I Don't Live Today

The Root has another article on the anniversary of an important album. But this time it's about Jimi Hendrix's Electric Ladyland, on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of its release this month. I'll admit that it does seem pretty crazy that this album came out 40 years ago. I have a hard time believing that this record is actually 40 years old. The Joshua Tree is now just over 20 years old, which doesn't surprise me at all; that record sounds very much like it's from the 1980s. 1968 is one of those mythic years though, and Electric Ladyland is supposed to be, apparently, very indicative of its time of origin. I don't hear it, though. To me, it doesn't sound dated at all. I can't imagine an album sounding more contemporary. The White Album also came out in 1968, but--as much as I love the White Album--it's a record that is pretty instantly datable for me. But anyway, those are just my impressions.

The other interesting thing in the article, from my point of view, is the mention of the Experience Hendrix 2008 Tribute Tour, a series of 19 concerts across the country featuring people like Buddy Guy, Kenny Wayne Shepherd, and people who played with Hendrix including Mitch Mitchell and Billy Cox. Hendrix of course was one of the first artists to have a tribute album, 1993's Stone Free. And the Hendrix estate (whoever it is that is in control after the most recent legal skirmishes, of which there have been many), has never been shy about cranking out new product in an attempt to cash in on Hendrix's legacy. This tour is certainly a part of that impulse, but I also think it's part of the tribute phenomenon more generally that I'm researching these days. (And, to complicate matters, the tribute phenomenon is never just an end unto itself, either. It's about making money off of older music. Not that that's necessarily a bad thing. Let's just be honest with ourselves.)

I doubt that the artists on these concerts are playing these Hendrix songs note-for-note. What would that even mean in an improvisatory tradition like blues-rock, anyway? And besides Hendrix, unlike the Beatles or even the Stones or Zeppelin, has a huge number of live performances commercially available, so you'd have to first figure out which performance to play note-for-note. (This profusion of live recordings, by the way, has to do with a couple of things. First and foremost would be the desire to get more product out there, since Jimi only left us with only 3 proper studio albums before his death. But also important, I would guess, is the fact that his live performances were worth having--they were not just note-for-note renditions of his studio recordings).

But the artists on this tribute tour are taking part more generally in the same things that I see characterizing the tribute band scene at large. It's about creating a community in the context of live performances, not just listening to the records at home by yourself. It's about celebrating the past and, in particular, placing oneself within the past, giving oneself a history. Anyway, the tour actually stops in Philly tonight, at the Tower Theater. If I was in town, I'd probably go (though tickets are quite expensive). But as it is, I'm half a world away from home, so I'll have to content myself with watching Game 2 of the World Series and desperately craving a Yuengling (for the first time in history). Go Phillies!

Rawkin' in the Free World

Well, it's apparently going to happen. Chinese Democracy, the long-awaited album from Guns n' Roses, is finally going to be released next month. But I actually don't believe it. I've heard rumors that this album was going to be released for about the last 8 years. So I'm not going to be convinced by a story in the New York Times. But that's just because I'm jaded and cynical, and I have no doubt that Axl will find some way to mess it all up again. (I have infinite faith in the ability of Axl Rose to sabotage himself and others.) But you can read the story and check it out for yourself.

Also, AC/DC has a new album out. There are big posters advertising it outside my apartment in Buenos Aires (yeah, I'm in B.A. now, and for the next four months--more on that later). At first when I glanced at it I just saw "AC/DC, Black Ice [the name of the new album], Never Disco." Never disco? Really? Umm, OK. But I think most people realize that AC/DC isn't a disco band. Plus, are they really fighting a war with a musical genre that, for all intents and purposes, has been defunct (de-funked?) for nearly 30 years? Talk about beating a dead horse.

But then I looked closer and realized that the poster actually said "Nuevo Disco," Spanish for "new album." Which of course makes a lot more sense than "Never Disco." This was the first of no doubt many misunderstandings here.

Bob en Espanol

Oh, how I do love technology. I wrote earlier about the release of the newest installment in Bob Dylan's "The Bootleg Series," a collection of more recent outtakes, unreleased songs, and live tracks. And here I am in Guatemala of all places, listening to it streaming from Rhapsody. (This isn't supposed to work, by the way. Rhapsody is supposed to just be limited to use in the U.S.--as are a lot of other online services. But when I fire up my laptop, Rhapsody logs right in, so I get to listen to Bob).

First reactions. The track "Girl From the Red River Shore" is amazing, I don't know how this track was left off Time Out of Mind. By now, it's become a cliche to say that Dylan's rejected tracks would be someone else's greatest hits, but I think that this rejected track would have been one of Dylan's greatest hits. "Born in Time" is a good corrective to the only other version of this song that had been released (I think), a pretty tepid cover by Eric Clapton on his Pilgrim album. The alternate take of "Ain't Talking" (from his most recent studio album, Modern Times) has a better groove, I think, than the album version. I also like "Ring Them Bells" from Dylan's 1993 gig at the Supper Club in NYC. Can some kind soul send me the mp3 of "Tight Connection to My Heart" from this gig? The studio version of that song (from Empire Burlesque) has terrible production, but this live version that I used to have on my computer was great. Needless to say, a live version of "Tight Connection" isn't on this new release, but there's a lot of other great stuff to make up for it. There may be a proper review of this album forthcoming from me. But for now, you'll just have to content yourself with watching the video for "Tight Connection to My Heart." I wasn't kidding about the terrible production choices on this song, but I also think you can hear that it's a good song underneath all of the unfortunate drum sounds and back-up singing. The video is incredibly hilarious, I have no idea whether it's a joke or not. After all, it was the 1980s . . .

Bono, The King of Ireland

The other thing that I’m thinking about right now is the bizarre version of American culture that gets transmitted to countries abroad. Please forgive the general naïveté of this. This is my first extended trip abroad, and I’m trying not to have too many, “Oh gosh, this gives me such a new perspective on life in America” moments. But I will say a few things.

At least in one of the cafes that I often go to in order to mooch off their free wireless internet (and electricity), they play awful, horrendously bad music. I’m talking things like “My Heart Will Go On” and lame covers of tunes like “Wonderful Tonight,”—and this is when they’re not playing smooth jazz. (And by the way, do you remember how ploddingly slow “My Heart Will Go On” is? The song seems to last for about an entire year.)

If all people in other countries know about the U.S. is George W. Bush and crappy music, I can understand why we have a bit of an image problem now. In the 1950s, the state department sent jazz musicians to various countries to convince them to remain loyal to the United States during the Cold War. This history is detailed in Penny von Eschen’s excellently-titled book, “Satchmo Blows Up the World.” But for those of you who haven’t read it, it was especially important that the U.S. send over African-American jazz musicians to counter ideas that black people were being treated poorly: the Cold War also being the era of civil rights agitation. One of the Soviet Union’s propaganda tools was to insist that America’s constant harping on freedom was hollow since it didn’t treat African-Americans as equal citizens. The sight of Dizzy Gillespie and Louis Armstrong and an American flag on the same stage was supposed to counter this idea. Also, the musicians were supposed to just present a positive version of America, an America where great music and great culture were being produced.

It seems to me, at least, that we could use a contemporary jazz ambassador program to counter some of the negative images of America that exist abroad. I guess the parallel now would be to send Muslim Americans abroad to stump for the country, but I honestly don’t know of any prominent Muslim American musicians. (And do tell me if I’m overlooking someone obvious.) And jazz itself has taken something of a downturn in popularity since the 1950s (in relative, if not in absolute terms—and this is a key point to remember. More people than ever buy and listen to jazz and classical music. It’s just that elite culture—which, by roughly 1960, jazz had become—has lost its claim to being the sole arbiter of good taste and the only product available in the marketplace. So when people talk about the decline of jazz or classical music, this is what they’re really talking about: the fact that their preferred music no longer sets the standards by which other musics are judged.).

So for maximum effect, the U.S. probably shouldn’t be sending out jazz musicians. But if things turn around for my country in January, I do think that one of the steps toward improving our standing around the world might be to send people like Bruce Springsteen, Bob Dylan, John Legend, Erykah Badu, Norah Jones, Wilco, and others on goodwill tours around the world. Let people know that there’s more to America than the one-dimensional view they get from television and crappy music in cafes and bus stops.

A brief interruption

Jack Zaleski is the editor of my hometown paper, The Fargo Forum. I’ve never taken much stock in what he has written before, but I like this column on Sarah Palin, her faux-folkishness, and the general (and alarming) denigration of life on the mythical elite East Coast in favor of a somehow more American, more “authentic” (to use my favorite word from the world music survey class that I teach) small town value system. To flip around John Cougar Mellencamp, I got nothing against the small towns. But how are small towns more representative of the “real” America (whatever that is) than cities like New York, Philadelphia, or San Francisco?


Conceded: Sarah Palin and Joe Biden performed quite well in Thursday’s vice presidential debate in St. Louis. Gov. Palin did not self-destruct or look like a moose in the headlights, as she did a few days before in an interview with Katie Couric of CBS News. Sen. Biden was not condescending, and he dialed down his legendary go-on-forever rhetoric, which tends to put listeners off.

But there was this: While responding to something Biden said, Palin made a smarmy remark (embellished with an oh-so-phony smile) about “East Coast politicians.” It was yet another subtle jab at a part of the nation she and her fans apparently believe doesn’t measure up to their view of the “real” America. It’s become a drumbeat of insults that seems to be a tenet of the political gospel according to Palin.

Talk about condescension. She uses her tiresome “hockey mom” and “small-town mayor” references to suggest she’s somehow better than those millions of Americans who live in big cities, small cities or on the coasts. The last time I looked, the East Coast was part of the United States; one of those “East Coast politicians,” Sen. Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, was one of John McCain’s ardent supporters; McCain was trolling for votes on the East Coast, where millions of voters live, mostly in cities.

Maybe there’s political capital in identifying with the myth of small-town values. But anyone who’s lived in a small town (as I have) understands that small towns have no corner on the values market. A case could be made that small towns are insular hotbeds of family dysfunction, business back-biting, alcohol abuse and political corruption. In other words, no different from anyplace else, except the societal dramas are played out on small stages, which means everyone knows everyone else’s problems, failures, foibles, dalliances and family histories. (“Well, sure the kid’s in trouble. He’s just like his no-good ol’ man …”)

Coming from Alaska, Palin is standing on mushy permafrost when she gets glassy-eyed about her small-town values. Alaska has lots of small towns (even Anchorage isn’t large by national standards), but enjoys one of the highest rates of alcoholism in the nation. It’s right up there with divorce, rape and child abuse. Its remoteness tends to attract misfits, criminals and other assorted characters, many of whom embrace “values” that wouldn’t fit in Palin’s mythical small towns. The state has its own brand of oil-lubricated corruption. Can you say “Sen. Ted Stevens” or “Gov. Frank Murkowski”? And Palin concedes as much by touting her personal fight against the bad guys. Where did all that corruption come from? The awful East Coast? Or was it homegrown in small Alaskan towns, nourished by the values Palin celebrates?

Don’t be fooled by Palin’s image-making. When she does her “you betcha” and “by golly” shtick, remember, it’s rehearsed political spin, not the real thing you might hear at a lutefisk supper in Kindred or Barnesville.

The 40 Year-Old Genius

The 12-Year Old Genius was Stevie Wonder’s first live album, even though it was released when he was actually 13. He may have been 12 when the recordings were made, so I’m willing to give Motown the benefit of the doubt here. Anyway, it features a bunch of songs that would become staples of his, one of which (“Fingertips”) made it onto the excellent 3-LP Looking Back compilation that I bought at the brilliant used records store (indeed, it’s actually called Marvelous Records) on 40^th street in West Philly.

Genius, though, is one of those tough words. I have to admit that, in general I don’t really buy what the word is trying to get at (and here I am ascribing agency to words!). I don’t really believe that certain people are “geniuses”—somehow above and beyond the usual capacities of intelligence—and others aren’t. I know that it’s a word that gets thrown around a lot in musical/musicological discourse around people like Beethoven, Mozart, Ellington, Charlie Parker, Ray Charles, and my man, Stevie. Obviously, the concept of the “genius” has done a lot of damage in conjunction with European colonial projects, and it has only recently been appropriated by groups (women, people of color, etc.) that were formerly on the receiving end of the genius stick, so to speak. Guy is writing about genius right now, so, who knows, maybe he’ll drop something that will help me come to better terms with the word, though I somehow think that just appropriating the word against the power structure isn’t the answer either, unless it’s a “strategic” (see Spivak) appropriation. Oh, ha ha ha. I’m so clever. Gotta love it whenever you can work in a Spivak reference.

Anyway, the MacArthur genius grants were just announced last week, and I’ve taken something of an interest in them, if only because I personally know fairly well two people who have received them in the past and the MacArthur people have given a lot of much-needed money to jazz musicians over the years (Max Roach, George Russell, Steve Lacy, Anthony Braxton, John Zorn). The great thing about the MacArthur genius grants, I think, is that it gives money to interesting people to work on projects that they may have a difficult time finding popular support for.

So this year, Alex Ross, classical critic for The New Yorker, author of the award-winning and bestselling book The Rest is Noise, and keeper of a blog of the same name won a genius grant this year. Now, let me get this out of the way first. I really like Alex Ross’s blog. I really like his writing for The New Yorker. I thoroughly enjoyed reading The Rest is Noise (the book), and I look forward to reading what he writes in the future. I also feel a little bit validated that his taste in music is pretty similar to mine (Dylan, Radiohead, minimalism—though I just can’t get into Sibelius the way that he is. It reminds me too much of bad film music).

But I still can’t help but be a little bit surprised that he won a genius grant. The Rest is Noise is great, but it isn’t really a fresh look at anything. I mean, OK, maybe it was the first time that some of the more recent 20^th century classical composers were talked about in an intelligent way in a book put out by a major press. But there’s nothing revolutionary about the way that he writes the history. It’s incredibly competent, well-informed, with interesting opinions and interpretations. But that’s it.

I mean, maybe the MacArthur people know something I don’t and that he’s got a great project in the works that he just needs a bit of bread to finish, and it’s going to knock us all on our asses. But I somehow doubt it.

I think this is also a case of the rich getting richer. I mean, Alex Ross is probably the best known writer about music (period—classical, jazz, popular, whatever) in the world. He writes for one of the most prestigious publications in the English language. His book was published by Random House and sold a bunch of copies—probably about as many copies as all of the musicological books published last year by university presses combined. (I’m exaggerating. I have no idea what the comparison is. But that seems like it could at least possibly be true.) His book won a ton of awards (National Book Critics Circle Award, and a bunch of others I don’t remember right now and can’t be bothered to look up.) This isn’t a person lacking in resources or recognition.

I have no idea how the MacArthur people pick these things, but I can’t help but think that this was a case of jumping on the bandwagon here. Whatever, I don’t begrudge Ross the money and the recognition because, again, I think he does good work. I just think that there was probably somebody out there doing as interesting work who really could use the institutional support the MacArthur Foundation provides. 500 grand buys a lot of ramen noodles.

And I Ain't Talking About Ritz

The other thing, in terms of old business is this. So Cath and I watched a lot of television when we were in Boston for a couple of reasons. Her parents have cable and we don’t. The TV was in our room. And we were doing a lot of sort of mindless things (packing, putting together envelopes with documents) and the TV was nice to have on to help pass the time. Plus, we have a slight addiction to Law and Order, and Comedy Central was showing a marathon of Chappelle’s Show.

But the other network we watched a lot of was the Food Network. Don’t get me started on the various chefs on this network and the bizarre personalities that they either have or affect. But one thing in particular stands out. Paula Deen, the older woman with a Southern accent (though I’m reasonably certain she’s from, like, New Jersey, and not Savannah, Georgia, like her wikipedia page says) was preparing an engagement dinner for her brother Bubba (really). She made homemade pork rinds by (if I remember correctly) baking the skin off a ham. When she made them, they were really crispy and looked very tasty, although I have to confess that I’ve never actually eaten a pork rind. In fact, they were so crispy that when she cracked one, she described the sound it made as, “That’s music to a cracker’s ear.”

Really? “Music to a cracker’s ear?” I clearly know what she was getting at, but I have to admit that I was surprised to hear such a thing on television. Is “cracker” being reclaimed as a term of endearment? I know that lots of people (including my former professor at Columbia, Aaron Fox, and my current Penn colleague, Jennie Noakes) have written about how terms like “redneck” and “hillbilly” are being used within communities, after having formerly been used by outsiders as terms of abuse. (And for our purposes, it’s particularly interesting that this often happens around music. Also, there’s obviously a huge discourse about this with the n-word, too.) But cracker? At least according to our friends at urbandictionary.com, the etymology of that word comes from the crack of a slavemaster’s whip, hardly the type of thing one would want to rehabilitate and valorize. In fact, my experience is that “cracker” is primarily used by African-Americans to refer to white racists. Is this something that Paula Deen wants to identify with?

Whatever. I mean, I understand that words only have the meanings that we choose to give them, that no meaning is self-evident, that there’s a “struggle for the possession of the sign” (Hebdige), that “il n’y a pas hors-texte” (Derrida), and that words are free-floating signifiers. And I should also put it out there that I don’t really have any stake in this game. The peculiar kind of semi-urban Upper Midwestern Lutheran whiteness that I was born into doesn’t really contain “crackers.” I like to think it’s because there isn’t very much racism in the community I grew up in, but that may just be me looking back with rose-colored glasses.

So, what’s up with “cracker”? Is this a term of endearment now? Can I call one of my white friends a “cracker” and have it taken the right way. And for my purposes, the other thing that I’m really interested in is: is there music out there that deals with “crackers” in a positive light? Questions, questions.