Carl Wilson's entry in the 33 1/3 series doesn't need me to do publicity for it, but reading it a few weeks ago (I'm doing work on taste and cultural capital for my dissertation), I was struck by one of his song readings. Wilson takes the Celine Dion album Let's Talk About Love as his subject, trying to figure out how he, a white, Canadian rock critic can make sense of the phenomenal popularity of Dion, someone who seems to break all of the rules for how one gains respect in the popular culture world. In the chapter where he (finally!) gets to looking at the music on the album itself, he pens a brilliant description of the George Martin-produced "middle eights" (Wilson's term, though they're actually 5 and 9 bars long, but who's counting?) of the track, "The Reason."
"The first break slips into a minor key and sets up a counter-rhythm in the cello section, ushering the song behind a curtain into the bed chamber: 'In the middle of the night,' Dion pants (echoed by a hoochie-mama chorus), 'I'm going down, 'cause I adore you!' That's right, going down. Lest you not believe your ears, there's a classic (stunned?) George Martin pause and drum fill before she lets out a stretching, postcoital sigh: 'I . . . want . . . to floor you.' And isn't 'floor' a fine euphemism there? The second time it all happens again but more so, adding whooping horns and spiraling into a shit-hot guitar solo by Robbie Macintosh of the Pretenders, and the cumulative effect is to invert the self-abasement that might irk you in the lyrics, ensuring that by what must be called the climax, the lady is firmly on top. A tune that starts with a girl kneeling supplicant before a man ends up as a rhapsody to womanly erotic power as the flux at the heart of the cosmos, and as long as you stop yourself from picturing Dion's real-life husband at any point, you have to admit she nails it in more senses than one. Finally, adult entertainment."
-Carl Wilson, Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste, p. 145.
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Monday, March 14, 2011
All in the Timing
Hello, and welcome to 2011. Oh yes, it's been going on for several months already. I remember. I remember ringing it in with Catharine and Matt in downtown Pittsburgh, watching Tower of Power perform on an outdoor stage in unseasonably warm weather. I haven't blogged here since the new year, though, so I thought I'd just write a quick note.
I've been busy. Teaching again, writing my dissertation, traveling. The same old. As I mentioned in my last post, my article on Wynton Marsalis got published, although that seems like a lifetime ago (the fact that I first wrote it in 2007 may have something to do with that).
One of my last posts was about daylight saving's time. Since we have just "sprung forward," a few comments may be in order here, too. I am a huge fan of the fact that it is still light out when I get done teaching at 6:30. Class today was also particularly good--in addition to more "writerly" things, we talked about Adele, New Orleans hip-hop, and the current scandal about the German defense minister plagiarizing his thesis--so there were several reasons why I was actually energized leaving class today, instead of exhausted.
I didn't even mind "losing" an hour of sleep this Sunday. I just slept an extra hour.
The dissertation is coming along. It's a slog. But I've got three of the four chapters done, or at least, "done." The fourth involves me thinking in Spanish--perhaps I've had this all backwards, and I should have written three chapters on Latin American things and only one on Anglophone matters.
I saw Prince since the last time we spoke. He was incredible. I was a believer before, but now I think I'm a disciple. I also saw Maceo (again), who was a lot of fun, and the aforementioned Tower of Power.
I'm rooting for Pitt in the NCAA tournament, of course. I have about 15 projects that I would like to work on once I finish my dissertation, but I know that I have to buckle down and finish writing this little monster first. Then I get to write about Biggie, rock en espanol, the radio personality Delilah, jazz in Pittsburgh, etc. The goal is to get to all of those projects, sometime in the next 20 years or so.
I've been busy. Teaching again, writing my dissertation, traveling. The same old. As I mentioned in my last post, my article on Wynton Marsalis got published, although that seems like a lifetime ago (the fact that I first wrote it in 2007 may have something to do with that).
One of my last posts was about daylight saving's time. Since we have just "sprung forward," a few comments may be in order here, too. I am a huge fan of the fact that it is still light out when I get done teaching at 6:30. Class today was also particularly good--in addition to more "writerly" things, we talked about Adele, New Orleans hip-hop, and the current scandal about the German defense minister plagiarizing his thesis--so there were several reasons why I was actually energized leaving class today, instead of exhausted.
I didn't even mind "losing" an hour of sleep this Sunday. I just slept an extra hour.
The dissertation is coming along. It's a slog. But I've got three of the four chapters done, or at least, "done." The fourth involves me thinking in Spanish--perhaps I've had this all backwards, and I should have written three chapters on Latin American things and only one on Anglophone matters.
I saw Prince since the last time we spoke. He was incredible. I was a believer before, but now I think I'm a disciple. I also saw Maceo (again), who was a lot of fun, and the aforementioned Tower of Power.
I'm rooting for Pitt in the NCAA tournament, of course. I have about 15 projects that I would like to work on once I finish my dissertation, but I know that I have to buckle down and finish writing this little monster first. Then I get to write about Biggie, rock en espanol, the radio personality Delilah, jazz in Pittsburgh, etc. The goal is to get to all of those projects, sometime in the next 20 years or so.
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