Much to blog about - Obama's appointment of Brown Decision dissenter Wilma Liebman to the chair position of the NLRB, power struggles in the two most dynamic labor unions in the U.S., and much less important, the conclusion of Grant Morrison's Final Crisis, but i don't really have time to write about any of these things right now and instead i will leave you with a list of songs randomly compiled by my ipod.
The temptations - "since i lost my baby"
woody guthrie - "talking fishing blues"
NaS - "Project Roach (ft Last Poets)"
Sleater-Kinney - "I wanna be your Joey Ramone"
The pioneers - "long shot" (not to be confused with their "long shot kick de bucket," which is a different song with the same chord progression.)
Madness - "My Girl"
Lauryn Hill - "Doo Wop/That Thing"
Helium - "All the X's Have Wings"
Destroyer - "Certain Things You Ought To Know"
Refused "New Noise"
good smattering of mid 90s post riot grrrl, 70's "skinhead reggae" and white british appropriations thereof, and, uh, swedish anarchist post-hardcore?
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Showing posts with label music. Show all posts
Friday, January 30, 2009
Tuesday, January 20, 2009
inaugurations
First day of lecture is tomorrow after a break of hermitude, gramsci, and autonomia. I'm suddenly extremely stressed out. It snowed a lot yesterday. I walked through Green-Wood cemetery - whence originate that picture of those geese, snow covering their backs. It was quiet and beautiful, and a nice escape from reading/writing/worrying, though no substitute for the way MLK day should be commemorated, which is in struggle, not shirking from critiquing the more problematic aspects of King's ideology while nevertheless adamantly refusing the neoliberal attempts at cooptation of a leader and organizer who demanded a "radical revolution of values" and was murdered fighting for striking service workers in Memphis, on the very spot where today a crowd watched Barack Hussein Obama's inauguration as the president of the U.S.
I watched the inauguration from my home, flipping back and forth between ABC (cheesy insert shots of the golden gate bridge and various sundry national icons during Aretha's performance, ugh) and PBS (David Brooks and the two historians not named Peniel Joseph, ugh) because ABC got the best picture on my bunnyt ears and PBS had a historian who wrote a book about the black power movement commenting on the inauguration speech instead of like, Doris Kearns Goodwin, who I'm sure is a perfectly nice person and who people tell me is a good historian, but is also a convicted plagiarist and writes books i find entirely uninteresting. Rick Warren apparently asking god's forgiveness for his homophobia was a bizarre spectacle, as was wheelchair-bound Emperor Palpatine. Were i less sympathetic to disability studies critiques, i might conjecture that we had seen medeival literature come to life, not so much physical defacements reflecting inner and innate corruption as the vice president having been literally crippled by his own secrets as he tried to spirit them away from the eyes of historians to god knows where. But of course i don't know what was in the box, and my logic here is complicit in the privileging of certain kinds of bodies.
Anyway, i found a couple of things problematic about the speech - the nationalism, although what else can you expect from a president's inauguration, even this president. The foreign policy stuff, however much more muted and qualified than with the last guy - smart, diplomatic imperialism is still imperialism and it's still in crisis - and that the extremely powerful nods to sweatshop workers, to thie history of the working class, had to be framed by invocations of the gospel of work a la Joe Leiberman on Beinecke Plaza in August 2003. (Joe the traitor kept asserting that "they" - the workers - weren't asking for a lot, kept excusing their struggle's righteousness with fictitious, thankfully, claims as to its narrowness.)
And likewise I'm glad President Obama recognizes the selflessness of workers who accept cutbacks, but i don't think that workers should be expected to, as they say in Italy, "pay for your crisis," that there is a difference between selflessness and exploitation, that who is called upon to sacrifice what for whom is never a neutral set of relationships, always fixed within the shifting ideological and historically produced matrices of race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship.
Among the most powerful moments of the speech was
This was extraordinarily powerful, both because the emotion, the desire for the fulfilment of the dream King described 46 years ago remains a strong component of liberal nationalism, the idea that we can progress towards, are progressing, even have progressed towards an abstract equality that has now reached in the form of president obama, its apotheosis, retains every bit of its hegemony even as the multiculturalism of the 1990s has long since, it seems, given way to the libertarian "post-racialism" of 30rock and south park (which is often just "new racism" in disguise). But, historical objections aside (segregation in DC did not end in the 1940s) this is also powerful because it commemorates what it's stupid to claim as anything other than a victory in a deeper and more profound struggle against histories of race and racism not confined to juridical or representational arenas, that antiracists and pro-POC organizers and activists, workers and thinkers, produced, in a sense, this President in all his contradictory brilliance (here i'm thinking about something Nikhil Singh said at the Policing the Crisis panel back at ASA in october), that his victory (here i'm on my own but inspired by the hope from people bloc) is not simply the victory of neoliberal racial ideology, that he is no mere "centrist," that calling him a neocon in blackface (as i have seen some 'radica;s' allege in the wake of Ken Salazar and Robert Gates and Tim Geithner) is stupid and wrong, however much we need engaged, perceptive critique in the days ahead. To summarize, there were parts of the speech I found deeply moving, not simply as oratory, because they meant that we, at least the we i would like to identify myself with, had won a victory in a struggle that's nowhere near done.
Elizabeth Alexander said it best, more powerfully, my mother thought, bringing to the fore what was and is at stake in what has transpired and what is to come than even the momentous speech her poem followed.
And I would be remiss if I failed to mention Rev. Lowery, who brought my anarchist ass to tears as soon as he started speaking, and who offered not the platitudes of Warren's invocation but instead lessons in organizing.
I watched the inauguration from my home, flipping back and forth between ABC (cheesy insert shots of the golden gate bridge and various sundry national icons during Aretha's performance, ugh) and PBS (David Brooks and the two historians not named Peniel Joseph, ugh) because ABC got the best picture on my bunnyt ears and PBS had a historian who wrote a book about the black power movement commenting on the inauguration speech instead of like, Doris Kearns Goodwin, who I'm sure is a perfectly nice person and who people tell me is a good historian, but is also a convicted plagiarist and writes books i find entirely uninteresting. Rick Warren apparently asking god's forgiveness for his homophobia was a bizarre spectacle, as was wheelchair-bound Emperor Palpatine. Were i less sympathetic to disability studies critiques, i might conjecture that we had seen medeival literature come to life, not so much physical defacements reflecting inner and innate corruption as the vice president having been literally crippled by his own secrets as he tried to spirit them away from the eyes of historians to god knows where. But of course i don't know what was in the box, and my logic here is complicit in the privileging of certain kinds of bodies.
Anyway, i found a couple of things problematic about the speech - the nationalism, although what else can you expect from a president's inauguration, even this president. The foreign policy stuff, however much more muted and qualified than with the last guy - smart, diplomatic imperialism is still imperialism and it's still in crisis - and that the extremely powerful nods to sweatshop workers, to thie history of the working class, had to be framed by invocations of the gospel of work a la Joe Leiberman on Beinecke Plaza in August 2003. (Joe the traitor kept asserting that "they" - the workers - weren't asking for a lot, kept excusing their struggle's righteousness with fictitious, thankfully, claims as to its narrowness.)
And likewise I'm glad President Obama recognizes the selflessness of workers who accept cutbacks, but i don't think that workers should be expected to, as they say in Italy, "pay for your crisis," that there is a difference between selflessness and exploitation, that who is called upon to sacrifice what for whom is never a neutral set of relationships, always fixed within the shifting ideological and historically produced matrices of race, class, gender, sexuality, and citizenship.
Among the most powerful moments of the speech was
This is the meaning of our liberty and our creed, why men and women and children of every race and every faith can join in celebration across this magnificent mall. And why a man whose father less than 60 years ago might not have been served at a local restaurant can now stand before you to take a most sacred oath.
This was extraordinarily powerful, both because the emotion, the desire for the fulfilment of the dream King described 46 years ago remains a strong component of liberal nationalism, the idea that we can progress towards, are progressing, even have progressed towards an abstract equality that has now reached in the form of president obama, its apotheosis, retains every bit of its hegemony even as the multiculturalism of the 1990s has long since, it seems, given way to the libertarian "post-racialism" of 30rock and south park (which is often just "new racism" in disguise). But, historical objections aside (segregation in DC did not end in the 1940s) this is also powerful because it commemorates what it's stupid to claim as anything other than a victory in a deeper and more profound struggle against histories of race and racism not confined to juridical or representational arenas, that antiracists and pro-POC organizers and activists, workers and thinkers, produced, in a sense, this President in all his contradictory brilliance (here i'm thinking about something Nikhil Singh said at the Policing the Crisis panel back at ASA in october), that his victory (here i'm on my own but inspired by the hope from people bloc) is not simply the victory of neoliberal racial ideology, that he is no mere "centrist," that calling him a neocon in blackface (as i have seen some 'radica;s' allege in the wake of Ken Salazar and Robert Gates and Tim Geithner) is stupid and wrong, however much we need engaged, perceptive critique in the days ahead. To summarize, there were parts of the speech I found deeply moving, not simply as oratory, because they meant that we, at least the we i would like to identify myself with, had won a victory in a struggle that's nowhere near done.
Elizabeth Alexander said it best, more powerfully, my mother thought, bringing to the fore what was and is at stake in what has transpired and what is to come than even the momentous speech her poem followed.
Say it plain, that many have died for this day. Sing the names of the dead who brought us here, who laid the train tracks, raised the bridges, picked the cotton and the lettuce, built brick by brick the glittering edifices they would then keep clean and work inside of.
And I would be remiss if I failed to mention Rev. Lowery, who brought my anarchist ass to tears as soon as he started speaking, and who offered not the platitudes of Warren's invocation but instead lessons in organizing.
Amen.
And while we have sown the seeds of greed -- the wind of greed and corruption, and even as we reap the whirlwind of social and economic disruption, we seek forgiveness and we come in a spirit of unity and solidarity to commit our support to our president by our willingness to make sacrifices, to respect your creation, to turn to each other and not on each other.
And now, Lord, in the complex arena of human relations, help us to make choices on the side of love, not hate; on the side of inclusion, not exclusion; tolerance, not intolerance. And as we leave this mountaintop, help us to hold on to the spirit of fellowship and the oneness of our family. Let us take that power back to our homes, our workplaces, our churches, our temples, our mosques, or wherever we seek your will.
Bless President Barack, First Lady Michelle. Look over our little, angelic Sasha and Malia.
We go now to walk together, children, pledging that we won't get weary in the difficult days ahead. We know you will not leave us alone, with your hands of power and your heart of love.
Help us then, now, Lord, to work for that day when nation shall not lift up sword against nation, when tanks will be beaten into tractors, when every man and every woman shall sit under his or her own vine and fig tree, and none shall be afraid; when justice will roll down like waters and righteousness as a mighty stream.
Thursday, January 15, 2009
This is going to be one of those semi-narcissistic blog entries about me in which i try to work in stuff about the rest of the world too. I'm mostly kidding with the disclaimer. I don't think i'm much of a narcissist. You may disagree, of course.
Incomplete number two is about three pages or so from being done. I will finish it tomorrow, i think, then work on my diss proposal for a day or two, then start the final incomplete, which is, i think, going to be a review essay on race and financialization. It was originally going to be about the Birmingham School's race analysis, and maybe i'll decide to go back to that instead. I feel like the financialization stuff is important for understanding the past year and would be an excuse to read Christian Marazzi's Capital and Language, Ian Baucom's SPecters of the Atlantic, and Randy Martin's recent stuff, all of which could be useful for my project(s) broadly concieved.
I spent the majority of "break" in the library, researching, writing or trying to. Bobst is slightly more tolerable when it's less populated, but its fascist (literally, i learned last night) architecture has always unnerved me, far more so than SML's imperialist cathedral to orientalist and colonialist knowledges, say, or the fact that the NYPL was in Ghostbusters and Slimer could phase through that wall at any second, and then, i mean, who ya gonna call? Someone said recently that I reminded them of Jeanine. Not Louis, Jeanine.
Still, there's a feeling of satisfaction on the one hand in vold in making headway on this crap that's been hanging over my head for so long - like i'm actually getting stuff done, mixed with fear, because the papers are going to suck, because now i actually have to be evaluated on this stuff, because what now, because i don't want to be a professor if that means this. (Not to say that i don't respect the hard decisions folks had to make, but if hotel workers ask you to boycott the hotel you boycott the hotel. End of story. Whatever the problematic politics of the same sex marriage movement when they're making alliances with immigrant service worker unions and the American Historical Association fails to stand with them, that is a sad day. Anyway.) I'm also feeling stressed out, because this is taking so long, because I have so much to do this senmester, and because my Plato is rusty - i just remember there's that dude named Kephalos, which means "head" in Greek. I found this funny in high school, not for prurient reasons - get your head out of the gutter, nonexistent reader! More because of the absurdity, maybe the irony of a philosopher or philosopher's consilgliere named "Mr. Head." Also it sounded like the sock puppet from south park which i had not yet fully repudiated then. It's hard to recognize something as libertarian when they're mocking Atlas Shrugged and you're fifteen. Or sixteen. I guess i was sixteen. I'd contextualize the Plato remark, but this is the interwebs and google can come back to hurt your favorite alderpeople.
Still no cease fire in Gaza, no contract in chicago, (and we don't want no peace, we want equal rights and justice.)
At some point in the soonish future i want to write something about Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen before they turn it into a really shitty movie in which the writer has no stake (having forsaken it in protest of DC Comics' refusal to let the copyright revert to him.) And at some point i should really resume critical analyses of the university. Let's start with this.
Back to work for a bit, then sleep, then more work.
EDIT: forgot this last week, and i'll do another tomorrowish
Marnie Stern: Healer
Wally Cox + The Natives: House Party. rare funk track from california. Lot of hammond.
Charlie Parker - Donna Lee
Joe Lovano and Greg Osby - Truth Be Told sadly hadn't listened to this since high school
Mirah -- Exactly Where We're From. Isn't she from like Wynnewood or Bala Cynwyd?
Darkness - Gamith
Run DMC - Hollis Crew. they are going in the rock and roll hall of fame with metallica. They should team up for the black tracksuit album.
Specials - Blank Expression.
De la Soul - Supa Emcees
The Monks - Complication. This song is ridiculous.
Incomplete number two is about three pages or so from being done. I will finish it tomorrow, i think, then work on my diss proposal for a day or two, then start the final incomplete, which is, i think, going to be a review essay on race and financialization. It was originally going to be about the Birmingham School's race analysis, and maybe i'll decide to go back to that instead. I feel like the financialization stuff is important for understanding the past year and would be an excuse to read Christian Marazzi's Capital and Language, Ian Baucom's SPecters of the Atlantic, and Randy Martin's recent stuff, all of which could be useful for my project(s) broadly concieved.
I spent the majority of "break" in the library, researching, writing or trying to. Bobst is slightly more tolerable when it's less populated, but its fascist (literally, i learned last night) architecture has always unnerved me, far more so than SML's imperialist cathedral to orientalist and colonialist knowledges, say, or the fact that the NYPL was in Ghostbusters and Slimer could phase through that wall at any second, and then, i mean, who ya gonna call? Someone said recently that I reminded them of Jeanine. Not Louis, Jeanine.
Still, there's a feeling of satisfaction on the one hand in vold in making headway on this crap that's been hanging over my head for so long - like i'm actually getting stuff done, mixed with fear, because the papers are going to suck, because now i actually have to be evaluated on this stuff, because what now, because i don't want to be a professor if that means this. (Not to say that i don't respect the hard decisions folks had to make, but if hotel workers ask you to boycott the hotel you boycott the hotel. End of story. Whatever the problematic politics of the same sex marriage movement when they're making alliances with immigrant service worker unions and the American Historical Association fails to stand with them, that is a sad day. Anyway.) I'm also feeling stressed out, because this is taking so long, because I have so much to do this senmester, and because my Plato is rusty - i just remember there's that dude named Kephalos, which means "head" in Greek. I found this funny in high school, not for prurient reasons - get your head out of the gutter, nonexistent reader! More because of the absurdity, maybe the irony of a philosopher or philosopher's consilgliere named "Mr. Head." Also it sounded like the sock puppet from south park which i had not yet fully repudiated then. It's hard to recognize something as libertarian when they're mocking Atlas Shrugged and you're fifteen. Or sixteen. I guess i was sixteen. I'd contextualize the Plato remark, but this is the interwebs and google can come back to hurt your favorite alderpeople.
Still no cease fire in Gaza, no contract in chicago, (and we don't want no peace, we want equal rights and justice.)
At some point in the soonish future i want to write something about Moore and Gibbons' Watchmen before they turn it into a really shitty movie in which the writer has no stake (having forsaken it in protest of DC Comics' refusal to let the copyright revert to him.) And at some point i should really resume critical analyses of the university. Let's start with this.
Back to work for a bit, then sleep, then more work.
EDIT: forgot this last week, and i'll do another tomorrowish
Marnie Stern: Healer
Wally Cox + The Natives: House Party. rare funk track from california. Lot of hammond.
Charlie Parker - Donna Lee
Joe Lovano and Greg Osby - Truth Be Told sadly hadn't listened to this since high school
Mirah -- Exactly Where We're From. Isn't she from like Wynnewood or Bala Cynwyd?
Darkness - Gamith
Run DMC - Hollis Crew. they are going in the rock and roll hall of fame with metallica. They should team up for the black tracksuit album.
Specials - Blank Expression.
De la Soul - Supa Emcees
The Monks - Complication. This song is ridiculous.
Tuesday, December 9, 2008
Tomorrow at 5:30 I'll be outside the union square bank of america just a block up from the GSOC office, standing in solidarity with the employees of the Republic Window factory in Chicago who are occupying their factory to demand the back pay owed them/save their jobs. The workers have called for nationwide solidarity actions at noon - there's going to be a big one in Chicago. And an earlier march is being planned here in NY by the IWW leaving from St. Mark's Church at noon, which i might also stop by.
Meanwhile, I think the staples singers put it best:
(I love how the reproductive, feminized labor of the household and domestic service gets placed before waged or unwaged "masculine" "productive" labor and both precede and situate and articulate the nationalist narrative framework through reference to "the control over unpaid labor." Capital v1 p 672. Imperialism's the "materialization of unpaid labor time" spatially diffused and writ large across the globe, the movement of labor and capital, the commodification of workers and the labor of racialized and commoditized workers.)
Edited again to add that this performance precedes "The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community" by a whole year. Also see Silvia Federici's critique of post/autonomist, post/operaist theories of precarity, which i think is at moments extremely insightful, though I disagree with some of her claims.
Meanwhile, I think the staples singers put it best:
(I love how the reproductive, feminized labor of the household and domestic service gets placed before waged or unwaged "masculine" "productive" labor and both precede and situate and articulate the nationalist narrative framework through reference to "the control over unpaid labor." Capital v1 p 672. Imperialism's the "materialization of unpaid labor time" spatially diffused and writ large across the globe, the movement of labor and capital, the commodification of workers and the labor of racialized and commoditized workers.)
Edited again to add that this performance precedes "The Power of Women and the Subversion of Community" by a whole year. Also see Silvia Federici's critique of post/autonomist, post/operaist theories of precarity, which i think is at moments extremely insightful, though I disagree with some of her claims.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
random ten
Television, "Friction."
Wu Tang Clan ft Gerald Alston - "Stick Me for My Riches."
Beaufort Express - "You Got To Do Your Best."
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - "Be Easy"
The Advantage - "Guardian Legend - Corridor I." I love this band.
Linton Kwesi Johnson - "Two Sounds of Silence"
The Advantage - "Ghosts 'n' Goblins"
Jospehine Taylor - "I've made up my mind"
Sonic Youth "swimsuit issue"
The (International) Noise Conspiracy - "The Reproduction of Death." I used to love this band before Rick Rubin got ahold of them. Discuss.
Wu Tang Clan ft Gerald Alston - "Stick Me for My Riches."
Beaufort Express - "You Got To Do Your Best."
Sharon Jones & The Dap Kings - "Be Easy"
The Advantage - "Guardian Legend - Corridor I." I love this band.
Linton Kwesi Johnson - "Two Sounds of Silence"
The Advantage - "Ghosts 'n' Goblins"
Jospehine Taylor - "I've made up my mind"
Sonic Youth "swimsuit issue"
The (International) Noise Conspiracy - "The Reproduction of Death." I used to love this band before Rick Rubin got ahold of them. Discuss.
Friday, September 26, 2008
and sometimes i just ain't in the mood to take my place in back with the loudmouths
So i got those remastered versions of Tim and Pleased to Meet Me today. I was somewhat skeptical about the need for remasters on the twin tone cds. They always sounded perfect to me as is, and the graininess of the earlier CD mixes of Let It Be in particular felt more appropriate to what the album is and is trying to do than the remaster, which gave certain songs a vh1-y feel. But Pleased to Meet Me always sounded terrible on CD - distant, muted, brackish. I'm listening to the remaster now, and the songs that always sounded great sound better - those horns on "Can't Hardly Wait," for instance, now evoke the Memphis soul they were supposed to rather than Huey Lewis and the News, and i can hear subtleties of the guitar riff on "Alex Chilton" that I can't on the original CD version. The songs i usually skip on the album also sound better - "The Ledge" is explosive now, and the lyrics of "Shooting Dirty Pool"'s first verse are now almost comprehensible. "Nightclub Jitters" sounds hte most radically different - the remaster brings the bass way up, and it almost sounds like Sinatra meets Portishead or something.
Tim sounds mostly the same to me, and for me, that's a good thing. I've never had any problem with Tommy Erdelyi's production on that CD. One thing the remaster does is make Left of the Dial slightly cleaner, but not so much that it doesn't sound like what it is, a paean to the 1980s 'alternative' scene. At any rate, "Bastards of Young" and "Here Comes A Regular" sound as good as always, just a little louder, and I'm fine with that. Between them, the two discs have four different versions of "Can't Hardly Wait," one acoustic (which doesn't really work at all), with three different versions of the lyrics. The "Studio Demo" of "Kiss Me on the Bus" has Dinosaur Jr. levels of distorted guitar. "Nowhere is my home," an unreleased track from the Tim sessions, shows how great a guitarist Bob Stinson could be. Pleased to Meet Me has TEN bonus tracks. Some of the unreleased stuff, like "Birthday gal" and the incredible "photo," whose pre-chorus is awesomely reminiscent of Blue Oyster Cult's "burnin' for you," are wonderful. Chris Mars's take on "Cool Water" anticipates Cool Dump (and predates it by two decades.)
My three day-long stint in post-nasal hell caught up with me in the classroom today. It wasn't that I was underprepared so much as that my brain wasn't making the connections i wanted it to, that I just kind of blanked on where I wanted class to go and about a third of the connections i wanted to push people to make. Which sucks, because it was an important week in terms of the readings -- racialized domestic work. emotional labor. affect. Grr. Bobst Library is much more fun at 7 AM.
Mets are currently down 5 to 1 in the eighth. Here's hoping they pull out of it...
\EDIT: in lieu of Arlie Russel Hochschild's work and following Kathleen Barry's own work on flight attendant labor, i should note that "Waitress in the Sky" is an obnoxious, bad, and offensive song from a guy who once expressed admiration of ronal dreagan and said some dumb shit about Vietnam but writes (mostly) amazing songs.
Case in point: "Swingin' Party"
Tim sounds mostly the same to me, and for me, that's a good thing. I've never had any problem with Tommy Erdelyi's production on that CD. One thing the remaster does is make Left of the Dial slightly cleaner, but not so much that it doesn't sound like what it is, a paean to the 1980s 'alternative' scene. At any rate, "Bastards of Young" and "Here Comes A Regular" sound as good as always, just a little louder, and I'm fine with that. Between them, the two discs have four different versions of "Can't Hardly Wait," one acoustic (which doesn't really work at all), with three different versions of the lyrics. The "Studio Demo" of "Kiss Me on the Bus" has Dinosaur Jr. levels of distorted guitar. "Nowhere is my home," an unreleased track from the Tim sessions, shows how great a guitarist Bob Stinson could be. Pleased to Meet Me has TEN bonus tracks. Some of the unreleased stuff, like "Birthday gal" and the incredible "photo," whose pre-chorus is awesomely reminiscent of Blue Oyster Cult's "burnin' for you," are wonderful. Chris Mars's take on "Cool Water" anticipates Cool Dump (and predates it by two decades.)
My three day-long stint in post-nasal hell caught up with me in the classroom today. It wasn't that I was underprepared so much as that my brain wasn't making the connections i wanted it to, that I just kind of blanked on where I wanted class to go and about a third of the connections i wanted to push people to make. Which sucks, because it was an important week in terms of the readings -- racialized domestic work. emotional labor. affect. Grr. Bobst Library is much more fun at 7 AM.
Mets are currently down 5 to 1 in the eighth. Here's hoping they pull out of it...
\EDIT: in lieu of Arlie Russel Hochschild's work and following Kathleen Barry's own work on flight attendant labor, i should note that "Waitress in the Sky" is an obnoxious, bad, and offensive song from a guy who once expressed admiration of ronal dreagan and said some dumb shit about Vietnam but writes (mostly) amazing songs.
Case in point: "Swingin' Party"
Reason #347 Why Pitchfork Sucks
No way is Pleased to Meet Me a better album than Tim!
The former has four great songs and a lot of mediocre ones. The latter has three terrible songs and a lot of great ones. I love them both, but the idea that "One good dose of thunder" cancels out "here comes a regular" seems suspect..., as does the fact that an album that sounds as canned and as crappy as Pleased to Meet Me sometimes did (although i have not yet heard the reissue) could be the one cited as having better sound.
Also, it's kind of amazing that six plus years on, there's still a UOC for the YDN to complain about.
The former has four great songs and a lot of mediocre ones. The latter has three terrible songs and a lot of great ones. I love them both, but the idea that "One good dose of thunder" cancels out "here comes a regular" seems suspect..., as does the fact that an album that sounds as canned and as crappy as Pleased to Meet Me sometimes did (although i have not yet heard the reissue) could be the one cited as having better sound.
Also, it's kind of amazing that six plus years on, there's still a UOC for the YDN to complain about.
Friday, May 30, 2008
procrastinare semper
A couple things as i work through my exam - i wrote three thousand words on Wednesday and about 1800 since. I like what i've written, but i'm not sure if it's exam-ish enough.
First, in response to Alyssa's contention that Indiana Jones and Star Wars are no places to look for political praxis, I want to agree and renew my suggestion that we instead look towards Buffy. Here I am speaking not only of season 4 (Smash the corporate/military/demonic university!) btu also season three, for blowing up (metaphorically) the schools and the giant snakes inside them seems a fairly accurate representation of my political and academic projects over the past nine years (since the founding of the Fieldston Revolutionary Anarchist Collective of Activist Students (FRACAS).) Graduation Day pts 1. and 2., like much of Season 7, are about organizing, about making connections, about challenging folks, pushing folks, about mass armed uprisings at scholastic graduations. Err, um, scratch the last part? And for any FBI, i reaffirm my commitment to bourgie ass nonviolent direct action blah blah blah.
Second, it's friday. Random shuffle: (from a new ipod i haven't burned all my cd collection onto yet. (I go to 20 because i haven't done this in a while)
1. Som Nosso, "Pra Swingar," from Baile Funk 1: The Brazilian Beat Mix.
2. Moldy Peaches "Anyone else but you." From The Moldy Peaches. Enh.
3.The Fatback Band, "Backstrokin' ," from Hustle! The Ultimate Fatback 1969-1984
4.Crass, "Bloody Revolutions" from Best Before 1984
5. Dead Kennedys. "Stealing People's Mail." from Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (and i only just got the joke in the album title now, after owning it for god knows how long.)
6. The Coup, "ShoYoAss." from Pick A Bigger Weapon. Best song on the album by far.
7. Bob Marley, "Downpressor" from The Complete Bob Marley & The Wailers 1967-1972 Part 2
Actually Peter Tosh singing on this dub version, not surprisingly, since it's his song.
8.Grant McLennan, "Lighting Fires" from Intermission Great song. Requiescat in pace.
9.Little Milton "More &More". From Chicago Soul: Electric Blues Funk & Soul
10. Milton Nascimento, "Saidas E Bandeiras," from Clube Moderno Esquina Do Mundo (Scroll Down)
11. The Beatles - "I'm Only Sleeping." from Revolver.
12. The Dramatics - "In The Rain." from Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration and like twelve billion other compilations.
13. Robert Zimmerman. "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall." From The Freewheelin Bob Dylan.
14. Exploding Hearts - "Boulevard Trash," from Guitar Romantic
15, Laura Lee. "Mama's Got a Good Thing." from Chicago Soul: Electric Blues Funk & Soul
16. The Moovers "I love you baby," from Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label
17. The (International) Noise Conspiracy: "The Way I Feel About You" from Armed Love
18. Us, "Let's Do It Today" from Midwest Funk: Funk 45s from Tornado Alley
19. Fela Kuti, "Zombie" from Zombie
20. I-Roy, "Look a Boom" from Don't Check Me With No Lightweight Stuff
First, in response to Alyssa's contention that Indiana Jones and Star Wars are no places to look for political praxis, I want to agree and renew my suggestion that we instead look towards Buffy. Here I am speaking not only of season 4 (Smash the corporate/military/demonic university!) btu also season three, for blowing up (metaphorically) the schools and the giant snakes inside them seems a fairly accurate representation of my political and academic projects over the past nine years (since the founding of the Fieldston Revolutionary Anarchist Collective of Activist Students (FRACAS).) Graduation Day pts 1. and 2., like much of Season 7, are about organizing, about making connections, about challenging folks, pushing folks, about mass armed uprisings at scholastic graduations. Err, um, scratch the last part? And for any FBI, i reaffirm my commitment to bourgie ass nonviolent direct action blah blah blah.
Second, it's friday. Random shuffle: (from a new ipod i haven't burned all my cd collection onto yet. (I go to 20 because i haven't done this in a while)
1. Som Nosso, "Pra Swingar," from Baile Funk 1: The Brazilian Beat Mix.
2. Moldy Peaches "Anyone else but you." From The Moldy Peaches. Enh.
3.The Fatback Band, "Backstrokin' ," from Hustle! The Ultimate Fatback 1969-1984
4.Crass, "Bloody Revolutions" from Best Before 1984
5. Dead Kennedys. "Stealing People's Mail." from Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (and i only just got the joke in the album title now, after owning it for god knows how long.)
6. The Coup, "ShoYoAss." from Pick A Bigger Weapon. Best song on the album by far.
7. Bob Marley, "Downpressor" from The Complete Bob Marley & The Wailers 1967-1972 Part 2
Actually Peter Tosh singing on this dub version, not surprisingly, since it's his song.
8.Grant McLennan, "Lighting Fires" from Intermission Great song. Requiescat in pace.
9.Little Milton "More &More". From Chicago Soul: Electric Blues Funk & Soul
10. Milton Nascimento, "Saidas E Bandeiras," from Clube Moderno Esquina Do Mundo (Scroll Down)
11. The Beatles - "I'm Only Sleeping." from Revolver.
12. The Dramatics - "In The Rain." from Stax 50th Anniversary Celebration and like twelve billion other compilations.
13. Robert Zimmerman. "A Hard Rain's Gonna Fall." From The Freewheelin Bob Dylan.
14. Exploding Hearts - "Boulevard Trash," from Guitar Romantic
15, Laura Lee. "Mama's Got a Good Thing." from Chicago Soul: Electric Blues Funk & Soul
16. The Moovers "I love you baby," from Eccentric Soul: The Deep City Label
17. The (International) Noise Conspiracy: "The Way I Feel About You" from Armed Love
18. Us, "Let's Do It Today" from Midwest Funk: Funk 45s from Tornado Alley
19. Fela Kuti, "Zombie" from Zombie
20. I-Roy, "Look a Boom" from Don't Check Me With No Lightweight Stuff
Friday, May 16, 2008
twee pregnancies and postindustrializing racializations of space
As with most things, I'm about five months late with this, but I finally saw Juno tonight. My reactions follow, though it's narcissistic of me to assume that anyone would care at this point.
My parents loved the movie, my great aunt thought it was anti-abortion (but never saw it), and my own reaction falls in with the ambivalent chorus that my own age cohort seems to have with the movie. I do think it's a bit anti-abortion, moreso even than Knocked Up and the whole "shmushmortion" claptrap that actually merited column space in,like, the New York Times and The Nation. But then I've never actually been in an abortion clinic, so maybe barely post-pubescent goths do regale patients with tales of their boyfriend's grape penis and anti-abortion protesters engage potential aborters in well meaning conversations about fingernails rather than shouting threats and physically accosting them, cause, you know, that sort of thing only happens in movies. Like Dogma. Or not.
The twee-ness of the dialogue, and really therefore the uber-reliance on commodity fetishism (The Stooges, Sonic Youth, Orange tic tacs, blue slurpees, Kimya Dawson) in lieu of meaningful character development is either a really profound comment on postmodern aporia or just really lazy, probably both. And it's weird to see a song I got over quickly when i first heard it like six years ago treated as if it were the most profound piece of music in a film since John Cusack's boom-box discovered "Within Your Reach," which was the real star of Say Anything, not that Peter Gabriel song. I've always felt, since i first saw them at one of the Sideway anti-folk nights (I'd gone to see Sam play) that the moldy peaches were good, but not great, fun but hardly world altering, and this seems to be the kind of intervention the film wants to make too, just in a much more pretentious, Wes Andersonny kind of way.
Let me also add, on a totally unrelated note, that while I have not yet read, but look forward to reading Mandi Isaacs Jackson's new book about New Haven in the 1960s and 70s, Model City Blues, I have read an earlier essay Jackson (who i've known for about six years) wrote on the subject and I've done a good amount of research on the period (for my senior essay, which looked at the years between 1968 and 1971) and Paul Bass's review in New Haven Independent, which posits Bass collaborator Doug Rae as paragon of multivocality and textual democracy, is a bit problematic. Some of Bass's criticisms may be justified - I haven't read the book yet, but what I have read and my own knowledge of New Haven history leads me to be skeptical of some of the more pointed allegations Bass makes of Jackson's alleged historiographical failures, which would be strengthened if Bass were willing to discuss the actual text beyond offering a scarequote here or there. Though we need to be skeptical of the idea that people are organically speaking for themselves when interviewed by an academic or journalist - speech is always mediated - Bass might be right that there may be value in talking to more people than he accuses Jackson of doing. Again i don't yet know enough to form an opinion. But that doesn't, i think, invalidate the way Jackson reads the archive that she works with, the way she finds traces of a very real subaltern resistance (Hill Parents Association, anyone?) to the New Haven planner state in file photos and newspaper articles, for instance. Bass's claim that the fact that Jackson only interviews seven people means that her massive archival work is somehow flawed is thus specious. This is not an adequate lens by which to evaluate Jackson's project and/or its viability.
Bass's takedown really seems to unravel, though around his offering up of Rae as paragon of scholarly virtue - Rae whose investment in the actions of planners (ordinary people appear anecdotally and occupy a decidedly subaltern position in Rae's text, which tows orthodox lines on all matters of New Haven political history - Lee flawed, Panthers bad, John Daniels happy ending, Levin era implicit new epoch in Yale's investment in city though analysis of university's role largely absent from book despite G. William Domhoff's urges to the contrary) erases much if not all of the history Jackson treats on, almost completely ignores any popular involvement in the conversation around the city's future in favor of the narrative of heroically flawed planners. Rae's book - and i will admit it's been a few years since i read it, seemed to me far more invested in taking arrogant potshots at the left than in adequately answering the questions Jackson's work does deal with - the untold stories of urban redesign, the fraught and contested histories of racialized urban space, and the ways in which such spaces are shaped and reshaped not only by the Doug Raes of the world, but also the movements that Rae largely dismisses, ignores, or pathologizes in his own text. (Rae's hostility towards, for instance, the FHUE that Bass namedrops and that Jackson has been involved with for nearly a decade, is well known.) There's far more value in such a project than what Bass, despite his pointed references here to FHUE's complex tactical frames, seems, of late, willing to admit.
I feel a little weird posting this having not yet read Jackson's book (i just ordered a copy this morning,) so I'll stop there and maybe I'll post more later after I've finished reading it. But let me end with a question: does the fact that, say, Vinnie Sirabella was a backer/booster of Richard Lee's renewal programs really invalidate what i am sure is a very smart account of movements against said transformations or for a different kind of city if the author of such a history is a product of a political legacy which unites that opposition with the unions Sirabella helmed? That is what I take to be Bass's overriding argument, and it's unsatisfying.
My parents loved the movie, my great aunt thought it was anti-abortion (but never saw it), and my own reaction falls in with the ambivalent chorus that my own age cohort seems to have with the movie. I do think it's a bit anti-abortion, moreso even than Knocked Up and the whole "shmushmortion" claptrap that actually merited column space in,like, the New York Times and The Nation. But then I've never actually been in an abortion clinic, so maybe barely post-pubescent goths do regale patients with tales of their boyfriend's grape penis and anti-abortion protesters engage potential aborters in well meaning conversations about fingernails rather than shouting threats and physically accosting them, cause, you know, that sort of thing only happens in movies. Like Dogma. Or not.
The twee-ness of the dialogue, and really therefore the uber-reliance on commodity fetishism (The Stooges, Sonic Youth, Orange tic tacs, blue slurpees, Kimya Dawson) in lieu of meaningful character development is either a really profound comment on postmodern aporia or just really lazy, probably both. And it's weird to see a song I got over quickly when i first heard it like six years ago treated as if it were the most profound piece of music in a film since John Cusack's boom-box discovered "Within Your Reach," which was the real star of Say Anything, not that Peter Gabriel song. I've always felt, since i first saw them at one of the Sideway anti-folk nights (I'd gone to see Sam play) that the moldy peaches were good, but not great, fun but hardly world altering, and this seems to be the kind of intervention the film wants to make too, just in a much more pretentious, Wes Andersonny kind of way.
Let me also add, on a totally unrelated note, that while I have not yet read, but look forward to reading Mandi Isaacs Jackson's new book about New Haven in the 1960s and 70s, Model City Blues, I have read an earlier essay Jackson (who i've known for about six years) wrote on the subject and I've done a good amount of research on the period (for my senior essay, which looked at the years between 1968 and 1971) and Paul Bass's review in New Haven Independent, which posits Bass collaborator Doug Rae as paragon of multivocality and textual democracy, is a bit problematic. Some of Bass's criticisms may be justified - I haven't read the book yet, but what I have read and my own knowledge of New Haven history leads me to be skeptical of some of the more pointed allegations Bass makes of Jackson's alleged historiographical failures, which would be strengthened if Bass were willing to discuss the actual text beyond offering a scarequote here or there. Though we need to be skeptical of the idea that people are organically speaking for themselves when interviewed by an academic or journalist - speech is always mediated - Bass might be right that there may be value in talking to more people than he accuses Jackson of doing. Again i don't yet know enough to form an opinion. But that doesn't, i think, invalidate the way Jackson reads the archive that she works with, the way she finds traces of a very real subaltern resistance (Hill Parents Association, anyone?) to the New Haven planner state in file photos and newspaper articles, for instance. Bass's claim that the fact that Jackson only interviews seven people means that her massive archival work is somehow flawed is thus specious. This is not an adequate lens by which to evaluate Jackson's project and/or its viability.
Bass's takedown really seems to unravel, though around his offering up of Rae as paragon of scholarly virtue - Rae whose investment in the actions of planners (ordinary people appear anecdotally and occupy a decidedly subaltern position in Rae's text, which tows orthodox lines on all matters of New Haven political history - Lee flawed, Panthers bad, John Daniels happy ending, Levin era implicit new epoch in Yale's investment in city though analysis of university's role largely absent from book despite G. William Domhoff's urges to the contrary) erases much if not all of the history Jackson treats on, almost completely ignores any popular involvement in the conversation around the city's future in favor of the narrative of heroically flawed planners. Rae's book - and i will admit it's been a few years since i read it, seemed to me far more invested in taking arrogant potshots at the left than in adequately answering the questions Jackson's work does deal with - the untold stories of urban redesign, the fraught and contested histories of racialized urban space, and the ways in which such spaces are shaped and reshaped not only by the Doug Raes of the world, but also the movements that Rae largely dismisses, ignores, or pathologizes in his own text. (Rae's hostility towards, for instance, the FHUE that Bass namedrops and that Jackson has been involved with for nearly a decade, is well known.) There's far more value in such a project than what Bass, despite his pointed references here to FHUE's complex tactical frames, seems, of late, willing to admit.
I feel a little weird posting this having not yet read Jackson's book (i just ordered a copy this morning,) so I'll stop there and maybe I'll post more later after I've finished reading it. But let me end with a question: does the fact that, say, Vinnie Sirabella was a backer/booster of Richard Lee's renewal programs really invalidate what i am sure is a very smart account of movements against said transformations or for a different kind of city if the author of such a history is a product of a political legacy which unites that opposition with the unions Sirabella helmed? That is what I take to be Bass's overriding argument, and it's unsatisfying.
Monday, April 28, 2008
Which "Love Me I'm A Liberal" Youtube video is more sexist?
This one:
Or
This one?
Don't they get that the "Dykes of the American Revolution" crack was a)part of the gag, b) dumb, and c) homophobic?
But just so I don't sour you on the genius of Phil Ochs...
Bonus:
I'd post Josh Eidelson's "Love Me I'm a Yalie," but I don't remember the lyrics.
(If you're reading this on facebook, you won't be able to see the embedded youtube clips. click through to the blog.)
Or
This one?
Don't they get that the "Dykes of the American Revolution" crack was a)part of the gag, b) dumb, and c) homophobic?
But just so I don't sour you on the genius of Phil Ochs...
Bonus:
I'd post Josh Eidelson's "Love Me I'm a Yalie," but I don't remember the lyrics.
(If you're reading this on facebook, you won't be able to see the embedded youtube clips. click through to the blog.)
Tuesday, April 22, 2008
Brief early thoughts on remastered rerelease of Replacements' Let It Be. (1984)
"I Will Dare" sounds too bass-heavy. Mandolin kinda falls out.
Favorite Thing/We're Coming Out lose too much of their dirty, grainy, edge. Sound too sanitized, too eighties.
"Androgynous" sounds incredible, revelatory.
"Black Diamond" - was better on the old Twintone mix. too. Less focus on Bob Stinson wankery."
"Unsatisfied" sounds way off key, but the acoustic guitars sound great.
"Seen Your Video" sounds great.
"Gary's Got A Boner" still sucks, but sounds better doing so. Lyrics actually intelligible. Not sure if that's a good thing.
"Sixteen Blue" - Sounds even better than on the twintone. The remastering really brings out the guitar harmonies. I gain respect for Bob Stinson as a subtle lead guitarist.
"Answering Machine" - sounds fine. The demo is amazing.
Sunday, March 30, 2008
random ten for 3/30
The Cake - "Baby That's Me". Not to be confused with the 90's alternative rock band. This is late '60s female-fronted soul drenched in instrumentation, Phil Spector style. I found it on a blog somewhere.
The Coup - "Santa Rita Weekend."
Bad Religion - The Quickening. I have this album?
Skull Snaps - "Ain't That Loving You"
Os Mutantes - "Ave Lucifer."
El-P. "Accidents Don't Happen. Pretty sharp critique of post 9/11 NYC
Lord Rhaburn - "More Love Reggae." From the Numero Group Belize City Boil Up compilation. Good stuff.
Sister Love - "Blackbird." 70's NYC funk/soul Beatles cover. Not bad, either.
God, Gays and Guns. - "Sally." This is Thomas Frampton's "disco-punk" song about how we need to stop organizing and just revolt already (a gross oversimplification, i admit.) I'm not sure who "Sally" is here, but I definitely had this argument with Thomas on numerous occasions in a variety of iterations. In other words, I'm so vain I probably think this song is about me. That said, it's pretty good, and chock full of handy situationist references and a catchy chorus which smacks of Ralph Chaplin in a good way. I like Thomas a lot.
The Coup - "Santa Rita Weekend."
look around theres hell of motherfuckas that i recognize
oh whats up man im back again
but its a temporary situation
taking weekend vacation
government incaceration
i call myself working on a pay hike
they calling me working on my third strike
sike i cant go forward
and motherfuckas cant ignore it
cos all my peoples on parole
in the pen gotta warrant
so its some shit i done leaped in
damn another santa rita weekend
Bad Religion - The Quickening. I have this album?
Skull Snaps - "Ain't That Loving You"
Os Mutantes - "Ave Lucifer."
El-P. "Accidents Don't Happen. Pretty sharp critique of post 9/11 NYC
now they check their bags with a staff claspin' UzisDeerhoof - "You Can See."
who deserves the wrath without warning
the same sky for the martyr with a spork scorch New York forfeits
run among the poppy fields order some more clips
store trips are weird but the fear is forceless
Bloomey bought the city of Lego and shitty metal hull
jitters to the floor boards burnt almost aborted
flight of the accidental tourist, morbid
the advertising gods so oddly courtship
godly corporate squads plot these tortures
holiness is hard and it's costing god fortunes
(guess he took a second job on the force to afford it)
I don't want a part of these self fulfilled prophecies
Lord Rhaburn - "More Love Reggae." From the Numero Group Belize City Boil Up compilation. Good stuff.
Sister Love - "Blackbird." 70's NYC funk/soul Beatles cover. Not bad, either.
God, Gays and Guns. - "Sally." This is Thomas Frampton's "disco-punk" song about how we need to stop organizing and just revolt already (a gross oversimplification, i admit.) I'm not sure who "Sally" is here, but I definitely had this argument with Thomas on numerous occasions in a variety of iterations. In other words, I'm so vain I probably think this song is about me. That said, it's pretty good, and chock full of handy situationist references and a catchy chorus which smacks of Ralph Chaplin in a good way. I like Thomas a lot.
Saturday, April 14, 2007
last night's karaoke
Me: "Pictures of You," "Don't Stop Believin" (with H,) "Come See About Me," (with JoL,) "Hey Jealousy," "Heartbreaker,"
Funniest Moments: DCM and DY's "Du Hast" duet, "RMJ's "Edge of Seventeen" dedicated to WJ, and "Closer." Also the women in the big room who did "pimpin' all over the world" directly followed by "One Minute Man."
Conference reportback to follow
Funniest Moments: DCM and DY's "Du Hast" duet, "RMJ's "Edge of Seventeen" dedicated to WJ, and "Closer." Also the women in the big room who did "pimpin' all over the world" directly followed by "One Minute Man."
Conference reportback to follow
Sunday, March 25, 2007
Sunday, February 11, 2007
Because every substantial post must be accompanied filler, here, belatedly, are some of my favorite albums released last year, in no particular order and including reissues and compilations.
Ann Peebles, Original Funk Soul Sister Peebles is an amazing singer, backed by what is basically Al Green's rhythm section, and the songs are unbelievable. I have "Trouble, Heartache, and Sadness," and "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" playing on my Ipod frequently.
The Honey Cone, Soulful Sugar. Other Music claims this was released in 2001, but i'd never seen it before this fall, so i am including it here. The Honey Cone performed Holland-Dozier-Holland's post-motown stuff, which was harder and more politicized and feminist than their earlier work. Kanye West samples "Innocent Til Proven Guilty" on Common's "Testify" but the original is far superior, and there's better stuff 0n the first disc, like "Girls It Ain't Easy," "When Will It End," "Are You Man Enough, Are You Strong Enough" and a very good cover of "Son of a Preacher Man."
plus:
Ghostface, Fishscale, which I really don't need to say anything about , because you can just go read what Sasha Frere-Jones or one of the many critics who writes about music far better than this blogger has to say about this record, which is necessarily thus overrated but still very, very good.
Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass. I don't have that much to say about this record I haven't said here before, but it's pretty great.
Lily Allen, Alright Still. I am a sucker for witty homages to Jamaican music, or british appropriations thereof, and this is smart, funny stuff. Except for Alfie, which just makes me sort of uncomfortable.
Destroyer: Destroyer's Rubies. This is the first record to make me really appreciate Dan Bejar, though i think i have probably said that here before too. Helped me survive last spring.
Peter Bjorn and John, Writers Block. I still think it sounds like what the Go-Betweens would have sounded like if they'd been Swedish hipsters in 2006 rather than obscure Australian indie rockers in the mid 1980s. But I'm a moron.
Ann Peebles, Original Funk Soul Sister Peebles is an amazing singer, backed by what is basically Al Green's rhythm section, and the songs are unbelievable. I have "Trouble, Heartache, and Sadness," and "I'm Gonna Tear Your Playhouse Down" playing on my Ipod frequently.
The Honey Cone, Soulful Sugar. Other Music claims this was released in 2001, but i'd never seen it before this fall, so i am including it here. The Honey Cone performed Holland-Dozier-Holland's post-motown stuff, which was harder and more politicized and feminist than their earlier work. Kanye West samples "Innocent Til Proven Guilty" on Common's "Testify" but the original is far superior, and there's better stuff 0n the first disc, like "Girls It Ain't Easy," "When Will It End," "Are You Man Enough, Are You Strong Enough" and a very good cover of "Son of a Preacher Man."
plus:
Ghostface, Fishscale, which I really don't need to say anything about , because you can just go read what Sasha Frere-Jones or one of the many critics who writes about music far better than this blogger has to say about this record, which is necessarily thus overrated but still very, very good.
Yo La Tengo: I Am Not Afraid of You And I Will Beat Your Ass. I don't have that much to say about this record I haven't said here before, but it's pretty great.
Lily Allen, Alright Still. I am a sucker for witty homages to Jamaican music, or british appropriations thereof, and this is smart, funny stuff. Except for Alfie, which just makes me sort of uncomfortable.
Destroyer: Destroyer's Rubies. This is the first record to make me really appreciate Dan Bejar, though i think i have probably said that here before too. Helped me survive last spring.
Peter Bjorn and John, Writers Block. I still think it sounds like what the Go-Betweens would have sounded like if they'd been Swedish hipsters in 2006 rather than obscure Australian indie rockers in the mid 1980s. But I'm a moron.
Sunday, February 4, 2007
Digital Diploma Mills Are The New Pornography, or Casualization Gets Mass Romantic
I just saw a new tv commercial for the University of Phoenix, an entirely online university which relies on a hypercasualized, hypercontingent labor force of teahcers and graders who never meet their students. This commercial utilized the chorus of the New Pornographers' "Bleeding Heart Show," specifically the innocous-sounding "Hey-Na" part.
There's obviously some serious irony here. Beyond that, I'll leave off deeper analysis in favor of reader interjection. So, dear reader, I ask you, WTF?
There's obviously some serious irony here. Beyond that, I'll leave off deeper analysis in favor of reader interjection. So, dear reader, I ask you, WTF?
Tuesday, January 30, 2007
I downloaded four cds today. Haven't had the chance to listen to them all yet, but feel obsessively-compulsively drawn to blog about the ones i have listened to. Peter Bjorn and John's Writer's Block is at this juncture probably the one i like the most. At its best, it sometimes feels like the best album the Go-Betweens never made. The New Deerhoof album, Friend Opportunity pretty much picks up where The Runners Four ended, at least musically. Lyrically, I think it's a little less sanguine and explosive, a bit more rueful. But I may be pulling that out of my ass. I haven't listened to The Long Blondes' "someone to drive you home" enough to form an opinion yet, but I'm underwhelmed by Menomena's Friend and Foe.
Back to Black Marxism.
From the previews, it looks like Veronica Mars is going to jump the shark for good next week. Oh well.
Back to Black Marxism.
From the previews, it looks like Veronica Mars is going to jump the shark for good next week. Oh well.
Sunday, January 28, 2007
I haven't made it to Other Music in a while, and I've been pretty swamped. So i can give no insight into the new Shins album (objectivist or just misanthropic) or the menomena album. Also, I need to buy a new computer next weekish and am trying not to spend money on hipster music I will probably not enjoy but would only buy to achieve a certain cultural literacy in a genre i am not sure i give a fuck about (maybe bittorrent is the way to go here.) I do want to hear the new Deerhoof, but i probably won't for a while. Tonight after the insanely long five hour GSOC meeting, though, I did manage to listen to James Brown's Funky People Part 3, which, while it lacks the highly sampled tracks of the first two comps - "Pass The Peas," "I Know You Got Soul," etc., is just as good. Check it out.
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Saturday, January 13, 2007
Edit: I really need to stop blogging at 2 in the morning. The opening song was "Black and White," not "Black or White," which is by Michael Jackson and involved the King of Pop morphing into a pathera pardus and smashing a car with a crowbar. And half my sentences don't make any sense.
I saw the dB's tonight, for the first time and after two years of obsession with the band's first two albums. I was going to go to the show with JL, who is my concert buddy and has been my only concert buddy since senior year of college with the exception of the Alek-Julie-me exodus to the 4/26/2004 Irving Plaza Sleater-Kinney show, missing the Federation rally to my great chagrin but getting in retunr an extremely Hot Rock, Call The Doctor, and One Beat-heavy set, and a couple of shows - the Wowz, Siren, The Go! Team, MIA, that I went to alone. Unfortunately the dB's sold out today at the last minute, so I was on my own.
I suspect that I was in the lowest one or two percentile agewise in relation to the crowd, many of whom had very grey hair - or very little hair - and wrinkly faces. There was a row of ridiculously tall men in leather jackets standing in front of me, and that was a bit lame. There was also a recurring flatulent odor which was not very fun to soak in.
That said, shows at the Bowery Ballroom are always fun because the venue has fantastic acoustics. (I saw Sufjan Stevens there last year.) The dB's set started out explosively, with a bombastic rendition of "Black and White," then turned to "Dynamite," with it's awesome synth-organ parts, and "Big Brown Eyes" sans Hubley animation. "Living a Lie" and "Neverland" were both incredible, as was "Happenstance" and "Cycles per second." Unfortunately no "Bad Reputation" or "The Fight" but the musicianship was impeccable and people-watching the 50 year old former hipsters was pretty amazing. Also the guy standing next to me looked like Ira Kaplan.
I saw the dB's tonight, for the first time and after two years of obsession with the band's first two albums. I was going to go to the show with JL, who is my concert buddy and has been my only concert buddy since senior year of college with the exception of the Alek-Julie-me exodus to the 4/26/2004 Irving Plaza Sleater-Kinney show, missing the Federation rally to my great chagrin but getting in retunr an extremely Hot Rock, Call The Doctor, and One Beat-heavy set, and a couple of shows - the Wowz, Siren, The Go! Team, MIA, that I went to alone. Unfortunately the dB's sold out today at the last minute, so I was on my own.
I suspect that I was in the lowest one or two percentile agewise in relation to the crowd, many of whom had very grey hair - or very little hair - and wrinkly faces. There was a row of ridiculously tall men in leather jackets standing in front of me, and that was a bit lame. There was also a recurring flatulent odor which was not very fun to soak in.
That said, shows at the Bowery Ballroom are always fun because the venue has fantastic acoustics. (I saw Sufjan Stevens there last year.) The dB's set started out explosively, with a bombastic rendition of "Black and White," then turned to "Dynamite," with it's awesome synth-organ parts, and "Big Brown Eyes" sans Hubley animation. "Living a Lie" and "Neverland" were both incredible, as was "Happenstance" and "Cycles per second." Unfortunately no "Bad Reputation" or "The Fight" but the musicianship was impeccable and people-watching the 50 year old former hipsters was pretty amazing. Also the guy standing next to me looked like Ira Kaplan.
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