It’s Criminal: Badly Drawn Boy

It’s criminal that more people aren’t required to listen to the following songs by Badly Drawn Boy:

(In No Particular Order)
1. “Four Leaf Clover” - a quintessential BDB song, cheery and sad at the same time. How else can you fathom an offer to lend out a lucky four-leaf clover with an opening line that goes, “Go on/Do what you’ve got to do/You’ve got your dreams/I’ve got mine too/Be strong/get off at the next stop/don’t worry about a thing/keep taking it easy.” So why’s he lending out the clover? Because he thinks they’re getting back together soon. That’s hope…and heart-breaking. And not nearly as bad as it’s going to get.

2. “Above You/Below Me.” I once dedicated an entire column to the premise of this song: tolerance. The song’s refrain, “Please accept me as I am/there will be something in the wind/to tell us we’re right/and show us we’re wrong.” In other words, truths might become evident of their own accord, but not because we’re busy shouting each other down. Or something like that. I hope that’s what the song means. (I had lunch recently with The Queen; she explained Leonard Cohen’s “Halleleujah” to me in ways that made my head hurt. I will never know enough to know fully understand what she said that day. Still, I think I’m relatively spot on with my interpretation here.)

3. “Once Around The Block.” It’s just a good song.

4. “You Were Right.” Ever been broken up with unexpectedly? Because even if you can ignore how good the song is generally, there’s this, “And I/Was busy finding answers/While you just got on with real life.” Never, anywhere, ever, has the pain of a breakup been so simply captured. For that, BDB deserves serious dap.

5. “Logic of a Friend.” I’ll be honest; much of this music stems from enjoying BDB’s overall delivery of the song. (I’d call them “tightly constructed pop gems” in an attempt to go all hipster on you, but I’m not sure his music qualifies as pop.) So, delivery it is. Put more simply, the sounds flow together in an enjoyable way.

Everything mentioned here is available from the iTunes store. Or, yknow, wherever you get your music.

Technorati Tags: Badly Drawn Boy, Music

Madonna and Not Drinking

As I approach the two year anniversary of the last time I had an alcoholic beverage - I mark the date as December 9, 2006, although I’m not entirely sure of the absolute accuracy of that - I find myself listening to Madonna’s “Hung Up.” There’s no doubt that Madonna is batshit crazy, but still, I have a very difficult time separating myself from some of her songs. Like “Hung Up.”

Specifically, I remember listening to this song a lot on the first day of the first time that I tried to quit drinking, long before the December 9th 2006 anniversary. I was the designated driver that night, and spent my evening driving around really drunk people. I had put this song on a CD and listened to it while trying to get people to various locations before they threw up all over my car. (Mission Accomplished.) The song evokes that particularly memory, of that particular evening. It always will. It’s a decent song.

My daughter is learning to play the piano, and her interaction with that instrument may form the way in which she connects to music. I never played anything, and I still boggle at her ability to play songs from memory. So I connect songs to events. The Red Hot Chili Peppers “Soul To Squeeze” to my first junior high school dance. Edie Brickell’s “What I Am” to bizarre emotional state during my junior year in high school. And Madonna’s “Hung Up” to one my earliest revelations that my drinking was getting completely out of control. There are more of course, which I think I’ve documented elsewhere. The interaction of music and memory is beyond fascinating to me.

Right now, I’m listening to Pink Floyd’s “Wish You Were Here,” a sad lament for their fallen lead-singer. The song is one of the all-time greats; the pleading in the lyrics with an essentially comatose man - “Did they get you to trade/your heroes for ghosts?” - cannot be highly praised enough. I don’t connect this song to anything. It’s just beautiful.

Incidentally, one of this blog’s occasional readers is battling the bottle. My thoughts are with him. It isn’t an easy thing to quit.

Technorati Tags: Alcohol, Memories, Music

Damn The Onion’s AV Club 2: Electric Boogaloo

I have a decidedly love-hate relationship with The Onion’s AV Club - generally I enjoy reading it, and certainly trust its reviews, but it occasionally things go bad. There’s just something about its writers that don’t seem to realize that they don’t have to take everything so damned seriously.

Earlier, I podcasted about the irritating way in which people will hide from the things that they enjoy by claiming that they really enjoy a certain whatever’s kitsch value. Among the response that I got was a sort of boggle from people who seemed to indicate that they weren’t sure about the claim that I was making.

The AV Club stepped up in my defense thankfully, with this review of Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo which comes under the title of: I Watched This On Purpose. Right away you’ve got all the evidence you need that the review’s author, Tasha Robinson, is attempting to separate herself from a movie that she enjoyed. “Guys, I didn’t stumble across this. It was so bad that I Watched This On Purpose.” You can imagine the conversation.

The gist of the I Watched This On Purpose reviews is to act as if the author is willfully standing between the viewer and a bullet. (When you think about it, Tasha Robinson is the Mother Theresa of our time, helping the lepers that we want to ignore…) Right away, the movie is described as “cultural garbage” that is “trashy looking.” The author acknowledges hoping to discover in the film some sort of real reward, but is cautious. There’s this:

Much to our surprise, Breakin’ 2 turned out to be pure, laugh-a-minute cheeseball entertainment. Granted, it’s utterly terrible, with stiff, amateurish acting, enough vivid Day-Glo to blind an army of sunglasses-wearing Corey Harts, and the thinnest and hoariest of thin, hoary old plots.

In other words, “I really enjoyed this film, but acknowledging that would be a bad thing to do without qualifying my enjoyment, so I’ll add that it was an awful movie that was terrible for the following reasons.”

And there’s this conclusion:

At an absolute minimum, 85 percent. Breakin’ 2 is utterly hilarious. Many of the dance sequences are redundant and overlong, but even so, there’s always something ill-conceived and hysterical to look at, from fluffy ’80s hair to terrible fashions. (Apparently full-on school-band uniforms were really hot in the ’80s San Francisco breakdance scene.) The cheesy acting, monumentally trite storyline, and all-around camp level kept our whole musicals-watching party howling in disbelief. It’s a lousy movie to watch alone, or with any serious expectations in mind. But in the “so bad it’s good” pantheon, it ranks surprisingly high. It’s almost—almost—a pity there was never a Breakin’ 3: Electric Jubilee.

Reading those claims is important, because what you’re being asked to do is believe that this movie is totally worthless trash while simultaneously being asked to believe that it is completely enjoyable. Maybe I’m not as subtle as hipsters, but how is it possible that something be both complete trash and wonderfully enjoyable? Based upon her description, she got some friends together, they popped in Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and enjoyed themselves watching it. That sounds like the makings of a good movie, doesn’t it, one in which you and your friends can sit around and enjoy yourselves watching it?

But in hipster world, there are levels of enjoyment and this wasn’t enjoyed nearly as much as something serious by somebody serious. Let’s use, for this argument, the German Rainer Werner Fassbinder, whose movies I’ve never seen but whom my friends Mitch the Killer and Married Mike rave about. Let’s suppose you had two parties, one of which watched Breakin 2 and the other of which watched something or other by Fassbinder. People who seriously believe this stuff would claim that even though they enjoyed both movies, the Fassbinder was enjoyed more because it was art. The Onion AV Club has a section of movie reviews about films that they can’t believe that their staffers have missed - as if they’re shocked that somebody could have made it to hipster adulthood without having seen Scorcese’s Raging Bull. The horror!

Go back and read Robinson’s conclusion, in which she writes:

But in the “so bad it’s good” pantheon, it ranks surprisingly high.

What is the “so bad it’s good” pantheon? I assume that’s different from the “so good” pantheon, even both both presumably represent movies watched and enjoyed by the possessor of said pantheon. Despite the claims made by hipsters and other snobs of varying colors - does, “I don’t enjoy reality TV, I just watch it for the camp value!” sound familiar? - I don’t think it is possible to rank order pleasure in this way, to suggest that some movies create “so bad it’s good” pleasure and other movies create “so good it’s good” pleasure. There’s simply no way to tell the difference. If something is “so bad it’s good” then it must then be good, right? When Tasha Robinson writes something like, she’s trying to signal that she understood that there’s a difference between Breakin 2: Electric Boogaloo and Raging Bull. Except there isn’t one.

People that try to differentiate between various songs, or books, or poems, or movies, or television shows, or pieces of art, or whatever, are doing so because they’re trying to stake their own claim about relative bests. But those bests are relative, and should never be forgotten. No movie is objectively better than any other movie. All movies are the same. Some produce pleasure, and some don’t. But they produce those differently for each person. For Tasha Robinson to claim that Breakin 2 produced one kind of pleasure and Fast Times at Ridgemont High produced something else is just plain lying. I wouldn’t even be against a claim that she enjoyed one more than the other, but to claim that the pleasure produced was somehow different?

Come on. One of the longest running arguments that I’ve ever had, and I’ll have it with anybody at anytime, is about the equality of all things produced by people. There’s no such thing as a good or bad movie, intrinsically. They’re all equal. I enjoy some more than others, but that doesn’t reflect upon the movie, but rather, upon what I do and do not enjoy. Anybody who claims any differently, particularly in regard to objective realities, is lying.

Where I Write About Photography…

This is the sort of post that I write late at night, ostensibly about the above photograph, although who knows if I end up there. It’s also the sort of thing that my obsessive commenter Haku will certainly not appreciate. I anticipate something along the lines of, “This sucks, you’re boring.”

A few times, I have taken photographs and thought to myself, “That’s a good one.” Good is defined, in this case, as a photograph that satisfies my own vague aesthetic sensibilities, and if you think it’s ridiculous for me to suggest that I have aesthetic sensibilities, you’re correct. However, I like the fact that the subject of the image - Billy Matheny and his band - are not dead-centered. I like the dead space around them. I like that they were talking to one another and not concerning themselves with me in the slightest. I like that this was an image of a band, in a bar, enjoying a drink. To me, it is honest photography.

I realize that claim sounds ridiculous, but I strive to capture real images, whatever that means. “But Sam!” You’re rightly exclaiming, before asking, “Didn’t you alter the image in photoshop?” It’s true. I opened it up and stripped out the color. Black and white is the cheap way to make a regular photograph appear important. Allegedly. For whatever this is worth, I liked the photograph in color, but like it more in black and white. And as this is my site and my bandwidth, that’s going to be quite enough criticism of my photoshopping.

I took these photographs because I was asked to. Matheny and his band need new images for their promotional materials, and because everybody else on Earth was booked, he called me. I don’t know the first thing about taking pictures of people, or bands, or anything else. Still, he trusted me, and I think we’ll end with a serviceable image as a result of our work together, at least until Annie Liebovitz is photographing him for the front cover of Rolling Stone or Spin or whatever music magazine is important these days.

Speaking of music, I’ve been obsessively listening to a single featuring Dwight “Tight Jeans” Yoakam and Ralph Stanley. The song - “Down Where The River Bends” - is fantastic, a simple song about a man going to war and wanting to be with his woman instead. However, I have to admit that no matter how hard I try to force myself to like this sort of roots music, I just can’t do it. I like songs, for sure, but I can live without the genre as a whole. I can live without most genres as a whole. Hip-hop, country, electronica, metal, whatever. For some reason, I’ve struggled mightily to attach myself to any single genre, which means I barely know anything about particular music history. Instead, I can make killer mixed-CDs which is a worthless skill that won’t get me anywhere, so I’ve got that going for me, which is nice.

There’s something beautiful and haunting about roots music. (Is roots music even a term, or am I just making stuff up because it sounds good?) But at the end of the day, it’s sad and serious, and I don’t need anything more sad or serious in my life. There’s enough of that in the world. I listen to music because I want to escape into it, not look in a mirror. I think this makes me a failure as a music fan. I’d rather sing with my daughter in the car- what can I say?

So there you have it: I liked the above photograph, Billy Matheny is super talented, and I don’t know anything about music. Haku, set upon me with the dogs of criticism.

Nerding Out

I like The Onion’s AV Club. I’ve been a fan since I first realized that the satirical news magazine was doing serious reviews, interviews, and giving Dan Savage a place to publish. That said, it is a publication that has the tendency to really condescend beyond all reason to its readership.

Today’s The Knights Who Say “Nerd”: 20 Pop-Cultural Obsessions Even Geekier Than Monty Python is just ugly. There’s no merit to it, because nowhere do the authors indicate that they themselves might share in some of this fandom; it reads instead as if the hipsters are just making fun of the nerds in an attempt to feel better about their own cultural obsessions. And yes, these are people that are culturally obsessed.

It takes genuine cajones to believe that spending all of your available income on the latest European release of a Modest Mouse EP before heading over to your friend’s house for a Fassbinder Film Festival is somehow better than dressing up like your favorite anime character. Hipsters, of course, do prioritize the world this way, believing that their own obsessions are somehow superior to everybody else’s and using that idea to condescend to everybody around them. “Oh, really? Frank Zappa? Thanks, but no thanks. Rilo Kiley’s the thing now.” (Or, you know, whatever band is the thing now. I have no idea. I still think They Might Be Giants are fantastic.)

In the movie “The Apostle” with Robert Duvall, he is walking over a bridge in Louisiana when he sees Catholics celebrating a Christian holiday. Himself a Pentecostal minister, he watches for a few minutes. “You do things your way, and I’ll do them mine.” He says, laughing to himself, because while he isn’t a Catholic, he understands that ultimately, they’re both praying to the same god.

The hipsters at The Onion’s AV Club could take a lesson from that. Hipsterism isn’t in any way superior to the sort of nerdish behavior decried in the article above; rather, it is precisely the same sort of behavior focused on (barely) different pursuits. Acting as if the other is true is both offensive and shockingly dense. (One wonders if they have any idea what kind of people are reading and enjoying The Onion itself?)

My Daughter Has Bangs

My daughter got into the car this morning with bangs. This is new. The last time I saw her, her hair was much longer. But apparently, she decided that she wanted bangs and her mother allowed it.

I can howl in protest, but my daughter is getting older. I have always entrusted her to make her own decisions about what to wear, but now she seems to display a genuine style. She is concerned about her look, even if she isn’t old enough to know that it is called a “look.” These bangs of hers are evidence that she’s beginning to function more fully as a human being.

I am very excited to witness the decisions she makes, even if I am just as excited to have her stay the same age forever. Soon, I’ll be beyond uncool - I am now, but she doesn’t know it - and just being in the car with me will be torturous beyond belief. This is the nature of things.

Also, my daughter has asked me to make (another) mixed CD for her. I swear to you, she requested the following songs:

-”My Brain Is Hanging Upside Down,” by the Ramones.
-”Immigrant Song,” by Led Zeppelin.
-”Steve’s Hornpipe,” by Cracker.
-”Shockheaded Peter,” by the Tiger Lilies.
-”Where’s Your Head At?” by Basement Jaxx.
-”Zydeco Cha Cha,” by Clifton Chenier.

My daughter is unbelievable. I know that every parent believes this, but I am right. My daughter actually is unbelievable.

This Post Is Boring (Music Is Important)

I’m going start cross-posting some of what I write at my self-indulgent MySpace blog on this website. Don’t like it? Don’t read it.

-Earlier this week, I was thinking about the first time I saw Bjork’s “Human Behavior” video. I remember it distinctly. It was three in the morning at my friend Zach’s house. We were bundling Sunday newspapers and watching 120 minutes. When that Bjork video came on, we watched it, confused. “Human Behavior” is a good song.

-I remember a lot about music. The first song I ever danced to with a girl? “Soul to Squeeze” by the Red Hot Chili Peppers. Whereas you were busy remembering the Pythagoream Theorem, I remember my seventh grade dance at Suncrest.

-The first ever tape that I bought? “Flood” by They Might Be Giants. First ever CD? “Greatest Hits” by Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

-When I was in high school, during my junior year in the midst of intense anger, I had this strange night when I was manically happy. I remember just being intensely ecstatic, for no real reason. I called my friends and talked to them, and the whole time, I listened to Edie Brickell’s “Shooting Rubber Bands at the Moon.” In college, when I had a shaved head and big sideburns, I borrowed that album from Sue, a girl living downstairs. I’m pretty sure she thought I was strange for looking like that and listening to Edie Brickell.

-Converse to all of my memories about music is the fact that rarely, if ever, can I remember song lyrics. I have friends who remember every lyric they have ever heard; I can’t remember lyrics to They Might Be Giants songs that I’ve heard hundreds of times.

-I get sucked in by songs and terribly disappointed by albums. Story of my life. Want to know what the great albums are? “Graceland” by Paul Simon and “Endtroducing” by DJ Shadow. That’s it. The other day, I was fighting with Julie about music, and she pointed out that I listen to songs but not albums. The hint was pretty clear: I shouldn’t claim to like or dislike bands based on single songs. I ought to listen to more before I pass judgement. But what are you supposed to do when albums are always disappointments?

-One night in high school, I rode around with my friend Aaron. He was a couple of years older than me, and if it wasn’t his car that he was driving, it was soon to be his. We listened to Bob Marley and drank Den sodas. That night sticks out to me. There was something vaguely free about the experience. This is what adults do, I might have been imagining.

-The first time I ever rode in the car with people my own age, it was with a guy I know named Eric. He was playing some tape by Skankin Pickle. I never got into ska music, but I remember that.

-I can’t disconnect music from my memories. I really liked Justin Timberlake’s newest song “My Love,” but now I can’t listen to it. I was into it when things were falling apart a few months ago. It’s all I can think of whenever I hear it.

-Right now, I’m listening to Cat Power’s cover of “Can’t Get No Satisfaction.” Apparently, there’s a debate between Beatles fans and Rolling Stones fans as to which band is better. How about neither? Can I go with neither? I hate the Rolling Stones. I used to think Devo’s cover of “Satisfaction” was the best, but this one is better.

-I have a cousin named Evan. When I was in high school, I visited him on Cape Cod. He sat around smoking weed and being cool. Needless to say, we didn’t hit it off. But he listened to DJ Shadow before anybody I knew, and when I later discovered him, I was blown away. I saw him a few years later and asked him what he was into. Jamaican Dance Hall Music, he said. So of course it was popular a few years later, with Sean Paul leading the way. Don’t ask me how he predicted two trends.

-When I was in sixth grade, we had exploratory days on early dismissal Fridays. Professionals would visit our school and host hour long sessions. We got to pick two to attend. One time, U92 came to visit, and gave us a chance to be on the air. The person on the mic asked us our favorite music. Everybody said Mariah Carey or Madonna or whatever was popular those days. I said They Might Be Giants. The person on the mic thought that was cool. And for the first time, I felt like it was cool. Obviously, I wasn’t then, nor am I now, cool. But that validation was important to me.

My Dad picked me up after the final day of school that year, and we ran errands in his yellow Volkswagen Rabbit. He let me pick the station, and so we rode around listenined to U92. And wouldn’t you know it, that the best part of that station is stumbling onto unknown songs that blow you away? The albums almost always suck, but great songs are great songs are great songs. Regina Spektor? Meredith Bragg and the Terminals? Mount Sims? I’ve gotten great songs from that station.

ClearChannel Bought By ClearerChanneler

For $18.7 billion, you could have bought out Clear Channel Communications, making you one of the largest media owners in the world. And a monopolist over our airwaves. I remember hearing once, somewhere, that that the airwaves belonged to the people, and should be distributed with that in mind. Distribution based on such knowledge would lead to market-place diversity, which would in turn lead to all listeners having better options.

But fuck it - I can’t get enough of Clear Channel Communications same forty songs, in the same forty formats, each played forty times a day. Congratulations to the new buyers - you’ve invested in homogeny.

Dee Snider? Professionally Stupid

Tonight on the 1976 episode of I Love The 70’s: Volume 2, Dee Snider criticized bands with lightshows, saying that they were covering for their minimal musical talent with unnecessary theatrics. This was Dee Snider during his performing days. So, the point is, well, that, umm, Dee Snider’s a fucking moron.

That Damned “Hallelujah”

Awhile ago, I proclaimed that the three greatest songs written about love included Leonard Cohen’s “Hallelujah.” (Obviously my list is up for interpretation.)

I wrote that post after having a discussion about great love songs with some friends of mine, and after recounting the sad tale of a young woman I met who believed, genuinely, that Dave Matthews Band’s “Crash” is the greatest song ever written. (”Crash,” is the song which features Dave describing some lucky lady’s vagina as her “world,” which is…bold. It certainly takes boldness to reduce a woman to her vagina. What about her breasts Dave? Huh?) These friends of mine and I decided that we weren’t sure if “Hallelujah” was an uplifting song about love, a realistic song about love, a depressing song about love, or perhaps about something else altogether.

Thoughts? Please convince me of the song’s true meaning because I’m not smart enough to figure it out. Ageless Amy? Mean Amanda? Violence Loving Isaac?