Handicappin' The Grammys

Ahhh, my favorite time of the year: Grammy season. When all of America comes together to celebrate crushing banality and mediocrity in our popular music. When industry experts cast their votes for the very best music has to offer, which is a complete conflict of interest since they want their own CDs to sell. When we get an answer to that age old question: “Dear god, this is the music Americans want?!”

Ok, that’s a bit harsh, but c’mon. The Grammys suck and there’s no way around that. This is the institution that decided that the best album of 1977, a year of complete musical upheaval and pioneering all over the world, was Fleetwood Mac’s Rumours. There’s also that whole Jethro-Tull-beating-Metallica debacle, but enough’s been said about that. The nominations for the next wave of glorious music industry irrelevance were announced yesterday and I want to go through the major awards and handicap the races a bit. In a month or so, we’ll find out whether I was even in the ballpark or not.

Album Of The Year
-I Am…Sasha Fierce, Beyonce
-The E.N.D., The Black Eyed Peas
-The Fame, Lady Gaga
-Big Whiskey And The Groogrux King, Dave Matthews Band
-Fearless, Taylor Swift

T-Swift and Beyonce have to be the favorites here. Fearless has already run rampant through the smaller award shows, but Beyonce is simply Beyonce. She’s the kind of iconic-but-not-cutting-edge singer the Grammys love. Of course, DMB is the most inexplicable nominee here, so they’ll probably win.

Song Of The Year
-“Poker Face”, Lady Gaga
-“Pretty Wings”, Maxwell
-“Single Ladies (Put A Ring On It)”, Beyonce
-“Use Somebody”, Kings Of Leon
-“You Belong To Me”, Taylor Swift

“Single Ladies” should take this without a contest, but watch out for dark horse “Use Somebody”, which is going to absolutely steamroll through the rock awards. Again, Swift is riding a wave of awards right now, so she’s definitely a contender.

Record Of The Year
-“Halo”, Beyonce
-“I Gotta Feeling”, The Black Eyed Peas
-“Use Somebody”, Kings Of Leon
-“Poker Face”, Lady Gaga
-“You Belong To Me”, Taylor Swift

Without the overwhelmingly awesome “Single Ladies” casting its ominous shadow over everything else, “Use Somebody” and “You Belong To Me” lead the pack for Best Record. This could also be where they throw a bone to Lady Gaga, who was denied Best New Artist status by a month or so.

Best New Artist
-Zac Brown Band
-Keri Hilson
-MGMT
-Silversun Pickups
-The Ting Tings

Dear jesus god, what a horrible field. MGMT, Pickups and the Ting Tings all don’t have a chance, since they fall into that “edgy music” category. Keri Hilson didn’t make big enough waves this year to really have a chance either, so it will probably fall to Zac Brown Band, who we’ll probably never hear from again. That’s how these things tend to work.

Finally, just because it’s the token category aimed at hipsters like myself…

Best Alternative Album
-Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Brian Eno/David Byrne
-The Open Door, Death Cab For Cutie
-Sounds Of The Universe, Depeche Mode
-Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix, Phoenix
-It’s Blitz!, Yeah Yeah Yeahs

Grammy voters have two choices here: A) the “old choice”, giving the award to Eno and Byrne because, hey, they’re kind of important, right? or, B) the “young choice”, It’s Blitz!, because Yeah Yeah Yeahs have finally sanded away all those dangerous sharp edges and have become something truly boring enough for the Grammys to love.

Not that I’m bitter or anything…

The Countdown Begins...?

So, something funny is going on with the Roots. Let’s look at the known facts:

1) The Roots announced a while ago that their next album, titled How I Got Over, would be out this year.
2) They performed the album's first single, “How I Got Over”, on Late Night with Jimmy Fallon all the way back in June.
3) That song has since been released officially. It even has a music video.
4) If you go to http://www.theroots.com/, you’re greeted by a massive picture of the band announcing that How I Got Over will be released 10/20/09.
5) There has been no announcement that the album has been pushed back. Wikipedia still lists the release date as either “October 20” or “October,” depending on where you look.

In the meantime…

6) No album artwork or tracklist has been released.
7) While Amazon does have How I Got Over available for pre-order, they have no art or release date listed.
8) No copies of the album have been leaked online. With less than 24 hours left before the album’s supposed release, that’s just nuts.

What exactly is going on here? I’m generally assuming that the album has, in fact, been pushed back for whatever reason and there just hasn’t been any big announcement. However, could it be that the Roots are sneaking an album onto shelves tomorrow without anyone really noticing? Could they be…*gasp*…releasing it some other way? Are the Roots gonna pull a Radiohead tomorrow? We’ve got…a bit over nine hours until the 20th. We shall see.

Don't You Want This Man In The Hall Of Fame?

It’s a well-established fact by now that the Rock & Roll Hall Of Fame is a joke and cannot be taken seriously. However, I still get irked when I see shenanigans like their list of nominees for induction in 2010. The list, which was released a month or so ago, features superstar names like ABBA, Genesis, KISS, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Donna Summer, along with the Stooges for the umpteenth million year. Now, the fact that the Stooges weren’t inducted back in 1994, when they first became eligible, is nothing short of a crime, but maybe…just maybe…this year will be different. The list also features LL Cool J as the Hall’s token hip-hop nominee, following in the footsteps of Grandmaster Flash and Run-DMC.

Now, the Hall Of Fame’s only condition for eligibility is that the artist’s first recorded material had to have been released twenty-five years or more before their induction year. So, for 2010, that means anyone who has released music since 1985 is fair game. Let’s take a look at some of the current eligible names who have been inexplicably left off this year’s ballot:

-Kraftwerk
-Brian Eno
-Scott Walker
-Joy Division
-T. Rex
-Gram Parsons
-Tom Waits
-Iggy Pop (as a solo artist)
-Roxy Music
-The Smiths
-The Replacements
-Black Flag
-Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
-The Cure
-Iron Maiden
-Motorhead
-Thin Lizzy
-The B-52s

Mind you, I’m not saying all these bands should be immediately ushered into the Hall Of Fame. I just think they’re that names deserve to be in the discussion, especially the older acts on the list (Gram Parsons, Scott Walker, Eno), who’ve been so routinely ignored that it’s almost physically painful. The Hall voters seem to be into including all kinds of music in their general “Rock & Roll” banner lately (see Madonna, hip-hop acts, etc), so I think the time is right to start opening doors to these artists, who’ve shaped modern music just as much as many of the bands already in the Hall.

For the full nominee list and accompanying blurbs written by the Hall Of Fame people, see here.

0 And 1 And 0 And...

For whatever reason, I’m just not feeling in a writing mood tonight. Your regularly scheduled Who’s Simon Defending Now? article will appear sometime tomorrow. In the meantime, watch this awesome clip from Laurie Anderson’s Home Of The Brave, a concert film that absolutely needs to be released on DVD sometime in the near future.

Up, Up And Away

Pretzel Logic is going to be quiet for the next several days, since I’m going to be tackling the demands of flying cross-country and moving into an apartment. In the meantime, if there’s anyone out there reading this blog who’s listened to the new Beatles remasters and has an opinion about how they compare to the versions you’ve presumably come to know and love, please share. This reissue collection seems to be making a lot of headlines and I want to know what people are thinking.

Woodstock's Legacy: A Manifesto

So, as many people are probably aware, this past week marked the fortieth anniversary of Woodstock. There have been all kinds of retrospectives, photo montages and interviews in newspapers and online, all focusing on the glory of this one weekend back in 1969. However, as a twenty-year-old music fan, I draw issue with all of this Woodstock-centric backslapping and reminiscing. To me, it sends out a few big messages that I don’t completely agree with:

1) Woodstock was awesome and represented the culmination of the 60s counterculture ideals.

Clearly, I wasn’t at Woodstock. All I have are descriptions that have been passed down through the years and the famous film to base any judgment on. However, what I’ve seen and heard sounds like a huge mudpit full of smelly hippies. This is certainly not my idea of a good time. The other problem with this whole “defined-an-era” type talk is that, to put it bluntly, the 60s failed. Forty years later, the hippies and all their associated ilk aren’t seen so much as forward-thinking cultural revolutionaries. They’re seen as ignorant, blissed-out idealists, who convinced themselves that the world could operate in a way that we now see it can’t. We can’t just all “love one another and get along.” It’s cynical but it’s true and celebrating Woodstock as a monument to the 60s sounds like you’re celebrating a monument to ignorance, if you ask me.

2) Woodstock was a one-of-a-kind event that can never happen again.

This is probably true. Woodstocks ’94 and ’99 pretty much proved that any attempts to recreate the old magic will end in a) more mud, b) rampant corporate gouging and c) sexual assault during Limp Bizkit sets. The mere fact that Limp Bizkit were allowed near anything with the name “Woodstock” attached to it is proof enough. However, this does not mean that Woodstock is “better” than any modern concert-going experience. All too often, I feel that Woodstock retrospectives imply that it was a better, more “pure” (whatever that means) live music experience than anything us modern hooligan teenagers go to. This is, again quite frankly, bullshit. The times have changed and live music is certainly different. But one is not better than the other. Those young whipper-snappers still enjoy live music, even if we don’t think we’re part of some forward-thinking cultural movement. We get a lot less muddy too.

3) The music at Woodstock was at an entirely different level.

This is the thing that irritates me the most about all this rose-tinted Woodstock lingering. Of course everyone is going to talk about the music at Woodstock and, of course, most of it was probably great. From what little film has survived from the concert, plenty of the performances seem stellar. However, this reinforces a belief that is widely kept throughout our (ie: American) culture: that the music of the late 60s was the best that music ever was and that no modern bands will ever reach this shining pedestal that we lift the 60s rock & rollers up upon. Anytime you see lists of “the best albums ever,” they are dominated by music from the 60s, especially the Woodstock bands (along with the Beatles, Stones, Dylan and so forth). All of these are great artists, but there are plenty of modern acts doing things just as amazing. The 60s were not the pinnacle of music. They had plenty of great artists…just like every other decade. Dwelling on the past of Woodstock and the supposed greatness of those musicians only makes it easier for people of an older generation to condescend towards the music of my own. The real tragedy is that this older generation has managed to convince their kids that this old music is better than modern music as well. I say this should end here. Enough retroactive romanticizing of Woodstock and the supposed “glory years” of the past. Live in the present. Embrace the modern. Find the greats of today who will become the classics of tomorrow. Stop living in the past.

Is Nothing Sacred?

This is the most upsetting thing I’ve heard all week:

http://pitchfork.com/news/36154-thom-yorke-radiohead-not-planning-to-release-any-albums-for-awhile/

Hear that sound? That’s the sound of your humble narrator desperately trying to hang onto his outdated ideas of commercial music, in an age where everything is changing and new and scary. First they take my CD stores away. Now my favorite band won’t release albums. If you need me sometime between now and whenever it is that I face this brave new world that is the music industry’s future, I’ll be in the corner weeping. Boo hoo.

A Surprise Around Every Corner

This may be one of the more inconsequential posts I’ve made on this blog so far, but today, I want to share a short story about how songs you know inside and out still find ways to surprise you. Last night, while idly scrolling through the Drive-By Truckers’ unusually user-friendly and insightful website, I noticed this strange blurb attacked to ex-Trucker Jason Isbell’s description of “Danko/Manuel”, a gorgeous song from 2004’s The Dirty South: “The horn parts came to me in a dream.”

“Wait a second,” I said to myself. “’Danko/Manuel’ doesn’t have horns!”

Well, long story short, I was wrong. Somehow, during the dozens and dozens of times I’ve listened to one of my favorite songs, I never noticed that, hiding deep within the chorus, there was a small and tasteful horn line blaring away. And damn if it doesn’t suit the song perfectly. I understand that this sounds very simple and obvious, but I’ve spent the day thinking this over. I find myself fascinated by the idea that there could be (and probably are) musical details hiding in all my favorite songs that I’ve never noted, for whatever reason. Think of the possibilities…

Lost in all this is the fact that Isbell said those horns came to him in a dream. Which is just awesome.

The Best Of 2008, Six Months Later

So, since July has been a strangely slow month for album releases, I’m going to use this newfound free time to post something I’ve wanted to compile for some time: a reappraisal of my favorite albums from last year. This seems all the more appropriate, since we’re now just over halfway through 2009. My purpose behind this is to see how albums I liked a lot way back in December have held up after half a year of re-listening. Below is my original list, posted (on Facebook, since this was pre-blog) on December 3-4. It looked a little something like this:

#1: Third, Portishead
#2: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
#3: Songs In A&E, Spiritualized
#4: Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, Drive-By Truckers
#5: 808s And Heartbreak, Kanye West
#6: Dear Science, TV On The Radio
#7: Accelerate, R.E.M.
#8: Rising Down, The Roots
#9: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Brian Eno/David Byrne
#10: Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
#11: The Slip, Nine Inch Nails
#12: Beat Pyramid, These New Purtians
#13: Saturnalia, The Gutter Twins
#14: Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, Coldplay
#15: The Age Of The Understatement, The Last Shadow Puppets

And now, here’s my updated list. For the most part, things aren't too different, except at the bottom part of the list. I may be the only one who cares about this edit, but…y’know what?...it’s my blog, so shush. Here’s my new, rank-ordered list of favorite albums from 2008:

#1: Third, Portishead
#2: Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!, Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds
#3: 808s And Heartbreak, Kanye West
#4: Songs In A&E, Spiritualized
#5: Dear Science, TV On The Radio
#6: Brighter Than Creation’s Dark, Drive-By Truckers
#7: Accelerate, R.E.M.
#8: Rising Down, The Roots
#9: Hercules And Love Affair, Hercules And Love Affair
#10: Fleet Foxes, Fleet Foxes
#11: Everything That Happens Will Happen Today, Brian Eno/David Byrne
#12: The Age Of The Understatement, The Last Shadow Puppets
#13: Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, Sigur Rós
#14: Viva La Vida Or Death And All His Friends, Coldplay
#15: You & Me, The Walkmen

Generally, most albums held on to their spots. Portishead and Nick Cave are still holding strong at the top spots. However, I have the following adjustments in placement:

-Kanye moved up two spots, claiming #3. I know many, many people don’t like 808s and still feel thrown for a loop by it’s cold, icy tone and reliance on Auto-Tune. However, as the months have gone by, I’ve grown more and more attached to this album. I see it as one of the bravest mainstream albums of the decade and one that is actually pretty enjoyable to listen to as well.

-TV On The Radio and Drive-By Truckers switched places, moving TVotR into the top 5. Dear Science has simply started to sound better with time, while the Truckers’ album seems a bit less cohesive than I initially thought.

-Fleet Foxes and the Eno/Byrne collaboration also switched, for similar reasons.

-The Last Shadow Puppets also gained a few spots, simply because that album’s awesome. Do I need more reason than that?

The following albums have also been added to this list for the first time:

-Hercules And Love Affair, Hercules And Love Affair: this was an album that I very quickly dismissed and, in retrospect, that was a huge mistake. This group of New York-based dance afficianados somehow reinvented disco as something enjoyable and edgy, eliminating the canned string sections and replacing them with hip electronic beats and a handful of stunning guest appearances from the one-and-only Antony. Very impressive.

- Með suð í eyrum við spilum endalaust, Sigur Rós: everyone’s favorite Icelandic band (sorry Bjork) released an album last year that was very much of a grower for me. Multiple listens were required for my ears to unlock what might be the band’s most pleasant and gentle record to date.

-You & Me, The Walkmen: another album that grew a lot on me over the past six months, this was an album that breathed some life back into the smoldering pile of lost potential that the Walkmen had seemingly become.

Averting Disaster

The soundtrack to my formative, early high school years was grunge music, that murky, emotionally intense strain of hard rock from my very own Seattle, WA. However, the odd thing about listening to grunge around 2005 and 2006 was the realization that all this great music was already a decade old. Grunge clawed its way into the mainstream with terrifying speed, but it also vanished off the map just as quickly. Cobain’s death in 1994 was the beginning of the end, Soundgarden’s Down On The Upside in 1996 is what I count as the last true grunge album (sorry Pearl Jam) and the whole era was finally over in 2002 when Alice In Chains’ iconic singer, Layne Staley, was found dead in his home. For such a powerful genre of music, grunge’s death was pretty damn ugly.

So, imagine my flurry of conflicted emotions when I discovered that Alice In Chains were releasing a new album this year and premiered the album’s first single yesterday. The idea of any incarnation of AIC without Staley seems beyond ridiculous, since he was the band’s heart, soul and figurehead. The band’s choice for a new frontman, William DuVall, has proven himself to be a capable stand-in during AIC’s recent string of live appearances, but all he was ever asked to do for those shows was imitate Layne. Now, with this upcoming album, DuVall is being asked to creatively replace one of the most beloved frontmen in rock history. I’m more than a little cynical about his chances.

However, some of that cynicism has begun to sink away after hearing AIC’s new single, “A Looking In View”. While the song certainly has some problems, it’s infinitely better than anything I was expecting. Big, loud and heavy as hell, it certainly slides comfortably into the AIC oeuvre. DuVall’s voice merges very nicely with guitarist Jerry Cantrell’s, creating a sound very reminiscent of Layne’s work with the band. The crunching rhythm section of bassist Mike Inez and drummer Sean Kinney is as reliable as ever. In many ways, the song…dare I say it…sounds exactly like an Alice In Chains song should sound.

Of course, the song has absolutely no reason for being seven minutes long. It repeats itself to the point of insanity and doesn’t have much of a build to it at all. AIC released several long songs (six-plus minutes) on their albums and all of them have more ebb and flow than “A Looking In View”. However, I feel like these are small details to quibble over. The fact is that Alice In Chains have returned, somehow, in a form that isn’t a complete disgrace to their legacy and the memory of Layne Staley. Jerry Cantrell has proven that he can still write excellent hard rock and William DuVall’s presence on this new material hasn’t seemed blasphemous yet. I eagerly await their upcoming album, titled Black Gives Way To Blue, set for a September 29 release.

Long Live The King, Cont'd

So, for those of you keeping score at home, I promised to re-review Iggy Pop’s Préliminaires after reading Michel Houellebecq’s The Possibility of an Island, the book that he claims inspired the music on the album. Well, I finished it this afternoon and feel ready to finish my review.

In many ways, I desperately want to write a review of the book more than the album. Let me assure you, in no uncertain terms, that I absolutely loved this book. Houellebecq’s tale of an aging comedian struggling to come to terms with a world that shamelessly values youth above all else resonated with me in a way that very few books ever have. At once incredibly depressing and strangely hopeful, I am incredibly glad I read this book. However, as I’ve established in the past, I am by no means qualified to be a literary critic, so I won’t try. All I can say on the subject is that I strongly recommend this book, especially if you enjoy the work of authors like Orwell and Heller (be warned, though, of many graphic depictions of sex).

As for Iggy’s Préliminaires, reading The Possibility of an Island has only given me a greater appreciation of what my favorite stooge has accomplished with his new album this year. Préliminaires is not explicitly “about” the plot of the novel, which is, in most ways, a very good thing. A distillation of the book, simplified into ten songs, would have been pretty damn awful. Instead, what Iggy manages to do is recreate the general tone and mood of the album, applying that voice to his own life and problems. The prevailing theme of the book is the struggle people face, especially in social and sexual terms, as the leave their youth and begin to fall apart with age. I can completely understand how Iggy, who is not by any stretch of the imagination a young man anymore, could relate to the character of Daniel in the book.

Of course, Iggy was never a piercing social commentator/ comedian like Daniel, but the similarities are too great to be ignored. Just like Daniel, Iggy was an entertainer who held audiences’ attention through a sense of danger. Both lived reckless lives in their younger days, before realizing they needed to slow down when they couldn’t keep up with the world they were used to. It’s a compelling tale, to be sure. While these themes are not explicitly addressed in Préliminaires, the resigned tone of the album suits the book so incredibly well. The chunk of text taken from the book and set to music for the semi-closing “A Machine For Loving” is one of the most moving and emotional segments of the book and gives perfect closure to the album, despite the fact that it’s taken from the middle of the book. Iggy has found a way to create a chunk of music inspired by a great novel while still making it completely his own. Thus, I feel Iggy Pop’s Préliminaires deserves all five of the pretzels I originally gave it.

Idol Thoughts

So, tonight, the people of the world are supposedly wracked with suspense, eagerly awaiting their own next "American Idol". Will it be Adam?! Will it be Kris?! Honestly, I really couldn’t care either way. I’m not just saying that as a glib comment from a bitter college-age hipster. I’m saying it because the chances that either of those two will make a lasting impression in the music industry are minimal. It has nothing to do with the talent either may (or may not) have. Rather, just look at Idol’s track record. Seasons of American Idol have come and gone and only two winners have become certified successes: Kelly Clarkson, the very first, and Carrie Underwood. Clarkson found success by reinventing herself as a punky pop star, while Underwood tapped into the awesome retail power of America’s country-record-buying masses. But none of the other winners have achieved anything like this. I went to a baseball game on Saturday and who was singing the national anthem? None other than Taylor Hicks, former American Idol winner. America supposedly elected him to be one of their foremost pop-stars. Instead, only a few years down the road, he’s finding himself singing at Mariners games in-between stints in a touring off-Broadway production of Grease. Oops.

It figures that the third-most successful Idol wasn’t even a winner. Chris Daughtry has become a certified rock radio phenomenon, lack of talent notwithstanding. However, he has single-handedly trounced all the other American Idol winners and hangers-on when it comes to commercial success. Look at last season’s winner. David Cook is already vanishing from view. So, whoever wins American Idol in a few hours, the record shows that they’ll probably have a rough road ahead of them. Will Adam or Kris be one of the few who break tradition by finally having some real success? Their chances aren’t looking good right now.

The Flannel Strikes Back!

Since I’m now back home in Seattle, it seems like an appropriate time to comment on an odd social phenomenon I’ve been noticing. For whatever reason, grunge music has been making headlines in the music world. More and more, I’m noticing that people are talking about everyone’s favorite moody alt-rockers from the 90s, despite the fact that grunge has seemed almost forgotten for most of this decade. Just looking at the “Big 4” grunge bands, let’s see what’s been in the news this year:

-Alice In Chains: they supposedly have a new album coming out…sometime…despite the fact that the band’s heart, soul and voice, Layne Staley, passed away in 2002. The remaining band members assure us that new singer William DuVall isn’t all that bad. We’ll see…if the album ever actually comes out. Could this be the grunge Chinese Democracy?

-Pearl Jam: they also say a new album is coming at the end of the year, which I hope will be slightly more interesting than 2006’s self-titled, avocado-covered release. They also received major national press by reissuing a tricked-out deluxe edition of their celebrated 1991 debut, Ten. They say similar reissues of the rest of their back catalogue are on the way.

-Soundgarden: back in March, three-fourths of Soundgarden (singer Chris Cornell was absent) reunited to play a small show in downtown Seattle. Meanwhile, Cornell is also keeping himself in the headlines, by releasing a dreadful solo album produced by Timbaland, of all people. Well, any press coverage is good press coverage, right…? (Answer: no.)

-Nirvana: April marked the 15th anniversary of Kurt Cobain’s death. Let the tears flow.

Even quasi-grunge bands, like the Smashing Pumpkins and Stone Temple Pilots, have reunited for cash-raking tours recently. Suddenly, the “Seattle Sound” is all anyone is talking about. Amazingly, the only place where you can’t find grunge’s fingerprints these days is in actual music. Almost nothing coming out recently seems to owe any debts to the 90s Seattle scene. Perhaps, with all these people yammering away about these bands, that will change.

Two Things

With all this talk about “good” music and “bad” music, I thought it’d be appropriate to share an amazing bit of science someone showed me on the Internet. Apparently, a group of scientists (if we want to call them that) surveyed a variety of people to determine what people hate the most in music. From there, the logical next step was to put every single thing people hate into one epic track, to “scientifically” create the “World’s Worst Song”. It’s a bit of an endurance test, clocking in around twenty minutes and featuring lots of harps and rapping opera singers. Listen at your own risk:

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/rocks/2009/02/the_scientifically_engineered.php

Also, I have a Sound Off! update. Both bands I have friends in, Dearboy and Dyno Jamz, have made it to the finals. Again, I encourage anyone in the Seattle area to go check them out and cheer them on. They’ll be performing at the EMP Sky Church this Saturday (March 7) at 8 pm. Links to their music can be found in my original Sound Off! post.

Everyone's A Critic, Part 2

I wanted to issue one last thought on the subject of the ethics of music criticism. I’d like to thank my friend Sam for posting a fantastic response to my original essay. One of the points he brought up, however, I don’t exactly agree with. He drew issue with the idea of needing to persuade others to agree with your opinions, instead suggesting that everyone join together and embrace their different opinions to improve the overall discourse about art. While this sounds great on a very idealistic level, I don’t feel it’s completely practical for a couple of reasons.

First, as Sam did point out, this kind of exchange of ideas can really only happen with people who really care about art and music. Expecting a casual music fan to devote the time and energy to these things is absurd. They have actual lives to live, unlike people like me, who just blog way too much when they should be doing constructive things. Casual music fans count on critics to do the heavy-lifting when it comes to music criticism.

Second, I don’t think media criticism is completely benign. With so many opinions and egos jostling around, critics do develop a competitive sense, trying to make sure their opinions are the ones that last. I’m borderline obsessed with something one of my teachers refers to as “the game” in art. “The game” is the process through which we decide what “the greatest albums of all time" are or other such things. Certain people’s opinions have “won” over time, creating the sort of “Hall Of Famer” albums we deal with today (Sgt. Pepper’s, Pet Sounds, Highway 61 Revisted, Nevermind, etc). I want my voice to be one of the many that dictates what albums become Hall Of Famers in the future. This is the competitive element of the whole process and my goal as a critic is to try to be on the “winning” side of things.

As always, if you’ve got thoughts to share, please comment away!

Everyone's A Critic

As anyone who follows the comments on my blog knows, my friend Sam Johnston challenged me to write something explaining my views about “good art”, “good music” and the general role of music reviewers. As it just so happens, this has been something I’ve been discussing with many people over the last year or so and my thoughts have been distilled down to the point where I feel they’re more-or-less coherent (unlike this sentence). That said, the following is definitely somewhat abstract and weird, in a sort of “wow, that’s really deep…man…*puff of weed smoke*” kind of way. I promise that I’m not just bullshitting here and that I’ve actually spent some time considering this.

By having the word “art” in our language, we imply that there are some things that are “art” and some that aren’t “art”. We use words to draw the lines separating one thing/emotion/ concept/whatever from the vast array of things/ emotions/concepts/whatevers that we can experience or conceptualize. In order for a word to mean anything, it has to convey what makes a specific thing different from everything else. We understand that “dog” means a hairy barking animal instead of a tall, leafy plant. If we saw a tall, leafy plant, its lack of hair and barking (despite having bark *rimshot*) would tell us it was definitely not a dog. We would then remember that tall, leafy plants are usually known as “trees.” Aren’t words wonderful?

The problem with “art” is that we (by which I mean humans who speak languages with words the mean “art”) have never quite understood what makes “art” different from everything else. There was a time (hundreds of years ago), when people could tell you, without hesitation, whether something was “art” or not. Now, post-60s, post-modern art, post-performance art and post-everything in-between, the boundaries of “art” have expanded so much they aren’t visible. The easiest thing to say at this point is “everything is art”…but again, that only really sounds good if you follow it with a massive bong hit. I think everyone knows that, as we go through our lives, there are things we consider “art” and things that we don’t. We just can’t get everyone to agree on these things.

Instead, I like to say that “anything CAN BE art.” “Art” is a type of potential lying in essentially anything, waiting for someone to come along and realize it. Nothing is intrinsically “artistic.” You need someone to come along and say “that’s art” for its art-ness to come into being.

Of course, a minute later, someone could come over and say, “Fuck you, man! That’s not art at all!” An argument would arise, points of view would be shared and, in the best case scenario, someone would eventually persuade the other that their view, whether this thing was “art” or “not-art,” was the better one.

This is where critics come in. I see my role as a music critic as someone who’s really good at persuading people. If nothing is intrinsically “artistic”, then nothing can be intrinsically “good art” or “bad art.” Instead, things can be “good art…in my opinion” or “bad art…in my opinion.” The people with opinions then have the responsibility to defend those opinions or change them if they encounter more compelling ones. A critic’s job is to have opinions. Therefore, it should also be their job to persuade people that those opinions are valid.

As the Internet has proven, you don’t have to be an “expert” to be a critic. This blog is a testament to that. I’m not a classically trained musician. I haven’t spent years in the record business. I’m a twenty-year-old college student who just likes listening to every record in sight. But I have opinions and from there, I can consider myself a critic. What separates a good critic from a bad critic is the ability to articulate those opinions well enough that you persuade people that your opinions are ones they should agree with.

Here on Pretzel Logic, there’s not a set criteria for what will get a good review from me as opposed to a bad one. It’s easy to say that “innovative” music is good, or “original” music is good, etc etc. But, in my mind, that’s only so much hand-waving. At the end of the day, it comes down to whether or not I like it, simple as that. Now, there are many ways that I might like something (based on sound, context, what I had for breakfast, etc), but it all boils down to whether I want to listen to it again.

From there, it’s just a matter of articulating the variety of thoughts that led me to decide whether I personally like this album or not. Hopefully, my reviews help give you, gentle reader, an insight into what pros and cons stand out for me for any given album. In a perfect world, you’d consider what I had to say, listen to the album, formulate your opinion and then compare it to mine.

Now, whether you agree with me or not is mostly irrelevant. You can have whatever opinions you want, since you are now as much of a critic as I am. But, if I’m a particularly good critic, most of the time you would find yourself agreeing with me, or changing your initial opinions based on observations in my review or information you didn’t know. A good critic has opinions you’ve grown to trust.

I don’t know if I’m a good critic. All I know is that I have opinions and I try my best to articulate them. Hopefully, I’ve persuaded a few people to listen to new music, or hear music they already knew in a new light. But, understand that when I review an album, no matter how many pretzels I’m awarding it, I’m not saying it’s inherently “good” or “bad”. If many critics come together in agreement over a certain album, we could, just maybe, begin to say whether something was “good” or “bad”, but that would still marginalize any minority opinions. To be safe, all any critic can say is whether they like something or not and try to get anyone who cares to agree with them.

What do you think? I find this whole issue fascinating and if you’ve got opinions about opinions, I’d love to hear them. Comment away, readers!

...And You Can Quote Me On That Smoothie: The 2009 Grammy Awards Coverage

Oh, the Grammys. That one time of year where the entire musical community gathers together to celebrate the best that music has to offer. It’s stars and it’s pioneers. Music we love today and will shape the sounds of tomorrow. Music that pushes the boundaries…

…what’s that?

Oh, we’re not doing that this year at the Grammys? That’s ridiculous! I’m sorry? We’ve never done that at the Grammys?

Well alright then.

Ok, all joking aside, I can’t help but watch the Grammys. Sure, they’re horrifically out of touch with just about everybody who cares about music on any level. Sure, their voting system is somewhat sketchy and is probably an astonishing conflict of interest. Sure, no one wants to see Sly Stone’s emaciated carcass being dragged around the stage. But, damn it, it’s the only award show music has. I’ve gotta watch.

That said, here’s a small sampling of the various unformed thoughts that ran through my head over the course of the epic 3+ hour broadcast.

1) Bono shouldn’t have his lyrics printed behind him. It just reveals how awkward they are. “Candy floss ice cream” indeed.
2) Whitney Houston is on a lot of drugs.
3) The Rock is not funny. The silence following his joke about “The Beatle Fighters” proves this (Paul McCartney and Dave Grohl were performing together, see…).
4) Paul McCartney and Samuel L. Jackson in one frame is the most incredible single frame of television I’ve ever seen.
5) When did Kid Rock start listening to so much gospel?
6) Introducing the Jonas Brothers by listing other great brother combinations, like, say, oh, you know, CAIN AND ABEL seems completely appropriate. *chuckle chuckle*
7) For a band that is supposedly reuniting, Blink-182 seem like they’re trying to stay as far away from each other as possible.
8) Katy Perry can’t sing. She also can’t dance. Or be graceful. She can, however, dress like a smoothie waiting to happen. We all have talents.
9) Why did Morgan Freeman introduce Kenny Chesney like he was the second coming of Jesus Christ?
10) T.I. + Kanye + Jay-Z + Lil’ Wayne + preggers M.I.A. = every kind of badass. Swagger like us….
11-20) I heart Radiohead.
21) Thom Yorke looked positively feral, stalking around the stage with long hair. He’ll fuck you up.
22) OBAMA GRAMMYS OMG WTF?!!!!
23) Excluding Ron Asheton from the “Encore” section (you know, where they pay tribute to the folks who died) is absolutely unforgivable. The Grammys had a month to add one last picture to their little PowerPoint. I expect their collective heads on my desk by the end of the week.

And this brings me to my final point:

…wait for it…

…you ready for this…

…oh god no…

ROBERT PLANT AND ALISON KRAUSS?! Are you for reals, Grammys? This is two years in a row you’ve managed to award the one album nominated for Best Album that has absolutely no relevance to contemporary music. I understand and respect the musical talents that Plant and Krauss have. I might even concede that the album isn’t half bad (I haven’t heard it. Guess what I’m doing tomorrow). But NO ONE CARES! Coldplay are one of the most beloved bands on earth right now. Lil’ Wayne is an incredible force of charisma. Radiohead are the single most important band in the universe (mmm, hyperbole tastes delicious…). Fuck, even Ne-Yo would have been better. But no. Instead, I have to listen to Raising Sand tomorrow. Tears for Simon.

Another year, another slog of bullshit music awards. I’m used to this by now. The fires of hope are struggling to stay alive after yet another deluge of culturally pointless backslapping. Perhaps, one of these days, I’ll completely give up on the Grammys. But…but…I just can’t.

So, with that, I’ll…oh god, am I actually saying this?...see you at next year’s Grammys. Sigh.

Sound Off!

What’s that? You’re in the Seattle area and you don’t have plans for Valentine’s Day? Well, I’ll tell you what you should do. You should go to the Experience Music Project at Seattle Center and check out their annual Sound Off! competition for bands under the age of 21. I’ve got friends playing in two bands, Dearboy and Dyno Jamz, and they would love your support. Go, enjoy some fabulous live music and cheer for whatever band you like the most. I can’t imagine a better Valentine’s Day.

Curious about their music? MySpace can help:

Dearboy
http://www.myspace.com/dearboyband

Dyno Jamz
http://www.myspace.com/dynojamz

Again, February 14, at EMP at Seattle Center. It’ll be a blast.

The Springsteen Redemption Begins

A couple weeks ago, I reviewed Bruce Springsteen’s new album, Working On A Dream. I found it interesting, stronger than I expected, but ultimately a bit boring. I pointed out that Springsteen has done little lately to really make his albums relevant to the music community as a whole.

Well, it looks like Bruce is suddenly changing that.

Springsteen has certainly been very visible lately. Artists like Arcade Fire and the Hold Steady have been very successful with Boss-like music. He won a Golden Globe for his song featured in The Wrestler. He was at the presidential inauguration, functioning as Obama Cheerleader #1. And last night, he turned in one of the most electric Super Bowl halftime shows in recent memory. He was fun and energetic, never for a moment looking like the 59-year-old man he is. He was a stark contrast to last year’s performance by Tom Petty, who looked like he was waiting for Death to come and take him away right then and there. Bruce’s selection of songs was very strong, opening with two excellent tracks from Born To Run before closing with his new single and “Glory Days”, with some football-related lyrics attached. It was exactly what the Super Bowl halftime show should be: a big, positive, fun-loving performance for a big, positive, fun-loving sports game. Bruce even plowed into an unprepared cameraman, which was more than a little awesome.

I’m still not sure if this makes Working On A Dream a better album. Rolling Stone felt the need to give it a five-star review, which seems a bit excessive to me. But all this recent Springsteen-mania is giving me a reason to go back a reevaluate it. It’s Boss time.

(Note: Jennifer Hudson’s performance of the National Anthem was also spectacular, although, according to the producer of the Super Bowl, it was lip synched. Hmmm…)

Tea And Oranges, All The Way From China

I hope everyone’s enjoying a very nice weekend. To help you in that matter, here’s an amazing song I can’t stop listening to lately. Nothing like a little Sunday mornin’ Leonard Cohen, I say. Enjoy “Suzanne”.

Also, tune in tomorrow for the first part of my week long feature on Australian music, in honor of Australia Day!