From: owner-loud-fans-digest@smoe.org (loud-fans-digest) To: loud-fans-digest@smoe.org Subject: loud-fans-digest V7 #534 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 Wednesday, October 22 2008 Volume 07 : Number 534 Today's Subjects: ----------------- [loud-fans] E on PBS [1325carter@comcast.net] Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time ["outbound-only email address" ] Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time [treesprite@earthlink.net] Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time ["Matthew Weber" ] Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time [treesprite@earthlink.net] Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS ["Joseph M. Mallon" ] Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time [Tim Walters ] Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS ["Joseph M. Mallon" ] Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS ["Michael Mitton" ] ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:40:17 +0000 From: 1325carter@comcast.net Subject: [loud-fans] E on PBS This sounds fascinating. The full article is linked below. "Eels lead singer Mark Oliver Everett, known as E, goes on a quest to learn more about his father and his fathers work Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, which debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. The documentary, which originally aired in the UK and was produced by the BBC and now airs as part of Nova, will also be viewable online as of Wednesday." http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/tv_documentary/2008_Oct_21_parallel_worlds_parallel_lives ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:43:32 -0400 From: "outbound-only email address" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time Bradley: " Do you understand why an A-D-G song with three tons of strings and a banjo on it does not sound at all like Van Dyke Parks?"" I kinda think what you're really complaining about (in both cases, although I didn't read the article you linked originally) is people writing about music without a technical grounding in theory and the ear to apply it. I certainly wrote an awful lot (maybe a lot of awful) reviews before I had the capacity to recognize an A-D-G song as such, and I don't always think about chord patterns even now. I don't think it's a problem for people to write about music without understanding what makes it tick (I take a much dimmer view of people throwing around specific technical terms imprecisely), but it does lead to facile comparisons like "anything with strings" is like "some other thing with strings" and my personal peeve, "breathy female sopranos always sound like some other breathy female soprano." ** On the other hand,at least some of those facile comparisons may be useful for an audience that may also largely tend to hear and respond to music without thinking about it technically. And writing about singing voices, I would argue, is damnably hard. I tend to think that what makes a genuinely compelling singer is actually all the stuff that happens outside the technique, because technically near-perfect singing often isn't compelling, and there are plenty of compelling singers with a marked lack of (conventional) technique. I don't know Callahan's work well enough to comment, but I think it's pretty hard to write objectively abut why a voice like John Lydon's or David Thomas's can be so effective: it's not the notes, it's not necessarily the phrasing (in the sense of timing), it's aspects of the delivery that communicate the singer's relationship to the song (and maybe things beyond the song). And there's something about it that's not _purely_ subjective because a lot of people react similarly to those voices (although of course many people hear it just as bad singing). But I don't think many writers have the vocabulary to tackle that in a rigorous way, and I don't think Pitchfork's audience would have the patience for reading it anyway. ** I perpetrated that plenty of times, but I'm trying to do better now ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:44:18 -0400 From: "Michael Bowen" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time By contrast, I was reading the three latest "Music - What Happened?" columns by Our Scott this morning, and even in the abbreviated format he uses, he lays out excellent cases why he likes what he likes. He discusses everything from lyrics to how the mid-range frequencies are recorded with precision and style. MB ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:39:56 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: treesprite@earthlink.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time >By contrast, I was reading the three latest "Music - What Happened?" >columns by Our Scott this morning, and even in the abbreviated format >he uses, he lays out excellent cases why he likes what he likes. He >discusses everything from lyrics to how the mid-range frequencies are >recorded with precision and style. He also does a great job of throwing up his hands when he doesn't really know _why_ something makes his list -- he just digs it! His entry on the Stone Roses is hilarious! B ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:48:30 -0700 From: "Matthew Weber" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time On Mon, Oct 20, 2008 at 6:31 PM, wrote: > >It's unfortunate but true that for some people, just liking something > isn't > >enough; they have to justify their reactions by inventing reasons why what > >*they* like is better than what anyone else likes. But hey, c'est la vie, > >and vive la difference, etc. > > I'm with you on that, but the failure of the piece isn't the content of his > list so much as it is that there's no "why"! I'm not necessarily against the > idea of justifying one's personal tastes in print, but you'd hope that a > piece of writing would provide some kind of defined persepctive so that you > could argue about whether the choices meet the author's criteria. It can be > fun like that! But this article is really just "I like these singers because > they sound like they're singing more than some other singers". > > Your point about indie-centricity is applicable, of course, because it > inspires those classic Pitchfork gut responses like: "Have you actually > heard Van Dyke Parks? Do you understand why an A-D-G song with three tons of > strings and a banjo on it does not sound at all like Van Dyke Parks?" Since > when did Parks replace Brian Wilson as the go-to name to drop in a review of > an album with a ton of vaguely orchestral crap piled on top of it? > > > Several years ago, on this very list, Tim Walters (I think) expressed his frustration at reading a review of a Birdsongs of the Mesozoic disc which characterized the music as "ambient jazz". BotM actually purvey a spiky avant-prog which owes much more to Philip Glass & Elliott Carter's bastard children than to anything approaching either ambient or jazz; but the music was instrumental (therefore "ambient") and features a saxophone (therefore "jazz"). All of which is to say that someone who listens only to hipster indie music is going to have a very limited frame of reference when it comes to anything which deviates a little from his pet subgenre. And a three-chord pop song accompanied by cack-handed string overdubs is going to remind him of that one Van Dyke Parks record he heard once (before trading it in at his local record store). Or maybe it just reminds him of a review he read where Van Dyke Parks is described as "orchestral" (hey, strings = "orchestral", right?). - -- Matt + Whatever a poet writes with enthusiasm and a divine inspiration is very fine. Democritus (c. 460-c. 400 B.C.), Fragment 18 ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 08:51:20 -0700 (GMT-07:00) From: treesprite@earthlink.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time >I kinda think what you're really complaining about (in both cases, >although I didn't read the article you linked originally) is people >writing about music without a technical grounding in theory and the >ear to apply it. Not really in this case -- my complaint is writing an article for a high profile music site that includes a list of artists without some kind of criteria being communicated to the reader for the artists being included and without even a skilled attempt at defending the arbitrary nature of personal taste! > I certainly wrote an awful lot (maybe a lot of >awful) reviews before I had the capacity to recognize an A-D-G song as >such, and I don't always think about chord patterns even now. >On >the other hand,at least some of those facile comparisons may be useful >for an audience that may also largely tend to hear and respond to >music without thinking about it technically. I'd argue that it might do more to turn people off from contemporary music when it's being erroneously compared to things it doesn't really have anything in common with. >And writing about singing voices, I would argue, is damnably hard. I >tend to think that what makes a genuinely compelling singer is >actually all the stuff that happens outside the technique, because >technically near-perfect singing often isn't compelling, and there are >plenty of compelling singers with a marked lack of (conventional) >technique. I don't know Callahan's work well enough to comment, but I >think it's pretty hard to write objectively abut why a voice like John >Lydon's or David Thomas's can be so effective: it's not the notes, >it's not necessarily the phrasing (in the sense of timing), it's >aspects of the delivery that communicate the singer's relationship to >the song (and maybe things beyond the song). And there's something >about it that's not _purely_ subjective because a lot of people react >similarly to those voices (although of course many people hear it just >as bad singing). But I don't think many writers have the vocabulary to >tackle that in a rigorous way, and I don't think Pitchfork's audience >would have the patience for reading it anyway. Yeah, that's really well said and it's the underlying problem with the Pitchfork article. The author could have come up with his own "technical language" (ie "I like singers with gravelly voices" or something) but if you're ultimately going to single out a group of singers you have to have some kind of reason -- something you can communicate to a reader to give your article a point! B ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:03:20 -0700 (PDT) From: "Joseph M. Mallon" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS It is. Sue & I saw it at a sneak preview-kind of thing. It's touching, and has lots of Eels music as well. On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, 1325carter@comcast.net wrote: > This sounds fascinating. The full article is linked below. > > "Eels lead singer Mark Oliver Everett, known as E, goes on a quest to learn more about his father and his fathers work Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, which debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. The documentary, which originally aired in the UK and was produced by the BBC and now airs as part of Nova, will also be viewable online as of Wednesday." > > > http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/tv_documentary/2008_Oct_21_parallel_worlds_parallel_lives > Joe Mallon jmmallon@joescafe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:22:21 -0700 From: Tim Walters Subject: Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time Matthew Weber wrote: > Several years ago, on this very list, Tim Walters (I think) expressed his > frustration at reading a review of a Birdsongs of the Mesozoic disc which > characterized the music as "ambient jazz". True, but it was 2fs, not me, who nailed the syndrome thus: > but the music > was instrumental (therefore "ambient") and features a saxophone (therefore > "jazz"). The current article seems a lot less pernicious to me: a failed attempt to answer a very difficult question (why are some singers more engaging than other, superficially similar singers), rather than a snarky, ignorant hit job. - -- Tim Walters | The Doubtful Palace | http://doubtfulpalace.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:31:26 +0000 From: 1325carter@comcast.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS Tim Goodman, the excellent critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, gave it the highest possible rating: "Every now and again, there's an amazing program on television that comes and goes so quickly, you can't believe the experience was so brief. It seems unfair. "This is not a dramatic culmination, some season finale, that was brewing for weeks. Usually, it's an obscure documentary or some work of nonfiction that's profound but unsexy and thus unable to be spun into hype. You get deeply touched by this random program you caught, perhaps accidentally, and it completely floors you - then vanishes, precisely when you want more. "On Tuesday night, "Nova," a series that has a long track record of greatness, is the program that nails you to the couch. "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" is a one-hour documentary originally produced by the BBC that was first shown in England, despite having a wholly American subject matter...." Full review here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/20/DD1O13KK2P.DTL - -------------- Original message -------------- From: "Joseph M. Mallon" > It is. Sue & I saw it at a sneak preview-kind of thing. It's touching, > and has lots of Eels music as well. > > On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, 1325carter@comcast.net wrote: > > > This sounds fascinating. The full article is linked below. > > > > "Eels lead singer Mark Oliver Everett, known as E, goes on a quest to learn > more about his father and his fathers work Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, > which debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. The documentary, which originally > aired in the UK and was produced by the BBC and now airs as part of Nova, will > also be viewable online as of Wednesday." > > > > > > > http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/tv_documentary/2008_Oct_21_para > llel_worlds_parallel_lives > > > > Joe Mallon > jmmallon@joescafe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:31:26 +0000 From: 1325carter@comcast.net Subject: Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS Tim Goodman, the excellent critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, gave it the highest possible rating: "Every now and again, there's an amazing program on television that comes and goes so quickly, you can't believe the experience was so brief. It seems unfair. "This is not a dramatic culmination, some season finale, that was brewing for weeks. Usually, it's an obscure documentary or some work of nonfiction that's profound but unsexy and thus unable to be spun into hype. You get deeply touched by this random program you caught, perhaps accidentally, and it completely floors you - then vanishes, precisely when you want more. "On Tuesday night, "Nova," a series that has a long track record of greatness, is the program that nails you to the couch. "Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives" is a one-hour documentary originally produced by the BBC that was first shown in England, despite having a wholly American subject matter...." Full review here: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/10/20/DD1O13KK2P.DTL - -------------- Original message -------------- From: "Joseph M. Mallon" > It is. Sue & I saw it at a sneak preview-kind of thing. It's touching, > and has lots of Eels music as well. > > On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, 1325carter@comcast.net wrote: > > > This sounds fascinating. The full article is linked below. > > > > "Eels lead singer Mark Oliver Everett, known as E, goes on a quest to learn > more about his father and his fathers work Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, > which debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. The documentary, which originally > aired in the UK and was produced by the BBC and now airs as part of Nova, will > also be viewable online as of Wednesday." > > > > > > > http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/tv_documentary/2008_Oct_21_para > llel_worlds_parallel_lives > > > > Joe Mallon > jmmallon@joescafe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:41:34 -0700 (PDT) From: Gil Ray Subject: Re: [loud-fans] wet blanket time - --- On Tue, 10/21/08, treesprite@earthlink.net wrote: > >By contrast, I was reading the three latest "Music > - What Happened?" > >columns by Our Scott this morning, and even in the > abbreviated format > >he uses, he lays out excellent cases why he likes what > he likes. He > >discusses everything from lyrics to how the mid-range > frequencies are > >recorded with precision and style. > > He also does a great job of throwing up his hands when he > doesn't really know _why_ something makes his list -- he > just digs it! His entry on the Stone Roses is hilarious! I love reading Scott's music assessments. I really wish he would do a general music blog. I'd eat it up. Gil ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:26:43 -0700 (PDT) From: "Joseph M. Mallon" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS On Tue, 21 Oct 2008, 1325carter@comcast.net wrote: > Tim Goodman, the excellent critic for the San Francisco Chronicle, gave > it the highest possible rating: It was at Tim's TV Hootenany that we saw it. I didn't think it was as awesome as he did, but it is good. Joe Mallon jmmallon@joescafe.com ------------------------------ Date: Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:38:00 -0700 From: "Michael Mitton" Subject: Re: [loud-fans] E on PBS It's worth reminding folks that PBS doesn't have set times to air something at each member station, and your station may not air it at all. So forgive the cliche: Check you local listings. On Tue, Oct 21, 2008 at 6:40 AM, <1325carter@comcast.net> wrote: > This sounds fascinating. The full article is linked below. > > "Eels lead singer Mark Oliver Everett, known as E, goes on a quest to learn more about his father and his father s work Parallel Worlds, Parallel Lives, which debuts tonight at 8 p.m. ET on PBS. The documentary, which originally aired in the UK and was produced by the BBC and now airs as part of Nova, will also be viewable online as of Wednesday." > > > http://www.realityblurred.com/realitytv/archives/tv_documentary/2008_Oct_21_parallel_worlds_parallel_lives ------------------------------ End of loud-fans-digest V7 #534 *******************************