From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V1 #203 Reply-To: loud-fans@smoe.org Sender: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Errors-To: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Precedence: bulk loud-fans-digest Monday, August 20 2001 Volume 01 : Number 203 Today's Subjects: ----------------- Re: [loud-fans] Hornby ["Andrew Hamlin" [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey [Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby >You'd have to do a lot of work to convince me that rebellion >used to be primarily concerned with establishing productive social discourse >and now it's just petulance. I think it's always mainly been for effect, and >only a small minority ever has much of a cogent agenda in mind (so, for >example, a lot of mindless rap-metal party bands like Limp Bizkit, but >lurking behind them Rage Against the Machine; lots of hip-hop about clothes >and pimping, and then a few songs about inner-city police response-time and >racial profiling). My only criticisms here: your examples seem short-sighted relative to the long-term status of the situation you describe, and the phenomena does, I must admit, seem deeper and more complicated to me. I just finished reading David Haju's POSITIVELY 4TH STREET and the nascent folk scene's internal entanglements never cease to amaze me; the rebellion (through protest, with the hope of spreading enlightenment) and blacklisting of Pete Seeger and the Weavers, to be sure, but on the other hand, Joan Baez's conscious decision to bring a political message (and a cogent agenda) to her work, after quite some time of "simply" folk-singing. Someone else might have a different perspective, but I'd always assumed, even after reading WHEN WE WERE GOOD, that this whole era, and all involved, got politically and socially galvanized from the get-go. Also--an observation, not a criticism--"establishing productive social discourse" is the rub. So many people, and so many movement (I'll not exempt myself from the former category) desire, with or without knowing it, simply to put their own point across. That's why Steven Stills' "Singin' songs/and carryin' signs/Mostly say, 'Hooray for our side'" sits head, shoulders, collarbone, nipples, and trunk above a long list of records neither starting nor ending with "Crack's No Worse Than The Fascist Threat." Mindless, mindless, Andy "I think I used to know that guy." - --Paul H. Henry on http://www.brunching.com/features/yourroommate.html ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 16:55:02 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: [loud-fans] a panther cyst? Peevage again! For whoever was complaining about pronouncing silent sounds in words, or adding sounds that aren't there even in letter form: - ---------- Forwarded message ---------- Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 08:28:46 -0400 From: Wordsmith From: M. Roult (roultm) Subject: epenthesis Epenthesis is responsible for the "p" in "Thompson," originally "Thomas's son." One example of epenthesis cited by the preeminent linguist Noam Chomsky was his own last name, generally pronounced as if it were spelled "chompsky." In honor of Dr. Chomsky, one of the chimps at one of the labs where they were trying to teach chimps sign language was named Nim Chimpsky. The pun was a fitting tribute! - -------------------------------- - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Watson! Something's afoot...and it's on the end of my leg:: __Hemlock Stones__ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 17:02:36 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] Hornby On Sat, 18 Aug 2001, dmw wrote: > > this seems to be one of the silver linings of the new trend in weird > coined names for companies (suntrust? eww!) -- the unexpected double > meanings. fer zample, when one of the companies i worked for changed its > name to "integic," all i could think of was one of the people i knew there > trying to say the word "integrity" and giving up half-way through with a > reflexive "ick!" at the end. tickled me no end. they think it's a > feminine rhyme with "strategic"...but we know better, don't we? There was a health-care concern around here for a while with the stunningly appalling name of "Emphysys" - yes, a health-care firm chose a name, six of whose eight letters begin the word "emphysema." Then there's "Accenture" (ex Andersen Consulting), which should be some sort of dental device...and amusingly, given that it includes "accent," is unstable in terms of accent. Is that "akSENTyur" or "AKsentyur" or what? - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::the sea is the night asleep in the daytime:: __Robert Desnos__ ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:25:23 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: Re: [loud-fans] re: On Sat, 18 Aug 2001, Brian Block wrote: > 2. Blink 182, since Jeff dragged them into this, i will absolutely defend as > good lyricists. They write from an adolescent perspective, but they write > with utter conviction and seem like basically good people trying very hard > to figure the world out without damaging too much in the meantime. The fact > that they become less adolescent over time implies sincerity and > autobiography, but even if they WERE taking years off their mental age to > write this way, it is perfectly possible to empathize with adolescence for > good reasons (teacher/counselor reasons, sympathetic presence reasons) > rather than just money. I didn't drag them into this; Nick Hornby did. I read a few of their lyrics at their website, heard a few tracks, watched a teeny, blurry, blotchy RealVideo. Some of the lyrics are amusing in an offhand sort of way - nothing I read (three or four songs) pissed me off. The music was okay - standard issue pop-punk. On this basis, if they were on the background, I wouldn't mind - but I don't feel compelled to run out and buy their records either. It is possible to empathize w/adolescence - case study Westerberg's "Sixteen Blue," Chilton and Bell's "Thirteen" - but that's not the same thing as pretending to be one, in the most crude and obnoxious ways. It is, obviously, a judgment call as to when one crosses over into the other, or whether just having fun & being entertaining crosses over. Since apparently naming specific bands pisses people off, I'll simply state that I see a lot of that crossing over. The point of this discussion wasn't to indict anyone's tastein music; it was (a) to say that from my pov, Hornby's article isn't completely out to lunch and (b) there seems to be more crap on the charts now than at many times in the past. > 3. Bands that choose to channel anger probably aren't angry all the time, > but then, bands that write from broken-hearted, in-love, or intellectually > penetrating (hi, Scott Miller) perspectives probably aren't like that all > the time either. The emotions that you best channel into songs can still be > valid at the time of writing, and no assumption of commerciality is > necessary. Saying "fuck" a lot isn't my idea of eloquence, but neither is > saying "baby" or "ba ba ba". I'm not arguing that bands should play angry songs only when they're angry, or sad songs only when they're sad - that they should be "authentic" at all times or some such. I'm not really sure which point in NH's article this comment addresses - but it seems to me that the range of emotions allowed on the charts these days is considerably reduced, and considerably oversimplified. YMMV. No, "baby baby baby" isn't eloquent - often, it's just a syllable for singers to surround notes with - but neither does it have any particular effect (which is why it's often just nonsense syllables instead). I don't know of any singers who just scat-sing on "fuck" (although that'd be pretty fuckin' funny); instead, they mostly seem to use it for its time-honored effect of conveying anger, outrage, shock, what have you. But it's overused, and I think many acts will toss a handful of "fucks" onto their record just to get a Parental Advisory sticker. I've read articles in which teens admit they're likelier to buy such stickered records, and bands admit they intentionally try to get their records so stickered. That's a whole lot different from deciding, as a lyricist, that saying "fuck" is the best way to get your ideas across. I.e., it's a cynically calculated move to increase sales: my point. (No, this isn't new - it's a question of degree.) > 5. If some of the bands ARE in it in large part for money and fame, is this > supposed to make them different from the Partridge Family, Herman's Hermits, > the Monkees, the Captain and Tennille, Pat Benatar, Debbie Gibson, etc etc? > I apologize if i have misrepresented any of those six, but the point should > stand. In intention, no. But as I said in discussing the way the music industry works now as opposed to then, I persist in believing that sixties producers (and into the seventies, I'd say) thought the quickest way onto the charts was getting a catchy song sung by a pretty face. What's happened since then is the pretty face has increased in importance; the catchy tune is almost unnecessary, since that function is carried almost entirely by musical image and stylistic considerations. It's as if cars - which certainly are sold on image, as well as ability to get you from one point to the other - no longer *did* get you from one point to another: so long as you looked good sitting in your parked car, you were okay. It's not that hard: to my ears, there are fewer and fewer actual songs on the charts. That's why so-called "power pop" is a ridiculous misnomer: it's about the most unPOPular style around. Please note: "actual songs" are not the only thing I like or value. There are other, effective ways to write interesting music. But it seems to me that most of the hits I've heard come from prefab parts in a box: this drum sound, this synth sound, this little guitar thing, this rhythm, this little nominal melodic noodling around a vaguely blues-based scale. They don't sound written by songwriters, or composed or arranged by musicians; they sound manufactured by consultants. > I defy anyone to show that the modern hits chart is unusually > commerce-driven or shallow next to any FAIR consideration of the charts of > the past, including the glory days of the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five. And what would a fair consideration of the charts be? It seems fair to me to look at (as two recent examples) charts from exactly X years ago: you're not cherry-picking the particular charts that happen to have all the good songs on them, you're just saying "on this day in 19XX." > And i don't like people dismissing a band as "not worthy of analysis" if > they haven't given any sort of analytical attention. It's fair not to > choose to look closely; it's not fair to then proclaim oneself right. The whole point of Hornby's article is that he *did* look closely...unlike any number of folks guilty of throwing in negative references to bands they haven't listened to at all. (On casual occasion, I might have done that: mea culpa.) And again: if rock, or pop, or some rock or pop, is *supposed* to be instantly appealing, ephemeral, and of its moment, how much analysis *should* it bear? How closely are you looking before your own navel gets reflected back at you? (Yes, that is lint on your computer screen - sorry.) But if you're alluding to my comment that, axiomatically, *some* music *somewhere* is going to be thrown together for strictly commercial reasons, and if it is so thrown together, the odds are it's not worthy of musical analysis...well, surely there are exceptions, but I think in general such musical analysis is a misapplication of tools: since no one was trying to do anything musically interesting, why look for it? Why not look for a Marxist analysis of culture in the lyrics of Fabian? Because there's no reason to expect to find it. (There are all different kinds of ways people can react to or interpret those lyrics, or make them mean things in their life. But that's different from saying "Fabian notes the radical disjunction between use value and commodity value.") Again I ask: What's at stake here, that people want to argue that the top 10 is no better or worse than it once was? I don't think there's any necessary relation between the health of music in general and the health of the top 10. And given that, probably, most consumers of the top 10 are, nearly by definition, *not* consumers of music per se,(*) you could almost argue that there is not likely to be any necessary relation between the smaller and larger samples. Those consumers (and I know this from most of my friends, most of whom are not music fanatics) buy music primarily as a social good: it bears certain associations, it has certain functions, etc. They simply don't think in the terms most of us do here - what about that guitar sound, that melody, that chord sequence, etc. Nothing wrong with that - but to me, the two things can coexist...but they don't anymore, as much. Instead, everything's constructed solely to fit in w/those social appeals, functions, images, nostalgias, etc. (*) because in order to be a mega-hit, a record must sell to people who do not regularly buy records. - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::sex, drugs, revolt, Eskimos, atheism:: ------------------------------ Date: Sun, 19 Aug 2001 18:32:08 -0500 (CDT) From: Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey Subject: [loud-fans] post re list-approved music I have a question about Big Star's third album. In the Ryko reissue, "Dream Lover" is placed, unflatteringly, as a bonus track...after a few covers that are clearly divergent stylistically from the album as a whole. And yet, in the notes, someone (Jim Dickinson?) is quoted as saying that "Dream Lover" was among the songs recorded during the _Sister Lovers_ sessions and was intended for inclusion on that album (which, as most of us know, was never released in its intended form...that form never actually having been decided upon). It seems blatantly obvious, both from the song itself and from the liner notes, that "Dream Lover" belongs as part of the album proper, with most of the covers ("Till the End of the Day," "Nature Boy," and maybe "Whole Lotta Shakin'") being more obviously bonus-track like. So what gives? - --Jeffrey with 2 Fs Jeffrey J e f f r e y N o r m a n The Architectural Dance Society www.uwm.edu/~jenor/ADS.html ::Drive ten thousand miles across America and you will know more about ::the country than all the institutes of sociology and political science ::put together. __Jean Baudrillard__ ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V1 #203 *******************************