We Interrupt This Program for a Brief Personal Message

We're engaged! And we couldn't be more excited.

Philadelphia. 2009.

Lago de Atitlan, Guatemala. 2008.

New York City. 2004.

Why I Love Rhapsody

It's because without Rhapsody, I never would have thought to seek out Cassandra Wilson's cover of "Harvest Moon" (originally by Mr. Neil Young), which appears on the My Blueberry Nights soundtrack (random) and, before that, on her 1996 album New Moon Daughter which had somehow slipped through my fingers. Young's original version of this song is one of my favorites, but I think I might even like Wilson's rendition better. I mean, I love the woozy pedal steel guitar that leads up to the end of each chorus in Young's version (and, oh, the chiming guitar harmonics that serve as a kind of hook). But it's amazing how much mileage Wilson's version gets out of just simple movements from scale degree 2 to scale degree 1 played by a bowed bass. Brilliant, I say.

Steven's Quit The Band (sung to the tune of "Janie's Got a Gun")

Steven Tyler may or may not have just quit Aerosmith (getting back at guitarist Joe Perry, who quit the band during the 80s?), but one thing is for certain: the photo the New York Times chose to include with their story on this has-he-or-hasn't-he development makes Tyler look absolutely terrible. This leads several people in the comments section to speculate if Tyler is already dead or express surprise that Aerosmith is still together. But comments like that just betray ignorance. Aerosmith may not be a critical favorite these days (if they ever were), but they've certainly been very successful live performers over the last 10 years or so, drawing quite a wide range of fans of different ages and genders. And grossing a ton of money, too, I might add. If you didn't notice that, you haven't been paying attention.

Nectar of the Gods/A Record Review

Here I am in Mexico City, doing some research for my dissertation (there are a ton of tribute bands in Mexico City) before the big SEM shindig that happens in about a week and a half. I'm staying at a perfectly nice hostel run by the Quakers in Mexico. It's dirt cheap and well-located close to the Revolucion stop on the metro and the Insurgentes metrobus. The only problem is that my room has no natural light, which is really throwing off my circadian rhythms. Well, that, and the fact that tribute band shows in Mexico (as in Pittsburgh, for some reason, but no where else I've been to) run quite late. Also, since my lovely girlfriend of 5 and half years had to stay in the U.S. (what's this thing called grad school everyone's talking about, eh?), I haven't been able to count on her to force me to go to sleep and wake up at regular human times.

So, like in most areas where I have I problems, I turned to music. Listening to music to go to sleep is one of the activities most reviled by music snobs--dissing Norah Jones's music as only suitable for a nap has become a common trope in CD reviews--but I love falling asleep to music. And it doesn't just have to be something "soothing" like Jones. I think I surprised one of my college roommates by being able to fall asleep to Nine Inch Nails's The Fragile, and just today I fell asleep to Terry Riley's In C. The other day I was ready to fall asleep and I cued up Gold by Ryan Adams on my iPod. I couldn't fall asleep for whatever reason, but I at least got the chance to think about this album again, which I remember quite liking and listening to quite a bit when it was released in 2001 and in the years following. I'm significantly less impressed by it now.

It's not that it's a bad album, per se. There are no obvious misfires. The production, arrangements, and playing are of a consistently high standard. Adams is a fine singer and writes nice songs, even if you can basically hear every chord change coming a mile away. I'm just left feeling that album doesn't have any real personality, that everything on it is so middle-of-the-road, and that his lyrics leave a lot to be desired. He tends to leave A LOT of space in his songs and to cycle through 4-bar phrase chord progressions for long periods of time. That would be fine if he gave you interesting lyrics to ponder while the guitar, bass, and drums chug away. But he doesn't.

The best songs on the album--"Firecracker," "When the Stars Go Blue," and "Wild Flowers,"--find pretty melodies and solid chord progressions to depend on. The worst songs--"Harder Now That It's Over," "Nobody Girl," and "The Rescue Blues"--don't make any sense or go on too long AND don't make any sense. Case in point: "Nobody Girl" plods along for nearly 10 minutes, taking 3:30 just to get to the chorus. And what is our payoff for waiting around that long? A chorus consisting of the words:

You're nobody girl
You're nobody girl
You're a nobody girl
You're nobody girl
You're nobody girl
You're a nobody girl

Genius.

I don't mean to hate on Ryan Adams. This album did accomplish a couple of things. For one, I think "New York, New York," though not one of the strongest songs on the album, is a tune that's going to endure. And it clearly did some unexpected cultural work in the fall of 2001, with its video famously shot the Friday before 9/11 on the Brooklyn waterfront with a prominent view of World Trade Center. And "When the Stars Go Blue" has become, and I think rightly so, something of a pop standard, having been covered by a lot of people over the last 8 years. (In fact, it's been something of a victim of its own success. When Blake Lewis performed it on American Idol, the song was credited to Tim McGraw--who released a cover of it that became a country hit, but had nothing to do with writing it.)

I'm not going to try to sum up Ryan Adams's career here, especially since he has released 8 bazillion albums over the past 7 years. (This is only a slight exaggeration.) I think he's got some talent, and I think a handful of his tunes have some real merit--like the very strange but beautiful "Strawberry Wine" and the well-constructed "Starlite Diner," both from 29, one of a trio (!) of albums he released in 2005. What I mean to say is that maybe it's time to listen to Gold one more time. And then not listen to it again for a while.

And if this long post put you to sleep, well, just consider it a favor.

A Baaaaaad Mother

This is an example of something rare: good academic writing.

From Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls, and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (Oxford, 2009), by Joseph G. Schloss

"B-boying began with the break, the part of a song where all instruments except the rhythm section fall silent and the groove is distilled to its most fundamental elements. In the 1970s, when kids began throwing rebel street parties in the Bronx, people from different neighborhoods came together for the first time since the gangs had taken over, and there was one thing they all agreed on: the break was an opportunity. It was a moment on a record that was so powerful that it could actually overpower day-to-day reality and become an environment unto itself. The power of the break was so evident that DJ Kool Herc even began to play two copies of the same record on separate turntables, repeating the break over and over again, giving the dancers more time to showcase their most devastating moves. Before long, Herc and other pioneering deejays like Afrika Bambaataa and Grandmaster Flash were playing nothing but breaks. And the dancers responded by creating a new dance form that was nothing but devastating moves: b-boying. Some even began dropping to the ground and spinning around. Hip-hop music and b-boying were born as twins, and their mother was the break."

Dorf on Music

It seems like we might be going into a rockism rant, doesn't it? That was my reaction, at least, to Jody Rosen's column on Slate discussing the fact that NPR seems to be incredibly attached to music by white artists, at least as evidenced by All Songs Considered's list of Best Music of 2009 (So Far). The exceptions to NPR's taste for music by white artists is music by black artists which fit the rubric of DORF, standing for:

Dead
Old
Retro
Foreign

Basically, what Rosen is pointing out is that you can't expect to hear much contemporary black popular music on NPR nor should you expect to see it on NPR-sponsored "best of" lists. The black music that NPR does tend to play will be by someone like Tracy Chapman, Solomon Burke, or Youssou N'Dour. This is certainly true, and Rosen picks out a good acronym that describes a phenomenon that, as he discusses, is prevalent not just at NPR but in music festival programs, your neighborhood Starbucks (what's the plural of Starbucks, by the way?), and the mainstream press in general. I'm not sure that this is something to be lamented or made fun of--as I think Rosen is at least hinting at doing. I think it's just something to be understood. NPR isn't going to be playing Lil Wayne. Hot 97 probably isn't going to be playing Grizzly Bear.*

Now that we've got that cleared up, we can watch "Dorf on Golf."



*There may be a future post on Grizzly Bear, too.

It's Bigger than Hip-Hop

David Segal published an article in the New York Times this weekend comparing hip-hop to conservative talk radio pundits. I'm not particularly interested in commenting on his points--that rappers and pundits both have huge egos, verbal skillz/skills, and are often getting in feuds with other rappers and pundits, etc. I'm more interested in noting that this is the second prominent article in recent months comparing hip-hop to some larger trend in the cultural world. The first one was Marc Lynch's article in Foreign Policy, comparing beefs between rappers to beefs between nations. Lynch's article got a ton of attention when it came out in July. I wonder, what is the next political or social idea that can be explained with a convenient reference to hip-hop? I vote for health care reform! I'll even start you out: "The public option is just like MP3 downloading." Now, go!

I will say one thing about Segal's article in the Times. If you're going to compare hip hop and conservative punditry, it might make sense to mention the huge fight between Ludacris and Bill O'Reilly. And, if you're going to specifically compare Jay-Z to Rush Limbaugh, you may have wanted to listen to Jay-Z's most recent album, in which he specifically takes on both Bill O'Reilly and Limbaugh himself. This is from the track "Off That."

Please tell Bill O'Reilly to fall back
Tell Rush Limbaugh to get off my balls
This is 2010 not 1864.

I'll leave it at that.