Music

One of our totally excellent readers sent me this interesting link. The article is entitled, “The day the album died? It may be soon” and acts like this is a bad idea. Wrong, wrong, wrong. It notes that the song-swapping craze created a demand for songs. Now that this basic approach has gone legit, duh, people still want to pay for good songs they like, and only for that.

“It’s a song economy now,” says iTunes spokesman Chris Bell. “Consumers have come to expect it through illegal file sharing and CD burning, and we’re making sure every song is available for individual downloading.”

The article’s author bemoans this overwhelming display of consumer rationality, and inadvertently displays a rather silly and bigoted misconception of what is and is not good, as well as getting a key part of the chronology wrong.

In the ’50s, rock ‘n’ roll revolved around the 45-rpm single. Albums – if record labels even bothered to put them out – were just ragtag compilations of unrelated singles.

First, the 45-rpm single dominated until the mid-60s. In other words, the golden age of rock and pop, the early Beatles, Stones, Beach Boys, Phil Spector, Motown, Stax and countless others, was the age of the 45-rpm single. You could get by just buying the singles. You didn’t need the albums. But if you bought the albums, far from being “ragtag” the better albums in the period from, say, 1964-67, were compilations which contained several songs good enough to be singles and a bunch of others songs almost good enough to be singles. The “filler” was often oddball tracks which had their own quality or humor. The Beatles’ “Help” or the Byrds’ “Mr. Tambourine Man” are good examples of this period. Not one really bad song on either of them. Also typical was the Beach Boys’ “Surfer Girl,” which had several brilliant songs, a few decent ones, and a few humorous throw-aways, but you got your money’s worth. And the Motown albums of the era were incredible – the odd tracks were usually covers of hits by other Motown artists (some really great) or of other hits of the day, again, often very cool, or interesting even if terrible.

The author then tells us:

Spurred on by free-form FM radio, musicians started writing longer songs and weaving whole albums around a musical or lyrical theme: The Beatles’ Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band (1967), The Who’s rock opera, Tommy (1969), Marvin Gaye’s socially conscious What’s Going On (1971). Suddenly, rock ‘n’ roll was no longer just a random parade of ditties blaring from an AM car radio. Thanks to the album, rock was an official art form, worthy of being analyzed on hi-fi stereos and dissected in The New York Times – just like jazz or classical music.

This is all wrong. What began to happen is that the business side of the music industry got control of what had been a revolutionary and bottom-up musical explosion. They began to package bands and albums and tours to support them. The deathless glory of the mid-60s singles era this writer disparages as “a random parade of ditties.” Yeah, and Renaissance Florence was just a bunch of random daubs of oil paint on canvas. These few years were a maelstrom of innovation and creativity, which to this day remains incompletely understood and incompletely mapped and cataloged. The number of compilations of 60s bands which had only regional hits, for example, is mind-boggling, both in terms of quality and quantity. This phase ended, for a variety of reasons too lengthy and sad to detail here, and was replaced by a much more cynical, money-driven, predictable, mechanized process. Selling albums, bigger pieces of plastic, with mostly filler on them, became the mainstay. That plus arena-sized shows. All a total scam. As to Rock suddenly becoming, “respectable” and analyzed by the New York Times, that is all nothing, dirt, scraps, words to carve on the tombstone. CDs made all of this worse. With 60 minutes to fill, you just got more filler, most of the time.

One of my great hopes is that the rise of the Internet and modern technology will restore the well-crafted song to its just primacy of place. It is long overdue.

The refocus – customer-driven, fan-driven, on SONGS not albums – may portend a new age of greatness in popular music. The incentives are there, and getting stronger: Write good songs, or you have nothing to sell.

Yeah, I’ve got my opinions.

But, by the time I get a break in the work/kids/life action, events have moved way, way on. Which is good. I don’t want this blasted war to bog down. Not that it will. Roll baby, roll on English-speaking Blitzkrieg, win this thing fast. Then, scrape Saddam’s dead meat out of your tank treads, and come on home.

This war is not over yet, but things will settle down again soon. Then even people who don’t have inside dope, like the teeming millions in Blogistan, will be able to work on a more level playing field and speculate to their hearts’ content. But not yet. For now, better to pay attention, accumulate facts, and stay alert to what is happening.

It is a waste to do too much theorizing right now, or at least for me to. The arguments and “analysis” are not coming out of word processors but off of bomb racks and out of the muzzles of tank cannons.

We are at one of those moments of discontinuity, the dividing point between the “punctuated equilibria” the evolutionary biologists talk about.

OK, I can’t resist. I’ll make one prediction. This short war is a major turning point in history. Not as big as August 1914 or September 1939, probably. But big. Just below that level. The configuration of world politics is changing rapidly and this is the hinge moment.

Let’s agree to reconvene in ten years and see if Lex was right … .

Meanwhile, I have devoted some time to not-the-war. On the highbrow level, I may buy this brand new 5 cd set of Sir Simon Rattle conducting the Vienna Philharmonic playing nine Beethoven symphonies. They are playing it on the radio today. Beautiful stuff. It is apparently not in the stores yet. It is Civilization, it is the West. It is the greatness of the West. It is what we are fighting for.

On the more lowbrow level, I have just been introduced to the incredible Puffy – totally cool Japanese girl pop madness! It is fun, it is silly, it is a high quality product of late Capitalism, it is American happiness being successfully pursued in weird foreign idioms, it is girls being creative, it is a world open and free with money in its pocket. It is Globalization. It is what we are fighting for.

Perhaps I should be more dour in wartime. Naaaah.

Pray for victory. Pray for the dead and their families. Pray for a just and free society to emerge in Iraq which will be a light to the whole Muslim world.

Forward the Anglosphere!

God bless America.

Update: Check out the incredible 6x! (Scroll down to the MP3s and listen to the absolutely perfect song “What Can I Do?”)

OK, I admit it. We ChicagoBoyz are a pretty serious bunch. We think about things like Iraq and Al Qaeda and the stockmarket and gold prices and politics and the Right to Keep and Bear Arms. Not exactly “guy things”, really, since we never talk about sports or who is the hottest babe on some TV show. But, still, most of the time, serious stuff.

And that is what you, our dear readers, have come to expect. So I hope you will excuse something a little more lighthearted for a moment. Specifically, some good musical news has recently come to my attention.

First, lodged obscurely in the lightly-traveled no-mans-land of the embedded message board on the rarely-updated Muffs website, is a tiny little notice from Kim Shattuck, (lead singer and guitar player and songwriter and presiding muse and genius of the Muffs) that, in fact, no kidding, really, they have a new record in the works. To quote Beavis: “Whoa”. If it is up to the Muffs’ historical average, it will be very good indeed. Start saving your pennies.

Second, I was really surprised to see something appear on the Lisa Marr Experiment website the other day. That thing had been about as lifeless as a bat-haunted Mayan ruin by moonlight for a year or so. But then a new message went up saying that they’ll be having a new record, which is recorded already, out this summer. Also, it provided this link to a Canadian TV show on which they play several new songs. The performance is pretty, um, loose.But I have high hopes for the studio versions. And I especially like the song “Shooting Stars”. It could have been written 50 years ago, in a good way. I think she is hitting her stride with this country-western angle, though I prefer the pop stuff she does (and used to do) so well.

Finally, note that the fabulous Eyeliners are on tour. Coming soon to your town, including a gig in Chicago on March 22, 2003 at the Fireside Bowl. So go see ’em.

Many New Yorkers live their whole lives in one of the five boroughs and never visit the Statue of Liberty. Many Parisians never visit the Eiffel Tower. Similarly, I have spent many years in Chicago without, until a few weeks ago, setting foot in the legendary Fireside Bowl. (and here and here). One of my coworkers, a regular, described the Fireside as “the last of the great punk dives.” It really is a bowling alley, with the lanes roped off, and a stage at one end of the back wall. It’s truly amazing claim to fame is that it has exclusively all-ages shows. (The bar is a cordoned off area, which you need ID to get into). Perhaps even more amazing is its survival in the face of the City of Chicago’s quiet but clear determination to make it go away. A gentrifying neighborhood may ultimately finish it off. But there it stands, for now. My visit occurred fortuitously. I was looking for Christmas presents on the cool Interpunk site, and I stumbled across the inventors and still champion practitioners of “Nerd Rock”: Nerf Herder. It turned out that Nerf Herder are pretty darn good, they have a bunch of catchy songs (“Vivian” is my wife’s favorite), a great pop/punk rock sound, and some funny videos. (Click on the guys in Star Trek shirts for the video of “Mr. Spock”). The downside is that they have painted themselves into a corner with the lonely-guy-as-pervert business, sometimes pushing it way too far into the “not funny anymore” category. But, that is a big part of their shtick and I guess they are stuck with it. (They reminded of the Simpletones, who had similar dorky lonely guy themes and singing.) (Moreover, Nerf Herder’s singer, Parry, mentioned in an interview that “we are big fans of The Muffs” — so I like them a little extra for that, too.) Best of all, I noted that Nerf Herder were going to be playing in Chicago in just a few days! So, the wife and I, instant fans, decided to get a babysitter and go. It was a very good show, and the Fireside, far from being a “dump” was run-down but cozy. It is like a neighborhood pub, almost. I had a good chat with various strangers at the bar, describing now defunct punk dives of a bygone era 15 or so years ago. And, get this, the bathroom was clean. That is always the sign of someone actually caring about the place. Everyone was there because they were into the music. Nerf Herder put on a solid, well-rehearsed show. Parry, the singer, is a great showman. (The guys from Nerf Herder are from California, and they looked COLD in Chicago. The guitar player was selling cds and stuff before the show and he said he’d never owned a pair of gloves before this tour.) This site has a bunch of good photos of Nerf Herder, including a bunch from the Fireside show, here, and here. Half the place was singing along with much of Nerf Herder’s set. My wife and I were about the oldest people in the place, with lots of teenagers and other people who were in diapers when we were in bands. Some people were dressed like ordinary yuppies, like me, some totally in punk attire, and everybody was cool. Finally, the truly awesome Eyeliners are coming to the Fireside in March. These gals are doing a substantial tour. Check their site for the night they are playing in your home town – and put on your eye makeup and go.