Music & Aging

From Carrie Brownstein over at Monitor Mix, a post worth checking out:

Last week, I received an interesting suggestion for a post. I was asked to ponder whether one's relationship to music -- either strictly as a fan or as both a fan and a musician -- keeps one in a delayed or perennial state of adolescence.

So, does music keep us young? And is that a good thing?

I wanted to leave a comment, but the first commenter said almost exactly what I was thinking: What does it mean that most people continue to listen to the music they listened to when they were, say, 15-25?

The Submarines' "You, Me & the Bourgeoisie"

Found in one of Atrios' late night threads, I am fascinated by the lyrics.

Sleater-Kinney's Carrie Brownstein on freedom and music

Major kudos to Carrie Brownstein for the Stiff Little Fingers reference.

And yes, it's a light post. But I like SLF, so check it out =)

Building and Composition

The National's "Fake Empire," off Boxer.

[Music] Seth Godin talks. You should listen.

Via BB, an excerpt from an admittedly long talk:

So, what’s next? And where do we go from here? I want to start by saying this really clearly. Music is not in trouble. I believe more people are listening to more music now than any time in the history of the world. Probably five times more than twenty years ago...that much! But, the music business is in trouble. And the reason the music business is in trouble is because remember all those pieces of good news?...every single one of them is not true anymore. Every. One. Now, if you want to, you can curse the fact the Solomon’s couldn’t figure out how to keep the tower going. You can curse the fact that it’s really easy to copy a CD. You can curse the fact that we don’t care about the American top 40. You can curse the fact that there isn’t top 40 radio that matters. What good is that going to do? Or, we could think about the fact that you have more momentum and more assets and more talented people than any body else. [And], at the very same time that people are listening to more music than ever before. Thats really cool. And, so when we think about transitions what we know is that timid trapeze artists are dead trapeze artists. And, that the only way you get from here to there is to just do it. Now, you might be wrong but the alternative is you WILL be wrong. There is no way to go from the perfect music business to the new music business with guaranteed ROI and written assurances-it doesn’t exist. So what will happen, I will guarantee this to you, is that 90% of the people in this industry will timidly start walking their way over and they will all fail. Thats why when you go to look up something online, you don’t go to RandomHouse.com, you go to Google.com.

It's a wonderfully concise talk. Check it out.

[Sleater-Kinney] "Entertain" on the Henry Rollins Show

I'll never forget when a friend of mine told me - after the fact - the she'd gone to the very last Sleater-Kinney show over the weekend. I never did see them in concert.

Anyway, check this out:



It kicks ass. No two ways around it.

UPDATE: This post is now a double feature. Also, Carrie Brownstein reminds me of Lucilla.

Hint: It's a drag name.

[Higher Education] US Education Funding Bill Contains Crappy Copyright Clause

Found at Slashdot, but the main points are covered best at EFF:

Last November, we reported on H.R. 4137, the College Opportunity and Affordability Act of 2007, which includes misguided anti-piracy requirements for universities. For the most part, the massive, nearly 800-page bill refreshes existing legislation about federal financial aid. But the bill also includes a section with a title that sounds as if it were dreamt up by an entertainment industry lobbyist: "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention." Specifically, the bill says:

Each eligible institution participating in any program under this title shall to the extent practicable—

[...]

(2) develop a plan for offering alternatives to illegal downloading or peer-to-peer distribution of intellectual property as well as a plan to explore technology-based deterrents to prevent such illegal activity.
To those unfamiliar with this particular sort of DC double-speak, "alternatives to illegal downloading" means industry-sanctioned download services; and existing "technology-based deterrents" means network filters and other tools.

These congressional requirements will turn out to be expensive dead-ends -- the industry-sanctioned online music services are laden with DRM, and network detection/filtering programs present privacy risks and are inevitably rendered obsolete by technological countermeasures.

Advocates of the bill stress that the language stops short of demanding implementation -- that it only requires universities to "plan" -- but this argument misses the point entirely. The passage of this bill will unambiguously lead universities down the wrong path. For the sake of artists, administrators, students, and consumers better approaches exist.

The bill also would hang an unspoken threat over the heads of university administrators. In response to concerns that potential penalties for universities could include a loss of federal student aid funding, the MPAA's top lawyer in Washington said that federal funds should be at risk when copyright infringement happens on campus networks. Moreover, earlier versions of "Campus-based Digital Theft Prevention" proposals nakedly sought to make schools that received numerous copyright infringement notices subject to review by the US Secretary of Education.

This is bad.

The cynic in me thinks that passage of this (and the subsequent trend of universities coming down hard on 'piracy') would actually get students to pay attention and collectively raise their voice in protest.

...

Nah, never mind. There might be a few, but students who enter college under such conditions would just accept it as the status quo.

One last note, from a link found at the EFF story:

"When the government is subsidizing universities...and it discovers that those universities are spending a lot of taxpayers' money to build digital networks that are being used primarily to allow college students to traffic in infringing content, I think it's perfectly legitimate for Congress to say, wait a minute, if we're giving you money, we don't want it to be used to help college kids infringe copyright," [MPAA Washington General Counsel Fritz] Attaway said during a panel discussion here Monday that was organized by the Federal Communications Bar Association.

I'm going to treat his statement with a seriousness it really doesn't deserve and suggest that he gets it wrong when he says university networks are "primarily" for illegal file-sharing. Remove that clause, and you're left with policing departmental email for folks who want to sell used toasters.

[meme] The Soundtrack of My Life, or How To Waste Friday Night While Your Friends Watch The Wire

I wasn't tagged, but I'll do this anyway - I have so much music I could do this dozens of times and not get a repeat, so I'm really curious to see what happens.

"This," of course, is a meme - set your preferred music player to shuffle and write down the song that shows up. Just go down the list.

I think memes are related to MASH, for those of you who remember that little gem. I think I played it once, under duress. (And to be clear, while my disagreement with it at the time was certainly sexist, my disagreement with it now is that it offers a very limited palette of possibility for human life.)

Found over at Uniquely Normal.

So, the songs..... format, of course, is song (artist) [commentary]. Clear?

IF SOMEONE SAYS "IS THIS OKAY?" YOU SAY?
Freak of the Week (Funkadelic)

HOW WOULD YOU DESCRIBE YOURSELF?
Solitude (His Name is Alive) [At times, this is certainly true]

WHAT DO YOU LIKE IN A GUY/GIRL?
Taper Jean Girl (Kings of Leon)

HOW DO YOU FEEL NOW?
Beer Bong (NOFX)

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE'S PURPOSE?
The Moisture Farm (John Williams - Star Wars: A New Hope Soundtrack) [This probably comes across as nastier than it is - we are talking about vaporators, after all. Maybe it's about hard work, but that seems equally unlikely]

WHAT IS YOUR MOTTO?
Rave On (Real Kids) [I like Dionysius but not dancing - go figure]

WHAT DO YOUR FRIENDS THINK OF YOU?
Orchid (Black Sabbath)

WHAT DO YOUR PARENTS THINK OF YOU?
Pothole in My Lawn (De La Soul) [Hey! I got a job!]

WHAT DO YOU THINK ABOUT OFTEN?
Imperfectly (Ani DiFranco) [This was too good - I'm not a perfectionist or a feedback junkie or anything, I swear....]

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR BEST FRIEND?
Not A Pretty Girl (Ani Difranco)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Emma Blowgun's Last Stand (Beulah) [Oddly appropriate, though I am annoyed it assumes there is only one]

WHAT IS YOUR LIFE STORY?
The Magnificent Bird Will Rise (Deerhoof)

WHAT DO YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GROW UP?
Killbot 2000 (Murder by Death) [Uh-oh]

WHAT DO YOU THINK WHEN YOU SEE THE PERSON YOU LIKE?
Lonesome Town (Ricky Nelson - Pulp Fiction Soundtrack)

WHAT WILL YOU DANCE TO AT YOUR WEDDING?
Pictures of Success (Rilo Kiley) [This is hypothetical, as there will be no wedding]

WHAT WILL THEY PLAY AT YOUR FUNERAL?
Fresh Shot (Kickass Martians) [An excellent choice, as the two people on the planet who've heard this song aside from me will attest]

WHAT IS YOUR HOBBY/INTEREST?
The O Men (The Butthole Surfers) [??????????}

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST FEAR?
School Spirit Skit One (Kanye West) [Failing at school? Sure]

WHAT IS YOUR BIGGEST SECRET?
Pro Bowler Tachikoma (Yoko Kanno - Ghost in the Shell Soundtrack)

WHAT DO YOU THINK OF YOUR FRIENDS?
Movement (LCD Soundsystem) [I hate it when they move]

WHAT IS THE THEME SONG TO YOUR LIFE?
It Just Is (Rilo Kiley) [Very existentialist]

WHAT DESCRIBES YOU?
Sons of the Silent Age (David Bowie)

WHAT WILL YOU NAME THIS BULLETIN?
Cheap Reward (Elvis Costello & the Attractions)


.... I like this post title too much to name it Cheap Reward. Sorry.

[Youtube] Sgt. Pepper's Remix

Brilliant.

MF, consider this an argument for musical snobbery/why the traditional definition of quality in audio matters.

[RIAA} More on Oregon and UO's Refusal To Submit to the RIAA

Found via Blue Oregon, NYT columnist Adam Liptak discusses, summarizes and opines:

The surprise was not that 20-year-olds listen to Sting. It was that the university fought back.

Represented by the state’s attorney general, Hardy Myers, the university filed a blistering motion to quash the subpoena, accusing the industry of misleading the judge, violating student privacy laws and engaging in questionable investigative practices. Cary Sherman, the president of the Recording Industry Association of America, said the industry had seen “a lot of crazy stuff” filed in response to its lawsuits and subpoenas. “But coming from the office of an attorney general of a state?” Mr. Sherman asked, incredulous. “We found it really surprising and disappointing.”

Nice move, Mr. Sherman. Note how he implies through his word choice that the RIAA is in the right here without actually addressing the claims made by UO or Hardy Myers?

Oops - Oregon's AG isn't being fooled (but neither is he promoting music piracy, unfortunately):

In his filings, Mr. Myers claimed to be looking for a middle ground.

“Certainly it is appropriate for victims of copyright infringement to lawfully pursue statutory remedies,” Mr. Myers wrote last month. “However, that pursuit must be tempered by basic notions of privacy and due process.”

“The larger issue,” Mr. Myers said, “is whether plaintiffs’ investigative and litigation strategies are appropriate.”

Bingo. Everything I've seen suggets the RIAA is breaking the law six ways from Sunday to prove that.... other people are breaking the law. I'm glad to see that it's Oregon that's fighting back.

Frankly, if the RIAA is a corporation, they need their charter revoked.

The Dumbing Down of Music [the downside of MP3s]

Seen at both BoingBoing and Slashdot (but really a Rolling Stone article), I have to offer a qualified disagreement with Cory Doctorow on this one.

Rolling Stone:

Just as cds supplanted vinyl and cassettes, MP3 and other digital-music formats are quickly replacing CDs as the most popular way to listen to music. That means more conven- ience but worse sound. To create an MP3, a computer samples the music on a CD and compresses it into a smaller file by excluding the musical information that the human ear is less likely to notice. Much of the information left out is at the very high and low ends, which is why some MP3s sound flat. Cavallo says that MP3s don't reproduce reverb well, and the lack of high-end detail makes them sound brittle. Without enough low end, he says, "you don't get the punch anymore. It decreases the punch of the kick drum and how the speaker gets pushed when the guitarist plays a power chord."

But not all digital-music files are created equal. Levitin says that most people find MP3s ripped at a rate above 224 kbps virtually indistinguishable from CDs. (iTunes sells music as either 128 or 256 kbps AAC files — AAC is slightly superior to MP3 at an equivalent bit rate. Amazon sells MP3s at 256 kbps.) Still, "it's like going to the Louvre and instead of the Mona Lisa there's a 10-megapixel image of it," he says. "I always want to listen to music the way the artists wanted me to hear it. I wouldn't look at a Kandinsky painting with sunglasses on."

Producers also now alter the way they mix albums to compensate for the limitations of MP3 sound. "You have to be aware of how people will hear music, and pretty much everyone is listening to MP3," says producer Butch Vig, a member of Garbage and the producer of Nirvana's Never- mind. "Some of the effects get lost. So you sometimes have to over-exaggerate things." Other producers believe that intensely compressed CDs make for better MP3s, since the loudness of the music will compensate for the flatness of the digital format.

Doctorow's comment on the shift:

"Designing for that, as opposed to lamenting it -- is a damned good and realistic thing to do."

In a sense, he's right, of course; people should design for the technology that's available, and the sooner the better.

On the other hand, I think the shift is indeed for the worse - and when digital music technology allows for a more complex and greater range of sound, are we going to engineer audio for that?

I hope so, but I am skeptical. And in any case, the shift to dynamic range compression, wherein everything becomes loud, is not a good one. I hope that goes away too.

In the meantime, can someone please send me a record player and a few thousand albums on vinyl so I can do some research on this very pressing topic?

An Australian Beatles Cover Band (The Beatnix) Covering Stairway to Heaven...

..... words fail me.



Found here.

Seeing The Blow

Last Saturday, after swinging by the ever more upscale bourgeoisie Portland International Airport to pick up a friend, I found myself at the Doug Fir Lounge for a show.

This was planned, of course - said friend wanted to go, and who am I to disagree to a visit to the wonderfully retro Doug Fir/Jupiter Hotel? (Where it's rumored that the item found on your pillow is not a mint but a condom - hilarious!)

We were there to see The Blow, an act that's been around for most of the decade in one form or another ( she was formerly Get the Hell Out of the Way of the Volcano).

While The Blow is normally the nom de plume of Khaela Maricich alone, her latest work has been a pop-oriented collaboration with Jona Brechtolt. The result - as evidenced by the show - was absolutely & entrancingly stunning.

I should have known something was up when, following the equipment takedown from the previous band (local metal-ish group named Swan Island), there was nothing but a mic and stand set up on the stage. I guessed that it would be one woman with a guitar.

I was wrong - she came out with nothing but a bottle of water in her hands. She set it down, stood in front of the mic for a second, then, without any announcement or music except the beat of her two fingers tapping the mic, she began to sing "True Affection," the song she would later close the show with.

I was instantly hooked - I knew right away that I was going to love the show.

A side note: I saw The Blow way back in 2002 or 2003 at Eugene's W.O.W. Hall with just her voice and a guitar, and she was the first person I'd ever complimented after a show. There was something I found compelling, even then.

Between songs, Maricich would stop and talk to the audience, throwing up a monologue that seemed part planned and part spontaneous. She led the audience through a twisted tale of the inner landscape of her head, her learning about love and life, her motivation for songwriting and her therapist's advice. It was amazing - every song was a step in her road to finding love, covering the mistakes she made along the way and the happy ending.

At the end of the show, she sang "Parentheses" about her partner, Michelle, who was working the sound (each song was sung to a pre-made track of dance/pop stuff). Then she sang "True Affection" again, this time with music.

I can't describe how engaging she was as a performer - she took me (and, I suspect, the rest of the audience) out of our heads and into hers for over an hour.

Her work was incredibly self-aware and postmodern, witty with a brutal honesty, and from a place so DIY that doing it any other way would be impossible to fathom. She managed to craft a coherent performance that spoke (to me, at least) to the anxieties of finding love in a world filled with anomie.

I'd had a relatively stressful week for a variety of reasons, and along with a fabulous dinner on Friday, the show did a great job of letting me relax and let a bunch of stuff go (albeit temporarily, it turns out).

If you're ever in Portland and you see that The Blow is playing (and you don't mind being a bit introspective), grab a ticket. It's a moving experience.

Oh, and she is one hell of a dancer. Go figure.

Emo

I think this is what I actually don't like about emo, and why I have such reservations about emo fans. It's not that they are "showing emotions" (which is often mistakenly understood as breaking the code of patriarchy), it's that the emotions that are often presented in emo music are dismissive and hateful towards women. Sexist and patriarchal, in other words. It's an interesting out - young men can show emotion, but only if it's hatred of women.

Not that the same isn't true of almost all other music as well.

For the record, I love music that can transmit raw, unfiltered emotions. I think it's rare and wonderful. I just think that it's silly to turn a blind eye towards what emotions are being presented, and how, and why.

From the PunkPlanet archives (minor errors left unchanged):

Girls in emo songs today do not have names. We are not identified. Our lives, our struggles, our day-to-day-to-day does not exist, we do not get colored in. We span from coquettish to damned and back again. We leave bruises on boy-hearts, but make no other mark. Our existences, our actions are portrayed SOLELY through the detailing of neurotic self-entanglements of the boy singer�our region of personal power, simply, is our breadth of impact on his romantic life. We are on a short leash in a filthy yard�we are mysteries to be unlocked, bodies to be groped, minimum wage earners of fealty, harvesters of sorrow, repositories for scorn. Vessels redeemed in the light of boy-love. On a pedestal, on our backs. Muses at best. Cum rags or invisible at worst. Check out our pictures on the covers of records�we are sad-eyed and winsome and well cleaved.

...

And so I watch these girls at emo shows more than I ever do the band. I watch them sing along, see what parts they freak out over. I wonder if this does it for them, if seeing these bands, these dudes on stage resonates and inspires them to want to pick up a guitar or drum sticks. Or if they just see this as something dudes do, because there are no girls, there is no them up there. I wonder if they are being thwarted by the FACT that there is no presentation of girls as participants, but rather, only as consumers�or if we reference the songs directly�the consumed. I wonder if this is where music will begin and end for them. If they can be radicalized in spite of this. If being denied keys to the clubhouse or airtime will spur them into action.

...

The dozens of bands, bands who�s records I knew all the words to, who were comprised of 25-30 year old dudes, with nothing much to say, did not feel like punk rock with it�s arms open wide to me. It took seeing Bikini Kill in an illegal basement venue to truly throw the lights, to show me that there was more than one place, one role, for women to occupy, and that our participation was important and vital�It was YOU MATTER writ large.

Maggot Brain