Priorities
Keeping the same theme as my last post. Hey, it’s Saturday. You don’t want anything serious, do you?
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Thoughts on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra
I suppose I should feel excited about the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and perhaps it is just my overbearing cynicism that overshadows any true optimism about this, but there’s just something vaguely unsettling about it. It’s hard to place a finger on, but I’ll give it a shot.
It’s kinda like Grandma making a YouTube video. It’s cute, you appreciate she figured out how to work the thing, but there’s something faintly depressing about it. Yes, it’s nice to see Grandma up on the internets, but does she belong there? Wouldn’t you rather see her just making cookies or something? Ya know, something Grandma-ey?
Ok, my analogy is stretching a bit, but here’s the deal. I’m often wary of sensationalist actions and events that seek to thrust classical music into the mainstream, even though many of them are made with the sincerest best of intentions. Similar attempts were made with The Disney Orchestra (which many of my friends were in) and Mr. Holland’s Opus. What did they do? They made a bunch of people feel warm and fuzzy, but their actual effect is questionable. These projects seem aimed more at stirring the guilt of the public for its glaring lack of support than they do at attempting to produce great art or creating a lasting effect on the consciousness of our society, a consciousness that – perhaps unconsciously – views classical music as something arcane and elitist.
Still, I felt kinda warm and fuzzy reading about Tan Dun’s and MTT’s efforts, two genuine forces for good in the classical music world. But you know what else made me feel warm and fuzzy? Charlie Bit My Finger.
My optimistic side tells me that the culture of YouTube is the perfect thing to encourage art and music in young people. As kids, my generation (and all before mine) grew up relatively isolated with our artistic endeavors. Young people now have endless avenues to explore, share, and learn about theirs; it’s the kind of encouragement we could only have dreamt of. Whereas I grew up hiding my classical music side from my friends, young musicians can now seek friends and support in their musical lives with YouTube as their primary tool.
So is it a movement or a Google P.R. move? Or both? Can the classical world be saved by a serious of stunts? I mean, we can pretty much rule out any great art coming from this project, yes? Something tells me Tan Dun’s “Internet Symphony No. 1 — Eroica” (yes, that’s the real title) ain’t exactly gonna be something for the music history books.
What I’d rather see is a long-term investment. A site connecting students and teachers via video, or live-streaming. The creation of an online infrastructure connecting young musicians who could support and collaborate with each other. Something that would benefit many as opposed to the few.
My worry: thousands of young musicians are going to make videos of themselves for this project. 99% of them are going to be assed-out. About a hundred people are going to have a badass time playing a big show at Stern. How does this help the classical world as a whole, aside from publicity? Wouldn’t a better project be something that would help the culture – the musicians, not just the winners of an audition?
Maybe it’s just the classical music world’s first shot at finally doing something with this crazy internet thing. Yes, at its core the whole idea is very old-fashioned. But maybe it’ll be good for Grandma. Maybe just what Grandma needs is to get herself up on her feet to dance around for a bunch of people. Maybe that will get her confidence up so she can actually do something worthwhile. :)
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Shop ’till Ya Drop!
Try Amazon. There’s less death involved.
I suppose I could go on a long rant about how consumerism in this country is tearing us apart and turning us against each other. But I don’t really believe that. At the risk of sounding simplistic, some people are just dicks. There is simply no reason too sleep overnight at a Wal-Mart and then swarm the store at 5am risking other people’s lives. I don’t care how poor you are, there are better ways to save. Do your shopping from from home, it’ll take less time, take less lives, and leave you with plenty of energy left over to, um, leave glittery embedded comments on your friends’ Myspace pages or something.
Oh yeah, and purely from a desire for revenge, I really hope they find and prosecute as many of those Wal-Mart tramplers as they can.
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Liberal or Conservative?
Ok, normally I don’t like just reposting silly stuff I’ve found from Reddit, but there is just so much to love in this. The inanity of the responses, the hats, the symmetry, their faces! Pure Reddit gold:
(click image for larger version)
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The Fog of Music Criticism
Rob Horning of PopMatters posted a really thoughtful response to a Peter Suderman post on the inherent positivity of music criticism (in response to a Joe Queenan article, aaaaa! blogosphere!). First, Suderman’s claims:
Scan the sidebar of Metacritic’s music page. Nearly all of the review averages are positive or very positive, and almost none of them are straightforward pans. In fact, right now I don’t see a single album with a review average that gets a score categorized “generally negative reviews.” Contrast this with the movies page, which contains more than a dozen films with low averages. Even the limited release indies — the “artsy” films — are often given low marks.
Is contemporary pop music really that much better than contemporary mainstream filmmaking? I think not. Instead, it’s just that the music reviewing culture has developed in such a way that most everything scores a “pretty good” or a “not bad.”
Horning responds:
Unlike films, many many records get released, and just noticing one and running a review of it already marks it as significant. The substance of the review itself is almost beside the point. Acknowledging its existence is already an admission that it’s “pretty good,” so it would be strange for the review to suggest otherwise.
…
It might amuse some readers to see well-established artists attacked, but who wants to read negative reviews of stuff they haven’t heard of? There’s no point, and the reviewer just comes across as mean. I certainly felt this way about myself when I was writing the negative reviews. It seemed dumb for me to be discouraging these performers, who had no chance of making it, really, no matter what I wrote about them. It’s no fun pissing on people’s dreams. In fact, it made more sense to try to champion all bands, so I could potentially claim some of the glory for helping one of them make it.
Exactly. In general, films are massive undertakings with insane budgets and scads of people involved to make it happen. For example, I recently watched 2004’s Primer, an amazing lo-budge sci-fi film that was made for an insanely low amount, around $7,000. But it still required a set of actors, a crew, tons of gear, etc. I am currently producing an album using solely the computer with which I am writing this blog. For, um, $0. For every indie film produced there are hundreds of indie albums. Why review one just to crush it? It would be rather sadistic (although most reviewers do display a hint of sadism, IMO).
I have a point of contention with this though:
Readers often want hype, not evaluation, because it gives pop culture a sure-fire context, whereas a review that traces musical influences and parses lyrics only helps a select few readers. Besides, there are no established criteria for what’s good beyond popularity or fidelity to genre expectations. Maybe Suderman thinks it’s possible that music reviews could be objective evaluations of quality, as defined by some unimpeachable universal standards, but I don’t believe these exist for pop music (or for much of anything in culture—aesthetic criteria are political creations). The pop music people consume is typically a tribal thing or a means to participate in the zeitgeist, and it’s hard as a reviewer to shape the zeitgeist from the margins.
I think what plagues much music criticism, both from professional reviewers and in the minds of listeners, is the lack of objective criteria from which to judge a work of music. The apparent criteria has become almost purely social: work is judged by its supposed “honesty”, self-consciousness, unpretentiousness, and authenticity rather than by traditional musical merits. The question becomes: is this rapper/singer actually from Brooklyn/Manchester or does he just say he is; it’s not about the musical product, it’s about the narrative. The highest rated albums are often the albums that are the most fun to write about. Yeah, you might feel like a douche praising a young white-boy rapper from Hempstead whose daddy bought him a record contract, but if the product is good, suck it up.
The most obvious example of this need to sustain narrative is J Dilla’s album Donuts. The story goes, he wrote the album on his laptop in the hospital whilst dying of cancer. Now, who wants to write a narrative about his sad, valiant efforts culminating in an album that’s, well, a piece of shit? More importantly, who wants to read that?
Now, not to get all conservatory-trained-musician on y’all, but why not focus on the product? Yes, a good back story can enhance the appreciation of music – Beethoven’s deafness for example, or Brian Wilson’s mental illness – but to ignore technical criteria in music, even pop music, is asking to be lead around in a fog of subjectivity and ambiguity.
Here’s a few objective things pop reviewers should listen for:
1. Originality: Not for its own sake, of course, but the band/artist should sound like itself. If the R&B singer sounds like Stevie with a hip hop beat, or the garage band sounds like The Velvet Underground with auto-tune, it is not original. Of course, originality for its own sake can be just as tedious, so keep an eye out for extra-musical distractions: costumes, romantic back-stories, different colored eyes…
2. The Singer: Can the singer get the same effect live as on the album without the album’s effects and auto-tune. This doesn’t mean the singer has to be classically trained, or even good. It just means he/she has to be a real performer. Also, as stated earlier, the voice should be original, if I hear one more Blink 182-influenced pop-punk singer I think I’ll open my veins.
3. Production: I dig gritty production, but there’s a big difference between lo-fi and bad. I can also appreciate intensive production, but not when it becomes glossy. Also, knowing some basics about electronic music can easily help you sift through the hordes of house and trance tracks built around presets and simple filter tweaks. Learn your gear, it is far more important to know the basic varieties of effects, synths, and editing techniques than it is to have heard of every last indie band to come out of Ann Arbor in the late-90s.
4. Musicianship: I can appreciate Teenage Jesus and the Jerks for what they are, but that doesn’t mean that the bar should be set at their level of technical proficiency on their instruments. If an artist or band is lacking in technical skill, they had damn well better make up for it tenfold with originality, creativity, and their lyrics. Yes, Meg White is kind of a sucky drummer, but she also amazes me at the same time (how can she drag the and-of-3 the exact same way every bar??)
5. Lyrics: The rhyming of the words “fly”, “high”, and “sky” in a sequence should be a federal crime. I don’t care if you’re being ironic. Lyrics that sound as if they were written on a pad of paper and then forced into some chord changes are nicht güt.
6. Composition: It doesn’t have to be symphonic – in fact pop albums can easily sound overwrought when inundated with orchestral instruments and weighted with complex 8-minute tunes – but there should be commentary on the craftsmanship of the songs by the reviewer. Structure, pacing, arrangement, and the overall vibe should be taken into account, much more than the off-microphone lives of the musician(s).
7. Authorship: Did the band/artist write their own tunes, or were they written by a professional song-writer? I think it is utterly hypocritical for many reviewers to lavish importance on the extra-musical elements of an artist’s life and how they supposedly enhance the musical experience for the listener, while the songs themselves were written by some old white dude living in Brentwood.
PopMatters is actually one of the music review sites I respect (and not just because they gave AWS a great review…). They do their research and for the most part their reviews are pretty down-to-earth. Contrast them with Pitchfork, the leading bullshit-driven review site. Pitchfork has a cadre of fantastic writers. Really, I’m in awe of their skills. But a review should not be a place to display your skill of writing, a music review should be an arena to display your musical knowledge and your talent at objective critique. If a reviewer’s ‘musical knowledge’ consists of the names of thousands of bands and the names of the thousands of members of those bands and their respective histories, then their knowledge is – to borrow a word from Horning – political. It is not musical. The increased prevalence of non-musical experts in music critic positions has turned the role of the music reviewer into a analyzer of the sociology of music rather than the art of music.
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The Big Sleep Quotes
I watched the classic noir The Big Sleep last night. It was pretty great. As with many of the old Howard Hawks films, I find myself sitting up in my chair to catch all of the lightning fast dialog.
Here’s a great collection from IMDB of some of the best tidbits:
Carmen Sternwood: You’re not very tall are you?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I, uh, I try to be.
Eddie Mars: Convenient, the door being open when you didn’t have a key, eh?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, wasn’t it. By the way, how’d you happen to have one?
Eddie Mars: Is that any of your business?
Philip Marlowe: I could make it my business.
Eddie Mars: I could make your business mine.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, you wouldn’t like it. The pay’s too small.
General Sternwood: Do you like orchids?
Philip Marlowe: Not particularly.
General Sternwood: Ugh. Nasty things. Their flesh is too much like the flesh of men, and their perfume has the rotten sweetness of corruption.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, Eddie, you don’t have anybody watching me, do you? Tailing me in a gray Plymouth coupe, maybe?
Eddie Mars: No, why should I?
Philip Marlowe: Well, I can’t imagine, unless you’re worried about where I am all the time.
Eddie Mars: I don’t like you that well.
Vivian: How did you find her?
Marlowe: I didn’t find her.
Vivian: Well then how did you-…
Marlowe: I haven’t been here, you haven’t seen me, and she hasn’t been out of the house all evening.
Vivian: So you do get up, I was beginning to think you worked in bed like Marcel Proust.
Marlowe: Who’s he?
Vivian: You wouldn’t know him, a French writer.
Marlowe: Come into my boudoir.
Vivian: Speaking of horses, I like to play them myself. But I like to see them workout a little first, see if they’re front runners or comefrom behind, find out what their whole card is, what makes them run.
Marlowe: Find out mine?
Vivian: I think so.
Marlowe: Go ahead.
Vivian: I’d say you don’t like to be rated. You like to get out in front, open up a little lead, take a little breather in the backstretch, and then come home free.
Marlowe: You don’t like to be rated yourself.
Vivian: I haven’t met anyone yet that can do it. Any suggestions?
Marlowe: Well, I can’t tell till I’ve seen you over a distance of ground. You’ve got a touch of class, but I don’t know how, how far you can go.
Vivian: A lot depends on who’s in the saddle.
Vivian: You go too far, Marlowe.
Marlowe: Those are harsh words to throw at a man, especially when he’s walking out of your bedroom.
Marlowe: You know what he’ll do when he comes back? Beat my teeth out, then kick me in the stomach for mumbling.
Vivian: You’ve forgotten one thing – me.
Philip Marlowe: What’s wrong with you?
Vivian: Nothing you can’t fix.
[last lines]
General Sternwood: How do you like your brandy, sir?
Philip Marlowe: In a glass.
[after a kiss]
Vivian: I liked that. I’d like more.
Philip Marlowe: She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up.
Vivian: I don’t like your manners.
Marlowe: And I’m not crazy about yours. I didn’t ask to see you. I don’t mind if you don’t like my manners, I don’t like them myself. They are pretty bad. I grieve over them on long winter evenings. I don’t mind your ritzing me drinking your lunch out of a bottle. But don’t waste your time trying to cross-examine me.
Philip Marlowe: My, my, my! Such a lot of guns around town and so few brains! You know, you’re the second guy I’ve met today that seems to think a gat in the hand means the world by the tail.
Vivian: Why did you have to go on?
Marlowe: Too many people told me to stop.
General Sternwood: You may smoke, too. I can still enjoy the smell of it. Hum, nice state of affairs when a man has to indulge his vices by proxy. You’re looking, sir, at a very dull survival of a very gaudy life, crippled, paralyzed in both legs, barely I eat and my sleep is so near waking it’s hardly worth a name. I seem to exist largely on heat like a new born spider.
Vivian: So you’re a private detective. I didn’t know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you’re a mess, aren’t you?
General Sternwood: If I seem a bit sinister as a parent, Mr. Marlowe, it’s because my hold on life is too slight to include any Victorian hypocrisy. I need hardly add that any man who has lived as I have and indulges for the first time in parenthood at my age deserves all he gets.
Philip Marlowe: You made a mistake. Mrs. Rutledge didn’t want to see me.
Norris: I’m sorry, sir. I make many mistakes.
Philip Marlowe: Hmm.
General Sternwood: What does that mean?
Philip Marlowe: It means, hmm.
General Sternwood: You knew him too?
Philip Marlowe: Yes, in the old days, when he used to run rum out of Mexico and I was on the other side. We used to swap shots between drinks, or drinks between shots, whichever you like.
General Sternwood: My respects to you, sir. Few men ever swapped more than one shot with Sean Regan.
Philip Marlowe: I know he was a good man at whatever he did. No one was more pleased than I when I heard you had taken him on as your… whatever he was.
General Sternwood: I assume they have all the usual vices, besides those they’ve invented for themselves.
Philip Marlowe: Thanks for the drink, General.
General Sternwood: I enjoyed your drink as much as you did, sir.
Norris: Are you attempting to tell me my duties, sir?
Philip Marlowe: No, just having fun trying to guess what they are.
Vivian: Do you always think you can handle people like, uh, trained seals?
Philip Marlowe: Uh-huh. I usually get away with it too.
Vivian: How nice for you.
[in a bookstore]
Philip Marlowe: You do sell books, hmm?
Agnes Lowzier: What do those look like, grapefruit?
Philip Marlowe: Well, from here they look like books.
[making a prank phone call]
Philip Marlowe: What can I do for you? I can do what? Where? Oh, no, I wouldn’t like that. Neither would my daughter.
Philip Marlowe: I can do what? Where? Oh no, I wouldn’t like that. Neither would my daughter.
[hangs up]
Philip Marlowe: I hope the sergeant never traces that call.
Philip Marlowe: You wanna tell me now?
Vivian: Tell you what?
Philip Marlowe: What it is you’re trying to find out. You know, it’s a funny thing. You’re trying to find out what your father hired me to find out, and I’m trying to find out why you want to find out.
Vivian: You could go on forever, couldn’t you? Anyway it’ll give us something to talk about next time we meet.
Philip Marlowe: Among other things.
Taxi Driver: If you can use me again sometime, call this number.
Philip Marlowe: Day and night?
Taxi Driver: Uh, night’s better. I work during the day.
Eddie Mars: Your story didn’t sound quite right.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, that’s too bad. You got a better one?
Eddie Mars: Maybe I can find one.
Philip Marlowe: Did I hurt you much, sugar?
Agnes Lowzier: You and every other man I’ve ever met.
Philip Marlowe: How’d you happen to pick out this place?
Vivian: Maybe I wanted to hold your hand.
Philip Marlowe: Oh, that can be arranged.
Philip Marlowe: You the guy that’s been tailing me?
Harry Jones: Yeah, the name’s Jones. Harry Jones. I want to see you.
Philip Marlowe: Swell. Did you want to see those guys jump me?
Harry Jones: I didn’t care one way or the other.
Philip Marlowe: You could’ve yelled for help.
Harry Jones: If a guy’s playing a hand, I let him play it. I’m no kibitzer.
Philip Marlowe: You got brains
Agnes Lowzier: Is Harry there?
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, yeah, he’s here.
Agnes Lowzier: Put him on, will you?
Philip Marlowe: He can’t talk to you.
Agnes Lowzier: Why?
Philip Marlowe: Because he’s dead.
Agnes Lowzier: Well, so long, copper. Wish me luck. I got a raw deal.
Philip Marlowe: Hey, your kind always does.
Philip Marlowe: What’s the matter? Haven’t you ever seen a gun before? What do you want me to do, count three like they do in the movies?
Philip Marlowe: Let me do the talking, angel. I don’t know yet what I’m going to tell them. It’ll be pretty close to the truth.
Carmen Sternwood: You’re cute.
Philip Marlowe: I’m getting cuter every minute.
Carmen Sternwood: Is he as cute as you are?
Philip Marlowe: Nobody is.
Philip Marlowe: Somebody’s always giving me guns.
Vivian: So you’re a private detective. I didn’t know they existed, except in books, or else they were greasy little men snooping around hotel corridors. My, you’re a mess, aren’t you?
Philip Marlowe: I’m not very tall either. Next time I’ll come on stilts wear a white tie and carry a tennis racket.
Vivian: I doubt if even that will help.
Vivian: What will your first step be?
Philip Marlowe: The usual one.
Vivian: I didn’t know there was a usual one.
Philip Marlowe: Well sure there is, it comes complete with diagrams on page 47 of how to be a detective in 10 easy lessons correspondent school textbook and uh, your father offered me a drink.
Vivian: You must’ve read another one on how to be a comedian.
Philip Marlowe: I collect blondes and bottles.
Carmen Sternwood: You’re cute. I like you.
Philip Marlowe: Yeah, what you sees nothing, I got a Balinese dancing girl tattooed across my chest.
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Back
I’m back from Alarm Will Sound’s Russia tour, taking a day to rest and recoup. I haven’t been this exhausted in a while. I think I’ll stay in on this nice rainy day and watch a horror movie. Or maybe an old noir… Horror, noir, horror, noir… Pulse (original, natch) or Double Indemnity… Oh, the choices…
Anyway, I’m gathering all of my photos and videos online to share them with the world, if you be so inclined to view them. But for now, I’ll leave you with my favorite footage from my Russia trip.
Inexplicably dancing girls in St. Petersburg:
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Matt Marks Music 
