One of the more illuminating conceptions of taste I have heard is a description my friend (with a mixture of condescension, appreciation, and vanity) applies to people's unique constellations of interests, the conceit of a town. For me, "Parkerville"--for someone else, let's imagine "Megan City" and "Larry Town."
The idea is, there are certain interests we have that are irreducibly particular to us: when we mention them, we are alienating people. What we find important or think to be famous, is actually peculiar and local. These interests weird people out and our very much strictly for us.
I like a few things about this. 1) It doesn't rule out shared, overlapping, universally agreed-upon tastes. Not everything someone likes is "within their jurisdiction." 2) It allows us to describe the interests of boring people or people with bad tastes in a more interesting way. Is there not an *interesting* (or bizarre) ur-phenomena at the root of even the most pedestrian tastes? 3) It allows us to think of people's appreciations as being never-neutral. What someone likes about the Godfather, let's say, might be completely determined by their weird local feelings.
I don't want to talk about real people who aren't me. So I'll give examples from myself:
For myself: VH1 "pop-up video"; Lord of the Rings RISK; Sergeant York; Everybody Loves Raymond; The Song of Roland; D'Aulaire's book of Norse myths; mediocre Swedish hardcore; biographies of Napoleon; the fourth Danzig solo album; etc.
Is it not true in some way that in our adult lives we are merely playing dress-up with our 10th-grade self?
Sunday, May 25, 2008
Tuesday, May 20, 2008
Some more thoughts on Guns 'N Roses
Sometimes, of course, I feel like I am the only person who knows what "filler" is. There are probably about 5 good double-albums in the history of music, but with every 74-minute CD being reviewed with a very blind eye turned towards about 30 of those minutes, "filler" seems like a dirty word for reviewers and fans to throw around. Filler is really the elephant in the room, though, which is really evident if you buy vinyl and not just cds or mp3s.
Now, the most filler-stuffed albums of all time are the double-double Use Your Illusion LPs. Over 140 minutes! What's bizarre, though, is that the filer works in precisely the opposite way that one would expect. "Sure," you are thinking, "Appetite for Destruction was a great album, but once they turned to all those piano-ballads and 8-minute songs, they just couldn't hack it."
The opposite is true. There is only one really long song on Use Your Illusion I. It is the best song. What really goes wrong wrong wrong is the number of Aerosmith-y, hard-rockin' tunes that precisely try to conjure up the first Guns 'n Roses album. In other words, their "experimentation" works, and their "sticking-to-what-they-know" does not work. The problem is not that the band "lost their touch" but that they did not go far enough.
This is not an important point, but as more and more people just don't listen to albums or don't know what they are talking about, the real character of "artistic objects" becomes veiled by circulating idle-talk with no clue.
(These albums are bad, still, though. Everyone is right about that.)
Now, the most filler-stuffed albums of all time are the double-double Use Your Illusion LPs. Over 140 minutes! What's bizarre, though, is that the filer works in precisely the opposite way that one would expect. "Sure," you are thinking, "Appetite for Destruction was a great album, but once they turned to all those piano-ballads and 8-minute songs, they just couldn't hack it."
The opposite is true. There is only one really long song on Use Your Illusion I. It is the best song. What really goes wrong wrong wrong is the number of Aerosmith-y, hard-rockin' tunes that precisely try to conjure up the first Guns 'n Roses album. In other words, their "experimentation" works, and their "sticking-to-what-they-know" does not work. The problem is not that the band "lost their touch" but that they did not go far enough.
This is not an important point, but as more and more people just don't listen to albums or don't know what they are talking about, the real character of "artistic objects" becomes veiled by circulating idle-talk with no clue.
(These albums are bad, still, though. Everyone is right about that.)
Thursday, May 15, 2008
Long Songs
This is a post about giving people what they want in musical form.
Most hardcore bands can't write any song over four minutes without feeling that they have achieved "epic" status, with all the trappings of a sword and sandals film: long boring stretches, needless ornamentation, pretentiousness, cellos, overtures, spoken-word sections, etc. It is moronic. Compare with the metal band Darkthrone, who probably have never written a song under four minutes, but who don't bother to fill up that time with any trappings or even more than a couple of riffs. Which is to say, the punk motivation for writing a long song has never been clear to me, as punk is so devoid of emotional content and dynamics (the elements which power Meat Loaf through all of his long songs).
Tragedy understand this perfectly. None of the songs on their last album are over 3:30.
On their last album, Fucked Up had nine songs over five minutes (compared with, say, four on the Wu-Tang album 36 Chambers). In retrospect, the problem with Hidden World is not the length of the songs, but that it is hard to remember *either* differences between the songs, or different parts within any given song. That sounds like a crippling problem, but that the record succeeds at all given this sameness is quite an accomplishment. Over an hour of mid-tempo, strumming hardcore should be way worse than this. I credit the proliferation of "neat parts" and the band's refusal of boring intros (rather, they tend to stretch out the conclusion of a song, once your interest is already held).
In contrast, I give you the monumentally boring diptych Guns and Roses released in 1991, Use Your Illusion I & II. These records are a real mess. But there are some real gems, almost all of them incredibly long, Zeppelin-esque monsters that truly pay their way: "November Rain" and "Estranged" being the best examples. Unlike Fucked Up's songs, you can tell right away "oh, this is not going to end for a while"---orchestration, pianos, no verse-chorus structure, guitar solos early and often.
I want to really draw your attention to these songs, though. They are long and boring, but they earn it with HUGE parts. On the album as a whole, Guns and Roses are excessive and over-indulgent, but one's patience is very much repaid when they succeed. The show-stopper moments in "November Rain" and "Estranged" are not mild pleasures--these are hooks big enough to hang a buffalo on.
It sounds like this will end up with me saying that bands should "stick to what they are good at" (punk bands to short songs, bands with big pretensions to long songs), but really that is such a false distinction. That is why I introduced Fucked Up earlier. THEY ARE NOT GOOD AT WRITING LONG SONGS. Their album is just a bunch of short songs stretched out. And it's not a problem at all, because those songs are good.
Many are familiar with Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return. Let me phrase it this way: would you rather spend your life listening (over and over) to a mediocre set of four two-minute hardcore songs, or one 9-minute monster with a lot of cool parts?
It is harder and more worthwhile to try to write one good 8 minute song than it is to write a 2 minute song. If you can't do it (like Fucked Up), fake it. You'll impress people. If you genuinely can't do it, your 2-minute songs probably aren't so hot anyways. Or, I dunno---string a bunch of short songs together, like The Who and The Beatles, and pretend they are a "suite." But I don't go for this low-stakes business. (The real enemy of this post is Jay Reatard.)
I also love short songs. But the pleasures should not be of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it variety. Give me something "to be intense upon" (Keats). Once you've done that, I'll forgive any amount of cello.
Or let me be *very* blunt: why don't we measure our enjoyment of music by how much pleasure it gives us? This post would be proposing a pleasure-per-minute ratio that would judge very harshly a great deal of music that, by other standards, has a lot of capital or allegedly succeeds (though without giving pleasure).
Most hardcore bands can't write any song over four minutes without feeling that they have achieved "epic" status, with all the trappings of a sword and sandals film: long boring stretches, needless ornamentation, pretentiousness, cellos, overtures, spoken-word sections, etc. It is moronic. Compare with the metal band Darkthrone, who probably have never written a song under four minutes, but who don't bother to fill up that time with any trappings or even more than a couple of riffs. Which is to say, the punk motivation for writing a long song has never been clear to me, as punk is so devoid of emotional content and dynamics (the elements which power Meat Loaf through all of his long songs).
Tragedy understand this perfectly. None of the songs on their last album are over 3:30.
On their last album, Fucked Up had nine songs over five minutes (compared with, say, four on the Wu-Tang album 36 Chambers). In retrospect, the problem with Hidden World is not the length of the songs, but that it is hard to remember *either* differences between the songs, or different parts within any given song. That sounds like a crippling problem, but that the record succeeds at all given this sameness is quite an accomplishment. Over an hour of mid-tempo, strumming hardcore should be way worse than this. I credit the proliferation of "neat parts" and the band's refusal of boring intros (rather, they tend to stretch out the conclusion of a song, once your interest is already held).
In contrast, I give you the monumentally boring diptych Guns and Roses released in 1991, Use Your Illusion I & II. These records are a real mess. But there are some real gems, almost all of them incredibly long, Zeppelin-esque monsters that truly pay their way: "November Rain" and "Estranged" being the best examples. Unlike Fucked Up's songs, you can tell right away "oh, this is not going to end for a while"---orchestration, pianos, no verse-chorus structure, guitar solos early and often.
I want to really draw your attention to these songs, though. They are long and boring, but they earn it with HUGE parts. On the album as a whole, Guns and Roses are excessive and over-indulgent, but one's patience is very much repaid when they succeed. The show-stopper moments in "November Rain" and "Estranged" are not mild pleasures--these are hooks big enough to hang a buffalo on.
It sounds like this will end up with me saying that bands should "stick to what they are good at" (punk bands to short songs, bands with big pretensions to long songs), but really that is such a false distinction. That is why I introduced Fucked Up earlier. THEY ARE NOT GOOD AT WRITING LONG SONGS. Their album is just a bunch of short songs stretched out. And it's not a problem at all, because those songs are good.
Many are familiar with Nietzsche's idea of the eternal return. Let me phrase it this way: would you rather spend your life listening (over and over) to a mediocre set of four two-minute hardcore songs, or one 9-minute monster with a lot of cool parts?
It is harder and more worthwhile to try to write one good 8 minute song than it is to write a 2 minute song. If you can't do it (like Fucked Up), fake it. You'll impress people. If you genuinely can't do it, your 2-minute songs probably aren't so hot anyways. Or, I dunno---string a bunch of short songs together, like The Who and The Beatles, and pretend they are a "suite." But I don't go for this low-stakes business. (The real enemy of this post is Jay Reatard.)
I also love short songs. But the pleasures should not be of the blink-and-you'll-miss-it variety. Give me something "to be intense upon" (Keats). Once you've done that, I'll forgive any amount of cello.
Or let me be *very* blunt: why don't we measure our enjoyment of music by how much pleasure it gives us? This post would be proposing a pleasure-per-minute ratio that would judge very harshly a great deal of music that, by other standards, has a lot of capital or allegedly succeeds (though without giving pleasure).
Sunday, May 4, 2008
Opera: Some Boring Thoughts
For those of you who felt that a blog post comparing hardcore/punk/indie shows to the opera was 1) inevitable, 2) sure to be boring, and 3) already sufficiently "previewed" in real-life conversation, feel free to tune out. You are probably dating me or hear enough of my opinions as it is.
For the rest of you, this comparison is sure to be invigorating and off-the-wall.
When one goes to the opera, one expects a great deal:
*a return on the outlay of money for tickets, in the form of world-class singing and staging
*good acoustics
*a bunch of old New Yorkers who will cough and rustle paper for the entire performance
*many guaranteed "highlights" interspersed among boring plot-advancement
*everything going off "without a hitch"
*established and world-renowned classics of the genre, confirmed by generations of fans
*showmanship, performance, excellence
*socializing optional
*class anxiety
When one goes to a "show" in Brooklyn, one ought to be prepared for:
*milling about and preening by people not really there to see the band(s)
*many people only there to see one band: their friends' band
*sound difficulties, bad sound
*unprofessional performance, drunkenness
*sets that go on for too long
*unpleasant social interactions with people you didn't know still lived here
*bands whose raison d'etre seems to be free drinks/getting laid/being talked-about
*no one even pretends that the goal is to give a memorable evening of entertainment
Now, I have seen some great shows in my life: but many of those were bands from Japan (with a completely different idea of performance than ours), and many of the others irregular "DIY" shows in basements, laundry rooms, etc.--no one was there for the ambience. On the other end of the spectrum, nearly every stadium-rock concert I've seen has been great: Judas Priest, John Fogerty, etc.
The problem, then, seems to be somewhere in the middle. A show so desperate to exist that it needs to take place in a laundry room, stands a fair chance of being good. A major concert with hundreds of staffers and million-dollar sounds, will probably be OK. It is almost a certainty that "some band" playing the Cakeshop, however, will suck hard.
Here I hope the opera comparison is useful. No one goes to hear a Mozart opera and walks away without having heard some astonishing and catchy tunes. And yet it is common in the extreme that your friends' band will play a show where, granted, the instrumentation may be fine, you may "like" the music for what that is worth, but the "take away" is nothing. A week later, you have forgotten who played completely. Only the ubiquitousness and incessant hyping of bar and club shows could produce their current dominance. No opera could be staged without a good chance of success, without elaborate composition that would ensure periodic engagement. No such "screening process" is necessary for a band to play their shitty set-list, however.
I could go on, but you take my point. "Shows" are a waste of money. The music scene in (your town) is a cluster fuck. If only bands worth seeing played shows, there would be 1/30th the number of shows there are now. The question no artist seems to ask is, "Will anyone care that we wrote these songs, five months from now?"
And to the reply that this is all an obvious point, I rejoin: is it? Then why is it that I am perpetually told that I "should come out" to X show; that it "will be fun," that Y band "is pretty good"? If I don't hear these phrases a single time this summer, then I will admit this point was obvious and unnecessary. Meanwhile, you will find me at home with my records or in line for rush orchestra seats.
For the rest of you, this comparison is sure to be invigorating and off-the-wall.
When one goes to the opera, one expects a great deal:
*a return on the outlay of money for tickets, in the form of world-class singing and staging
*good acoustics
*a bunch of old New Yorkers who will cough and rustle paper for the entire performance
*many guaranteed "highlights" interspersed among boring plot-advancement
*everything going off "without a hitch"
*established and world-renowned classics of the genre, confirmed by generations of fans
*showmanship, performance, excellence
*socializing optional
*class anxiety
When one goes to a "show" in Brooklyn, one ought to be prepared for:
*milling about and preening by people not really there to see the band(s)
*many people only there to see one band: their friends' band
*sound difficulties, bad sound
*unprofessional performance, drunkenness
*sets that go on for too long
*unpleasant social interactions with people you didn't know still lived here
*bands whose raison d'etre seems to be free drinks/getting laid/being talked-about
*no one even pretends that the goal is to give a memorable evening of entertainment
Now, I have seen some great shows in my life: but many of those were bands from Japan (with a completely different idea of performance than ours), and many of the others irregular "DIY" shows in basements, laundry rooms, etc.--no one was there for the ambience. On the other end of the spectrum, nearly every stadium-rock concert I've seen has been great: Judas Priest, John Fogerty, etc.
The problem, then, seems to be somewhere in the middle. A show so desperate to exist that it needs to take place in a laundry room, stands a fair chance of being good. A major concert with hundreds of staffers and million-dollar sounds, will probably be OK. It is almost a certainty that "some band" playing the Cakeshop, however, will suck hard.
Here I hope the opera comparison is useful. No one goes to hear a Mozart opera and walks away without having heard some astonishing and catchy tunes. And yet it is common in the extreme that your friends' band will play a show where, granted, the instrumentation may be fine, you may "like" the music for what that is worth, but the "take away" is nothing. A week later, you have forgotten who played completely. Only the ubiquitousness and incessant hyping of bar and club shows could produce their current dominance. No opera could be staged without a good chance of success, without elaborate composition that would ensure periodic engagement. No such "screening process" is necessary for a band to play their shitty set-list, however.
I could go on, but you take my point. "Shows" are a waste of money. The music scene in (your town) is a cluster fuck. If only bands worth seeing played shows, there would be 1/30th the number of shows there are now. The question no artist seems to ask is, "Will anyone care that we wrote these songs, five months from now?"
And to the reply that this is all an obvious point, I rejoin: is it? Then why is it that I am perpetually told that I "should come out" to X show; that it "will be fun," that Y band "is pretty good"? If I don't hear these phrases a single time this summer, then I will admit this point was obvious and unnecessary. Meanwhile, you will find me at home with my records or in line for rush orchestra seats.
Wednesday, April 16, 2008
Sunday, March 23, 2008
* Yesterday went to the Guggenheim, where Cai Guo-Qiang has taken up nearly the entire space of the museum with seven or eight gigantic pieces. This is not a "review" blog by any means, and certainly not one interested in contemporary art, so let me brief. The successful pieces are not "about" what the plaques and commentaries say they are about. The successful pieces (a stampede of stuffed wolves, a wrecked boat full of broken plates, stuffed tigers with arrows in them, a cascade of cars taking up the empty vertical middle of the museum) are successful insofar as they solve the problem of medium in art. Neither painting, nor sculpture, nor graffiti, nor computer, nor video---the genre is completely uncertain, except for the useless term "installation." Sounds simple enough. But I would go on to say that the unsuccessful pieces are precisely those that dwell too much on medium: clay figures in various states of construction, so that sometimes the wire frame is visible; the scattering of sketches and left-over construction material within the space; a prolonged meditation on gunpowder as a medium. This stuff doesn't work-- gunpowder still has to do *something* when used in lieu of paint. On the other hand, there isn't a whole lot one could do with 80 stuffed wolves that could go wrong, or that could be repeated. One mass stuffed-wolf artwork is probably all we will ever need. Ditto for the boat full of plates. The need to repeatedly employ gunpowder is a weakness of the artist, and not an interesting one. The problematic of medium is only solved when it is presented as solved, not when subjected to a number of works "thinking through" how to employ a medium. Which is all to say, aren't we all tired of the "meta"?
* How does one stand in front of a work of art like Courbet's "Origin of the World?" Essentially a frontal view of a woman's genitalia, "head on" as it were, the artwork is interesting for several reasons. For one, the body appears virtually inanimate. Second, the face is covered. Third, the painting was owned at one point by Jacques Lacan. Fourth, the painting bears a thematic and visual resemblance to Courbet's other series of painting about "origins," those depicting the origins of rivers (usually also pointing towards some sylvan cavern). It is my contention, that in 2008, no one attending the Met will be "shocked" by this painting. Further, that many clichés will be spouted in front of it. Many a dolt will inform their date that it is "strange how unsexual it is," not realizing that they are saying anything about sex itself. Or, on the other hand (but not necessarily out of different mouths!) the contradictory cliché that there is some innate beauty in the female genitalia. This one is particularly tired. For the Greeks, of course, art was a great opportunity to represent male genitals, and this ideal was re-born in, among other works, Michelangelo's David. Only in our pedantic and "sexually liberated" culture has it become fashionable to be squeamish and retarded about how "ugly" male genitals are. The genius of Courbet's painting is to silence all clichés by showing the thing "as it is." The intelligent response can ONLY be, "Well...when you put it that way..." In other words, nothing is idealized and decorated more than the object of sexual desire qua female body. The exposure of and stripping away of these idealizations is simultaneously wildly misogynist (in the "girls are gross" sense), and also very radical. Art, should, at its best, show us what it is we "really" want, and catch us in the act of not-seeing-it-at-first. Nothing can be less productive than imagining that the object of desire (here, woman) is innately this or that (beautiful, sexy). What is interesting is how we come to desire and idealize something that is itself not very appealing, rather than trying to assert (as exemplified in the feminist book Cunt) that there is something mystical and beautiful (Jungian, let's face it) about the feminine. And in this sense Courbet will probably always be ahead of the clichéd bores who treat sex (and therefore beauty) as something we are "born" in relation to.
* How does one stand in front of a work of art like Courbet's "Origin of the World?" Essentially a frontal view of a woman's genitalia, "head on" as it were, the artwork is interesting for several reasons. For one, the body appears virtually inanimate. Second, the face is covered. Third, the painting was owned at one point by Jacques Lacan. Fourth, the painting bears a thematic and visual resemblance to Courbet's other series of painting about "origins," those depicting the origins of rivers (usually also pointing towards some sylvan cavern). It is my contention, that in 2008, no one attending the Met will be "shocked" by this painting. Further, that many clichés will be spouted in front of it. Many a dolt will inform their date that it is "strange how unsexual it is," not realizing that they are saying anything about sex itself. Or, on the other hand (but not necessarily out of different mouths!) the contradictory cliché that there is some innate beauty in the female genitalia. This one is particularly tired. For the Greeks, of course, art was a great opportunity to represent male genitals, and this ideal was re-born in, among other works, Michelangelo's David. Only in our pedantic and "sexually liberated" culture has it become fashionable to be squeamish and retarded about how "ugly" male genitals are. The genius of Courbet's painting is to silence all clichés by showing the thing "as it is." The intelligent response can ONLY be, "Well...when you put it that way..." In other words, nothing is idealized and decorated more than the object of sexual desire qua female body. The exposure of and stripping away of these idealizations is simultaneously wildly misogynist (in the "girls are gross" sense), and also very radical. Art, should, at its best, show us what it is we "really" want, and catch us in the act of not-seeing-it-at-first. Nothing can be less productive than imagining that the object of desire (here, woman) is innately this or that (beautiful, sexy). What is interesting is how we come to desire and idealize something that is itself not very appealing, rather than trying to assert (as exemplified in the feminist book Cunt) that there is something mystical and beautiful (Jungian, let's face it) about the feminine. And in this sense Courbet will probably always be ahead of the clichéd bores who treat sex (and therefore beauty) as something we are "born" in relation to.
Saturday, March 8, 2008
Why I Don't Trust Anyone
When reissue label Light in the Attic re-released the first two Betty Davis albums last year, they did something very stupid. They only did CDs. Some genius, noticing this, immediately bootlegged the things on vinyl (which I bought). Now, in early 2008, about 10 months after the CDs came out, the label has gotten wise and has pressed the albums on wax (with nicer packaging and bonus 7"s).
For a split second, I thought: "wouldn't it be nice to have these beautifully packaged, legit LPs?" But, you know what? These records actually are not that great. Now, let me tell you my one insight into human nature: everyone thinks the thing that only they know about, or only they have, is much better than it really is. Extremely rare is the "long-lost masterpiece" that lives up to the hype. We were all much more excited about "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" before they, you know, really existed.
Luckily, there is a built-in psychological counter-action to the deflationary effect of finding out something does not live up to its hype. This is the joy of tastemaking: "You've got to hear it!" When something is in the vaults, this enthusiasm belongs to the few; when something finally comes out, we all get to join in. "Is it as good as everyone says?" "Yeah! It's great!"
How am I to tell whether a new discovery is truly great or only marginal? One would think we could rely upon reviews, but this turns out to be the least-reliable sphere of all. What we need is historical perspective and a kind of long-term judgment. It is not accidental that these things are lacking in American culture.
Here's a good write up about the disappointment of hearing Betty Davis' albums re-issued:
"Her music is a lot more fun to read about than listen to."
"She was, point blank, an awful singer."
"The vocals might matter less if the music were consistently inspired. But few of Davis' grooves really stick. Partly you can blame the singer: Davis often ignored the beat entirely."
"Claims that her albums belong in the first rank of the funk pantheon are deluded. Such claims aren't unprecedented, of course. Think of the mid-'90s vogue for exotica, fueled by CD reissues of forgotten kitsch by Esquivel and Les Baxter, or of R&B/rock guitarist Shuggie Otis, who in 1974 made a wan little album called Inspiration Information that was hailed as a lost masterwork by dint of a 2001 reissue on David Byrne's label, Luaka Bop. That Esquivel, Otis, and Davis became their seasons' misguided icons of lost virtue isn't something we should hold against them. Their tepid music, though, is something else."
What I like about this write-up is the historical perspective, which is two-fold: 1) What we might call a canon of funk music, against which Betty Davis can be judged as a quality, and 2) a remembrance of other hyped "lost gems," the fate of which can now be viewed serenely.
The #1 thing that happens in a record store in NYC in 2008 is that someone recommends to me a reissue of a record I was not previously aware of. Some of these records will be fantastic (the Roky Erickson "Evil One" 2xLP), some of them will be just fine (the Betty Davis albums), and some of them I will listen to once and file away (oh how many!).
The point being, we all would rather "discover" a mediocre $18.99 reissue than buy the $3 Stevie Wonder album which towers above it. Myself included. This might be taken as the central question of this blog in its entirety.
For a split second, I thought: "wouldn't it be nice to have these beautifully packaged, legit LPs?" But, you know what? These records actually are not that great. Now, let me tell you my one insight into human nature: everyone thinks the thing that only they know about, or only they have, is much better than it really is. Extremely rare is the "long-lost masterpiece" that lives up to the hype. We were all much more excited about "Free as a Bird" and "Real Love" before they, you know, really existed.
Luckily, there is a built-in psychological counter-action to the deflationary effect of finding out something does not live up to its hype. This is the joy of tastemaking: "You've got to hear it!" When something is in the vaults, this enthusiasm belongs to the few; when something finally comes out, we all get to join in. "Is it as good as everyone says?" "Yeah! It's great!"
How am I to tell whether a new discovery is truly great or only marginal? One would think we could rely upon reviews, but this turns out to be the least-reliable sphere of all. What we need is historical perspective and a kind of long-term judgment. It is not accidental that these things are lacking in American culture.
Here's a good write up about the disappointment of hearing Betty Davis' albums re-issued:
"Her music is a lot more fun to read about than listen to."
"She was, point blank, an awful singer."
"The vocals might matter less if the music were consistently inspired. But few of Davis' grooves really stick. Partly you can blame the singer: Davis often ignored the beat entirely."
"Claims that her albums belong in the first rank of the funk pantheon are deluded. Such claims aren't unprecedented, of course. Think of the mid-'90s vogue for exotica, fueled by CD reissues of forgotten kitsch by Esquivel and Les Baxter, or of R&B/rock guitarist Shuggie Otis, who in 1974 made a wan little album called Inspiration Information that was hailed as a lost masterwork by dint of a 2001 reissue on David Byrne's label, Luaka Bop. That Esquivel, Otis, and Davis became their seasons' misguided icons of lost virtue isn't something we should hold against them. Their tepid music, though, is something else."
What I like about this write-up is the historical perspective, which is two-fold: 1) What we might call a canon of funk music, against which Betty Davis can be judged as a quality, and 2) a remembrance of other hyped "lost gems," the fate of which can now be viewed serenely.
The #1 thing that happens in a record store in NYC in 2008 is that someone recommends to me a reissue of a record I was not previously aware of. Some of these records will be fantastic (the Roky Erickson "Evil One" 2xLP), some of them will be just fine (the Betty Davis albums), and some of them I will listen to once and file away (oh how many!).
The point being, we all would rather "discover" a mediocre $18.99 reissue than buy the $3 Stevie Wonder album which towers above it. Myself included. This might be taken as the central question of this blog in its entirety.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)