling on an unplugged SG, I at least wanted to play along to tunes that were a little more energetic than "Nick the Stripper". I was neither ambitious nor studious enough to tackle the finger-sports athleticism of the Dillinger Escape Plan, and a workplace feud had put me right off the gentler dexterity of finger-picked folk guitar.

So I settled on Fugazi's "deal-breaker" record, Red Medicine - often derided by the hardcore faithful for not being "punk" enough, yet too wry & recondite for emo fucks clutching copies of Diary to their chests. Which is exactly why I loved it so much: every repeat listen revealed a new harmonic warp or timbral weft, wrapped up with scathingly funny lyrics. Obviously, it was just a lot of fun to pinball around my living room jamming along to "Bed For the Scraping", but it was equally enjoyable to unravel the ambiguous, serpentine melodies of "Fell, Destroyed" or "Long-Distance Runner", or to parse the guitar-tone patchwork of "Latest Disgrace" or "Birthday Pony". It was impossible to tire of this record.

But Red Medicine also boasted a lot of hooks - not something often associated with post-hardcore slash-and-burn. By the early Aughts, there was already a glut of bands who squeezed every last histrionic drop out of the soft-loud dynamic, who screamed like drama queens, and who could purposefully hammer away at root/relative-minor chords. But Fugazi crafted choruses that could be sung, not just shouted; their riffs were armorial & memorable; and there was swing & groove in their rhythms.


This lead to the (incredibly late) realization that, perhaps, nuanced songwriting really mattered. Blisteringly obvious, I know, but remember that I'd preferred Zappa to Zeppelin and Mike Patton to Pavement over the course of my adolescence. During that time, one band that had been just compositionally perverse enough to attract my attention was XTC. I found it hysterical that a hyperactive pop romp like "Scissor Man" was actually about a serial killer, and the staccato clangor of "Paper and Iron (Notes and Coins)" sounded like Fugazi playing at being the Beatles. I'd also never heard low-gain guitar tones that still attacked with such crackle & whizz. Concerned I'd been buying all these distortion pedals for nowt, I became a little obsessed with this production trick, and so my fandom of XTC became slightly self-congratulatory when, of the various low-volume home-recording experiments I'd been conducting, one of my most successful had been in recreating Andy Partridge's guitar tone on the Black Sea record.

(There was also the fact that XTC had written the unequivocably anti-theistic "Dear God", wherein Partridge kept the tone intelligent and didn't resort to pseudo-occult faith-baiting. This song could be a musical madstone for a young atheist living in the dogmatically faithful United States.)

Though Black Sea is arguably my favourite XTC album, it sags in the middle such that I spent calculably more time listening to Drums And Wires. Also, though Drums is far more sapient & eccentric than the forgettable, naive New Wave of the first two records, it's still got the pluck & pathos that disappeared from XTC's music after 1982, as they fossilized into more of a fastidious songwriting workshop than a band. Consequently, Drums was a reasonable blueprint off which to work as I first attempted writing an entire song in a single key, or slowly accepted that repeating a motif more than once didn't automatically make a song "boring."

And to think that the album I listened to most frequently last year was Dopesmoker. I've come a long way, baby.

Next: Going to extremes and retreating.

Apocalypse No

Poor Evan Calder Williams... I never give the guy a fair shake. Every mention of him here and every comment I've made on his blog has been from a combative, borderline-bullying stance. But the truth is that we're both Marxists of one sort or another; we both try to imagine means by which capitalism can be choked; and we both have unruly beards that do us no aesthetic service. We're on the same side - and yet I can't read his writing without taking a swing at him.

How ferocious the battles are when so little is at stake.

Anyway, Williams has contributed to Mute magazine an article a propos apocalyptic cinema. It's well worth a read, and makes some interesting distinctions between crisis, catastrophe, and apocalypse. Most of my disagreement with the piece is specific & quibbling. For example, whereas Williams tacks to the original zombies-as-consumers interpretation (updated with a Žižekian notion of drive), I think the new glut of zombie films differ significantly in intent from the original Romero movies. The old Living Dead films were satirical critiques of persistent consumption, whereas the current crop are exploitation flicks preying on the audience's fear of the Other. Suppurating blank slates as they are, zombies are floating signifiers for whoever the audience fears are tearing at the fabric of civilised society: leftists may see fascists; Christians may see Muslims; conservatives may see immigrants, gays, or communists. (The heathen/immigrant/homosexual angle is especially persuasive, given bigots' fears of corruption of the blood & conversion by a kind of lobotomisation.)

I also think Williams gives The Road incredibly short shrift when he calls it "a terrible, terrible film." I see why many people wouldn't enjoy it (long, bleak, proud of its own straightjacketed sentimentality) but to call it "terrible" is unfair & inflated. I think the film is as embarrassed as proud of its nostalgia for good ol' late capitalism, especially considering how quickly the film's survivors/survivalists turn to cannibalism. Taking this literally - as an animal "urge" to digest human flesh -, Williams utterly misses the obvious symbolism of the cannibalistic act: that we as a species have eaten ourselves out of house & home, and will continue to do so until the last man gnaws his own kneecaps off rather than suffer from want.

I also get the sense that, as a good Marxist, Williams finds The Road's lack of faith in the collectivist spirit repellent and perhaps inaccurate. Maybe in Santa Cruz, where Williams lives amidst the redwood-shaded spectre of hippie utopianism, a group-oriented, egalitarian approach to survival would prevail. Let's hope it would. But from the rust belt to the Gulf Coast, where the bibles are beaten the hardest and the Gini coefficient is at its widest, American citizens faced with the deprivation & desperation presented in The Road would make the marauding motorheads of Mad Max look like British aristocracy.

A greater problem with Williams' piece is the writing itself - what happens to academics that bleaches any style or wit from their writing, leaving in its place a skree of adverbs and neologic nouns? Most infuriating (and this almost ruined Dominic Fox' Cold World for me) is an over-reliance on stock first-person-plural devices that affect the tone of the dullest college lecturer ever:

• To start, we should...
• Let us...
• What do we mean...
• Let us...
  
• To conclude, we should...

No, not "what do we mean," but what does "we" mean? Who is this phantasmic "we" that I, as a reader, have been presumptively lumped into by the writer? What are "we" fighting for, and can I get a deferment?

Ultimately, it's Williams' apocalypse fetishism that bugs me the most. Clearly, he's found his theoretical niche, and I can't begrudge him that, but his pontifical embrace of the eschatological suffers from two problems of perspective. The first is that Williams has never experienced first-hand the truly catastrophic. I'm not asking that he suffer, but anyone in Haiti or the Gaza Strip would probably find him naïve & privileged.

The second is the same arrogance that every post-apocalyptic film appeals to: that "I" am one of the lucky ones, that "I" am smarter-faster-stronger, that "I" will survive.

What are the odds of that? Well, how many heroin addicts aren't William Borroughs or Iggy Pop?

A Fantastic Life!

Happy 53rd, Mark.

Indie Bono-ism

Yesterday, I was catching up on current affairs & cultural chatter over my morning coffee when I saw this:

Yeasayer has committed to join the Polyphonic Spree on a trip to Gulu, Uganda later this year, where the bands will learn about the effects of the Ugandan civil war and perform live in various locations.

Ah, Yeasayer - the band with the hardest-working publicist in indie-rock, proof that in the post-Pitchfork paradigm, a high profile guarantees neither consensus nor support. Why exactly is this quintet of bourgeois-bohemian Brooklynites traveling to eastern Africa? Here's the story: Invisible Children is a nonprofit group that rehabilitates ex-child soldiers from Uganda's civil war; they've teamed with French music blog La Blogotheque to bring occidental indie-rock bands to Uganda to see firsthand what horror Joseph Kony hath wrought and, y'know, play a few tunes. La Blogotheque will film the cross-cultural encounters for a DVD which will be sold to benefit Invisible Children.

Oh, but to pull this off, they need fans of the bands to donate $20,000 towards the endeavour. Kind-hearted consumers can donate their ducats via the Kickstarter website, a "funding platform" whose investors include Pitchfork publisher Chris Kaskie.

This whole thing stinks to high heaven.

For starters, neither Yeasayer nor the Polyphonic Spree is a band that sells hundreds of thousands of records, let alone millions. If Invisible Children wants the M.O.R.-indie audience's discretionary cash, why not recruit acts with a wider fan base? Are Vampire Weekend unable to rearrange their touring schedule? Do the Arcade Fire not give a fuck about the Ugandan civil war? I seriously doubt that.

Secondly, the loop of participants is far too closed for this to be anything other than graft. Bands routinely hyped by a prominent music website get a free trip to Africa, while the publisher of said website gets his pockets lined by donations by the bands' fans - who are expected then to pay again for an entertainment commodity wherein the globetrotting bards will learn valuable "life lessons" from poor, beleaguered brown people. And Pitchfork seems to think the magic words "full disclosure" mitigate the flagrancy of this conflict of interest.

Amidst all this backscratching, it's expected that some money will wend its way towards the nonprofit, but this is going around your ass to reach your elbow. Rather than raise twenty grand to fly a bunch of mediocre musicians to Gulu, couldn't that cash be spent on, I dunno, a school? A mobile clinic? A skills-training program?

After all, why assume concerned consumers will only donate to Invisible Children after watching a bunch of middle-class musos wander awkwardly around Africa, muttering platitudes about what great perspective it lends them (before jetting back to the warm bosom of the developed world)? Condescending juxtapositions of celebrity Caucasians cuddling third-world orphans aren't necessary to appeal to people's sense of charity. Not On Our Watch just donated over $1 million towards the Haiti relief effort, and no one had to watch some damned documentary of Brad Pitt or Matt Damon gawking at bloody rubble in Port-Au-Prince.

Though I'm not the first incensed by this debacle, no one is questioning the nobility or value of Invisible Children's mission; I'd encourage you at the very least to check out their website, if not donate directly to their cause. What's disgusting is not only how integrated into the machinery of capital so-called "indie" music has become ("as in Lady Gaga is Brokencyde is Pavement reunion"), but that the musicians see nothing wrong with this and expect their fans to empty their pockets accordingly. By turning featherweight "ethical" gestures into commodities - like hybrid cars or "Live in Uganda" DVDs - capitalism not only keeps everyone playing only by its rules, it tacitly absolves everyone's guilt about playing only by its rules. The expected/accepted display of rockstar ostentation has shifted from trashing hotel rooms in a narcotised rage, to flying half a world away to be photographed messianically embracing victims of some fresh disaster. As Jessica Hopper put it recently, "is 'I can't afford to go on my trip to Africa' any different than 'I can't afford this special cocaine I'd like more of'? Not really."

Self-Portrait

Sometimes I feel like if someone were to parody this blog, all it would take would be a black-and-white photo of some dude screaming into a microphone followed by an apology for not having written anything 'cuz I've been soooo busy lately, wrapped up in vague reassurances that the storm has passed and I'll resume writing with renewed vigor.

Don't worry, we've still got Keith Olbermann, right?

You will be missed, Mr. Zinn.

Quick Aside

Who wants to bet that the US gov't paid off NBC to launch the late night wars so that no one would notice the SCOTUS putting American democracy up for sale? Of course, the 2012-style near-eradication of Haiti was a hell of a distraction, but given that most Americans have no idea who "Baby Doc" Duvalier is (or that he had a papa), Haiti was not a reliable long-term distraction. So roll out the big guns - er, big chin & big hair! "Go back to bed, America..."

Don't get me wrong, I stand among the many who are desperately waiting for Leno to choke to death on a Dorito, but - come on.

Souvenir Part 2: Then I Had Worry

Continuing a look at the albums that logged the most spins on my stereo over the Aughts.

2001:
The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion, Now I Got Worry
The Jesus Lizard, Liar

For the past thirty years, the personal evolution of the rock musician has traditionally functioned as follows: an angry young man or woman spends hours by the radio or MTV, bedazzled by guitar-slinging demi-gods, wishing it were them on the airwaves. Then they hear their older brother - or maybe a hipper friend - spinning either the first album by the Clash or some Void 7" and realise that anyone can pick up a guitar and start bashing out a glorious noise as long as the amp's cranked up enough. They start a band with their friends, and though it sounds bloody terrible, they don't care - they're making music! Then someone moves away, or takes umbrage that the guitarist won't turn down and quits. Instruments are swapped, a new member or two is introduced, and vocal duties are handed to the least-unwilling candidate. The band is still atrocious, but slowly a synchronicity develops. The playing gets tighter, the songs become less derivative, and total strangers start approaching the band after shows to inform them earnestly of how much it "rocked."

After a few years of this, either the band breaks up as everyone decides it's time to get that bachelor's degree in engineering or marine biology... or they sacrifice the comforts of middle-class existence to couch-surf, to drive thousands of miles in an Econoline van with a cracked windshield, to live off instant ramen & Subway sandwiches, and to bring their punk-rock gospel to the people. Onstage, the band is a rhythmic maelstrom, but their records never capture the crackle of their "incendiary live shows" (or so the critics say). But as their age inches closer to 30 than 18, their musical tissue begins to stretch & soften. Why are they still writing fuck-off anthems about their parents? Why do Abba and Burt Bacharach no longer disgust them as they once did? And have you heard Giant Steps by John Coltrane? Who knew there were so many chords available to play!

No more interminable bouncing between the I and IV chords. No more reliance on the relative minor as a harmonic trick. The time has come for musical sophistication, and hence there are any number of musical fates that await. They may shift from shaman to showmen, from music-as-exorcism to music-as-discipline (Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds). They'll perhaps ditch snarling wit to write tender confessionals, augmented by "serious" instruments like the piano & acoustic guitar (Joan of Arc). They could very well mistake gratuitous technical exercise for aesthetic substance (The Mars Volta). On very rare occasions, they may just become a better, more engaging band (Fugazi) but don't count on it.

This isn't what happened for me at all: I came to punk rock the wrong way round. I spent high school ripping off Mingus basslines for my own bad psych-funk songs (a la Primus) and studying Ligeti scores. My ex-bandmates covered Weezer to approving hoots; my own band covered Pizzicato Five to awkward golf-claps. What I didn't get was that music was supposed to be less an intellectual exercise than an existential one, an understanding that didn't sink in until a friend showed me the Fugazi documentary Instrument. That I was enjoying it should've been anathema: these clowns were missing chords, botching cues, speeding up/slowing down, and the dude with the Rickenbaker was dancing like a girl. It wasn't until the climactic single-chord seige of "Glue Man" that I got it - the total surrender to excessive sound, the pentecostal fervor, the physical transgression of performance.

"So that's what punk rock is really about," I muttered to myself.

Around the same time, my buddy Mike was schooling me on the finer points of rockabilly- and surf-tinged retro. Mike wasn't a crate-digger exhuming unheard-of garage 45s; his cup o' tea was decidedly more absurd & theatrical, like The Rev. Horton Heat and Southern Culture On the Skids. Grateful for the education, I wanted to return the favour and bought him The Jesus Lizard's Down for his birthday. I knew Duane Denison's gnarled twang would please Mike, but since my punk-rock Damascus moment, I was personally more taken with the jackhammer rhythm section and frontman David Yow's gleeful malevolence. Either way, the album scarcely left Mike's car stereo during our countless drives to & from the Towson Diner.

I spent most of 2000 and the first half of 2001 working as a tour manager, during which the Blues Explosion's Now I Got Worry had become my favourite on-the-road record. I'd picked it up before a particularly epic trek when I'd asked a record store clerk for "something like Southern Culture minus the gimmicks," and I've rarely since been so perfectly recommended a record. It had more than enough explosive riffs & wailing (ha!) energy to keep me awake during marathon nocturnal drives, and the locomotive rhythms meshed nicely with the steady thrum of the interstate beneath the van's wheels. It was also a civilised compromise between the band's current album du jour (Massive Attack's Mezzanine) and my own (the Dillinger Escape Plan's Calculating Infinity).

Fast-forward to the fall of 2001: I was living in Toronto and, in spite of the city's myriad wonders, was a miserable son-of-a-bitch for a combination of dull personal reasons and the spectacular trauma that scarred the world at large. Bandless for the first time in five years, I had to exorcise stress through my stereo and so began pursuing the most pathologically pessimistic, unrepentantly vengeful music that didn't collapse into the cartoonish cosplay of, say, black metal. This eventually led me to fire-and-brimstone post-punk of the Birthday Party, but for most of the autumn I listened endlessly to the Jesus Lizard's Liar - a flurry of bare knuckles & spit that doesn't relent until the elegaic penultimate tune, "Zachariah". The songs' industrial-strength rhythms lock like Swiss clockwork, and it's arguably Steve Albini's finest hour as a documentarian of live-in-the-room fury. I may have been stuck furious & fulminating in a room myself, but I relaxed at least a little knowing that a man like David Yow lived to rage on behalf of all us other sinners.

Next: Six-string strum & clang.