your current music-related pet theories/questions/investigations/dilemmas

as a person

Sorry to hijack your thread, Jody.))))

YLT - also a big problem. Love Fakebook, love the idea of the band, great people ... just about hate everything else. I can engage fakebook as a fellow traveller- a wonnerful selection of chunes. all the other stuff seemed sorta dead on arrival.

The engaging thing about pop is just continuing to discover the really good stuff, the way everybody does. Those happy accidents when you find yourself in the market or the sports arena saying "hey, what's this?". It's hard to resist its charms; it's aggressive. it isn't music I follow with dedication, but I love love love the way the best stuff is so arresting. Since I usually busy myself with all manner of goofy arcana, I really like being oblivious to the current chart-pop... stepping out of hyper-music-nerd mode and asking friends- "what the heck is that song that goes [x-y-z]?!"

Anyway, Jody it seems you're groping towards an aesthetic .. A flag to put in the ground? It's tough (he writes as he listens to an mp3 of Poison's 'Unskinny Bop'), but I'm just thankful for writers who HAVE one. From my seat the Carducci book, antithetical to my own (current) thinking as it may be, is pretty essential. I would like to see someone marry his conviction & lucidity to pop... (perhaps someone has and i've missed it..?)

i have not actively listened to dance music in a whole year.

"el-p vs communication theory.
noise = distortion of communication, interference which corrupts
meaning and
prevents the 'perfect fit' listener/interpreter. public enemy (etc)
use noise
+ communication (vox) + groove (beats x bass) in order to attract
+repel the
listener simultaneously.
but w/el-p the noise IS the communication, so fantastic damage =
noise(x2) +
groove.
and all because he can't rap! - that is, his flow is poor and unrhythmic, there is little
sense of
rhyme +/or metre in his diction + nunciation {at least to my ears, he
could be
writing in iambic pentameters but i have an idea that he ain't} and
this (lack
of)flow jars w/the music rather than jiving w/it; that is de la
soul/genius/etcetera {pick one from many} fit their rhymes in w/the
beat/groove of the music {specifically the beat, cos then the two
rhythms
(beat+rhyme) = groove (groove being two or more rhythms united, aye?)},
and
yet el-p's flow is insufficient to allow him to do this, so repulsion =
>>>>>attraction, ergo 'difficult', YET he does unite noise(sirens,
feedback,
synths, etcetera) + beat + noise(vox) in some unholy groove based on
repetition of found-sound = music (get some 'sound of the trees' tape
and
listen to it over and over again til you recognise passages of rustling
leaves
like refrains in music, and then walk in a forest and WOW! - nature =
free
jazz!!!).
+ yet el-p's 'noise' (as opposed to his music's noise) is Essential to
the
meaning of the music As A Whole. who listens to the fuckign words
anyway? +
yet you have to.

MBV (say) = [use of]noise as beauty ie; hidden melodies to attract vs
distortion to repel. But el-p is different. His noise is Not
Beautiful - it
is Noise."

Taken from my scraggy notebook after I scribbled it on Friday morning.

(A quick search of allmusic revealed that it was "The Fun and Games Commission")

But 60s Bubblegum is my new obsession. Why is it so good? Why is music so disposable and crappy and plastic so GOOOOOOOOOD? And why isn't this much effort (or non-effort as the case may be?) put into the bubblegum of today? How can something so self referential be so amazing? How did it flower and where did it go?

Should I be ashamed? I always thought that I loved 60s garage better. But no, I love 60s bubblegum better!!! Help me...

I was thinking abt how I need to find and read more books on music theory, to learn some of the jargon so I can try and enjoy a lot of the classical recs that have been piling up at home (I'm a bit stuck actually) (I enjoy a lot of of it from a 'impact on the body' perspective but that isn't really good enough anymore).

The whole dynamic behind the girl group thing is very, very interesting. On the surface, yeah, they were the puppets of their managers/producers/etc. but they also *weren't*, in a very huge, powerful way. It's like, IRL, they were controlled, confined, taken advantage of, sometimes physicall, in Ronnie Spector's case (locked in a 22 room mansion with a nutter). But the lyrics and the way they sang them presented this amazing, powerful, feminine world. The ambivalence of the messages presented - especially the Supremes, they really pushed it. This image of defiance in the face of societal convention, like even though they were aware of the limitations, singing about freedom (even a male's freedom in He's A Rebel or Leader of the Pack) was an identification with that freedom.

Excuse me, I've got to go and dance around the room to some bubblegum now. TOOOOOOO much coffee.

I also don't get the disproportionate Wilco hate. Critics and college stations and the occasional (OH NO EVIL) commercial alt-rok station lurve them, which makes them about one-tenth as omnipresent as the worst imaginable pop act today. Wilco as a "bad band" are far less harmful than, say, Good Charlotte as a "bad band".

(Also, Slug pulls off the live MCing thing marginally better than Boots, since Slug's frantic voice carries over from his records, while Boots' Cali funk drawl loses a lot of subtlety when he has to shout over a sledgehammer of bass.)

also, Nate: just my idle observation, but it seems like you're the one with the real "us (me) vs. them" mentality here, not the pop vs. indie hataz.

ie. one person might say "i find the album to be soulful and emotionally engaging and I like it."

while the other would say "I didn't find this album to be soulful." Cos soul is in the eye of the beholder after all, but could not the second person also add "But I still like it."

When I put it to my brother that soullessness need not be a bad thing, he replied sarcastically: "oh yeah, I HATE having my emotions interfered with when I listen to music." so in the absence of an intelligent response from he, could any soullessness-hataz on ILM tell me why they don't dig music which is soulless (or rather, music which they have found to be soulless.) I would prefer people to say:

"This record is vacuous, and this is a bad thing, because..."

rather than:

"This record is vacuous, and this is a bad thing."

at least, so i think---obviously not fully run its course yet. :)

I don't know if I can respond any more "intelligently" than your brother. For me, listening to music is so tied up with its ability to express, or somehow suggest, emotion, that I have trouble questioning that expectation. I understand that there are other ways of listening to music, and my own listening involves more than just my emotional responses, but without some sort of emotional element in my listening, I am generally not able to sustain interest. Maybe if the sounds as sounds are really exceptional.

Just picked up the lastest book by Nick Hornby, "Songbook," which is simply a series of essays on some of his favorite-ever songs (here's a brief description: http://shop.store.yahoo.com/mcsweeneysbooks/songbook.html ), from "Frontier Psychiatrist" by the Avalanches through.....er.."I'm Like a Bird" by Nelly Furtado (how anyone could rate this as one of their favorite songs eludes me, but wha'ever....I own Marillion albums, so who am I to talk?) In any case, in one chapter, he writes about "Heartbreaker" by ol' Led Zep (although by his own admission, it could may just as well have been "Black Dog", "Whole Lotta Love" or any other of their countless riff-driven pieces), and waxes rhapsodic on the aging process of the average male and how it relates to the appreciation of heavy guitar heroics. Ultimately -- and somewhat predictably -- Hornby asserts that the adoration towards the silver-taloned six-string sorcery of Sir James of Page is a realm populated solely by the young and that while he can still listen to it fondly, it is no longer his music per se. That struck me as rather sad in one way (i.e. it's something we all "grow out" of, which is certainly true in many respects), but on the other hand, I wonder if it's necessarily a total inevitability? Will their ultimately come a time where some of the music I zealously appreciate now (say, vintage Killing Joke) no longer captures my imagination?

anyway don't you dare grow out of k.joke alex!! teen feelings are as real as tiny-grumpy-little-old man feelings!! trust them both!! you may know things now you didn't know then but the opposite is also true

(admittedly i wz more like a tiny grumpy little old man when i wz 17 than i am now but that's valid too)

(and rightly so)

unless of course he means "when i was young" in which case what mark said

Granted, I'm over seven years removed from high school, but WHA?

(Disclaimer: I live in the home state of Kid Johnny Lang)

Yeah, I know it's "Living Loving Maid", not "Heartbreaker", but it's all part of the same song, right?

a) I Love Music.
b) I have a God complex.
c) Sometimes what seems like "the act of recommending" is really just me sitting there trying to figure it all out for myself.
d) I like to conquer things (I have a Napoleon complex). Believing that I thoroughly "get" something is a conquest for me.

Is giving a star rating [using the JBR star rating system - ed.] a gesture based on wanting to understand how both the recording and you stand in a larger world?

Yes.

Well, Coolio, I was curious (and was waiting interminably for my wife in Shakespears & Co. on Broadway for hours, and felt obligated to buy something since I'd been standing around using up their oxygen and space for so long). I've read some of his stuff in the past (notably, of course, "High Fidelity", and some of his stodgier contributions to The New Yorker) and found it entertaining. I don't always agree with him, but he's never bored m. Being that he's so inexcorably linked with music, I was curious as to what he'd have to say about his own favorite stuff. I haven't read the whole book (as, frankly, I find his choices rather baffling and his reasons even more so), and I'd have to say I'm somewhat dissapointed, but whatever. It's also put out by the McSweeny's folks, who I support and admire. They also take great care in the design, presentation and packaging of their works, which is also nice. I don't think I'd recommend the book, but I'd be curious to hear what other folks think about it.

Which is what leaves me clueless as to Nate's complaint.

i.e.: http://www.popjustice.com/sidebuttons/waronindie.gif

I think they hate rock in general ("indie" to them being 'it has guitars and doesn't aspire to glossiness'), which is worse than hating just indie rock (which, depending on what days I read P********, I have done every so often).

There's no Led Zep in my dad's record collection (cos he hates them) and no library on this island has records in it. Also, frankly, there is no one in the world (or at least in my world) who would feel impressed if I told them I've heard Led Zep; I just happen to love the music, and (amazing as this may sound to you) when I play it to my Linkin Park lovin' friends they dig it, too. So lay off, old man.

when did it stop being my music (of my life, talking to me) and start being their music (historical/social context)?

i don't know!

Perhaps it's because I saw Mindflayer again last night and am working on a project about Providence and the Olneyville scene.

I've been pondering the bitter relationship between irony and cyncism in music, mostly from a criticism perspective.

More internally, I've been wondering why I have such a negative visceral reaction towards certain kinds of music and where it stems from. As I get older I have been trying to figure out the origin of my musical preferences; is it nature or nuture that created my personal taste.

Also, there are certain acclaimed artists that I go to great lengths to dislike. I feel bad about this.

Jody Beth - Thanks - there are things that have puzzled me ever since I started reading here, and your answer gives me a plausible entry point into some other posts, as well.

Other people: Do other people feel this way, too - that they want to "get" music in order to conquer it?

I feel like I want to understand things, too - sometimes music - but the "conquest" part I have no interest in. At worst, I think I use "understanding" as a kind of excuse to feed my desire to order things - here, my tentatively equivalent gesture isn't giving anything a rating, but rather hearing (and often acquiring copies of) every recording by a given artist that I can manage to. I doubt that doing so gives me much more understanding, but I indulge the tendency to some extent anyway, because, really, it's that I'm probably trying to calm myself. There are other reasons I do it, such as that I have a desire to take care of the memory / artifacts of things I care about, and that I have a situational fear of losing things I care about (for instance, I never have to own records by The Clash, as I figure I'll just be able to hear someone else's, at least for now, but I'm afraid I will hurt somehow if I didn't have the Cravats records somewhere safe (on my shelf, maybe, where they somehow belong)). As for recommending music to people, I love making CDs for people where I'm actually inspired to put something on it that's especially meant for them, but, really, why would (should) anyone care what I think is good? I'll listen or read when other people speak or write about music, but I don't care to know who's supposed to be culturally important, or whether something's classic or dud, and I don't think I ever believe anyone when they tell me - usually, at that point, my mind tries to reach out to someone, probably real and not too far away, who couldn't care less.

This is a personality weakness. But at this point I feel comfortable blaming Beck for his bad records anyway.

There's a connection I wasn't expecting, but as far as I know I have heard almost no death metal.

Things I've been thinking about, short and long-term:

- Marcello's Spector essay.
- Nick Hornby as punk paradigm-smasher
- The shortcomings of glamour in pop music
- Springsteen and Jack Kirby
- Music weblogs and their potential
- 70s chart pop

Things I am thinking about music-wise:

-- utopian traces in what now seems to be called trance (Divine Inspiration, DJ Sammy etc)
-- slow-percolating stuff on temporal aspirations in music: ie calls back to past / appeals to future / wishes to exist in perpetual present
-- (stolen from popjustice) how to fill the Steps-shaped hole in my life.

Er, counterpoint?

My curiosity's piqued (peaked?)....please expound, Tom!