Nothin’, honey

Today’s existentialism quiz.

Bob Dylan: If you aint’ got nothin’, you got nothin’ to lose.

Kris Kristofferson: Freedom’s jsut another word for nothin’ left to lose.

What’s the difference?

I can think of at least a couple.

Once upon a time, you ruled so fine

What’s the world coming to? The chief justice of the United States Supreme Court quotes a pop icon  (pdf file) in his dissent on a court ruling:

The absence of any right to the substantive recovery means that respondents cannot benefit from the judgment they seek and thus lack Article III standing. “When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose.” Bob Dylan. Like a Rolling Stone, on Highway 61 Revisited (Columbia Records 1965).

Cool. And, believe it or not, that’s exactly what I got out of that song, too. How does it feel, Babe, to be out on your own, no direction home, with no Article II standing?

No, but hum a few bars

Another one of those silly lists compiled by people with too much time on their hands — 14 songs you should never play in a bar:

There’s nothing worse than having a perfectly good drinking session ruined by a song that either doesn’t belong in a bar, has been crammed down your ears too many times, or just plain sucks.

The three songs that should not be on this list but are — “Sweet Home Alabama,” “Hotel California” and “anything by the Beatles.” But that’s all subjective, which is the whole point of such lists.

I have two strong memories of songs being overplayed in a bar. One is Springsteen’s “Hungry Heart.” We played it every time we went into a certain bar in Michigan City. But so did a lot of patrons, and nobody seemed to mind. It was a catchy tune that everybody liked, and it expressed a sentiment that people drinking in bars might like to hear. “Hey, Honey, lay down you money and play your part, but lemme finish this drink first.”

The other was Bing Crosby’s “White Christmas.” A bunch of us from Fort Hood found it on a juke box in Killeen, Texas, and kept playing it over and over for about three hours straight. The locals (”civilians” is what we called them) were not amused, but the more annoyed they became, the more determined we were to keep playing it. We threw in Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” occasionally to keep them off guard, but they weren’t fooled.

“Stairway to Heaven,” by the way, is one song on the list that definitely belongs there. Even when I hear it on the radio, I have to pull over and make myself calm down. “Sometimes words have two meanings.” Yeah, right, move it along, for God’s sake, my ears are bleeding.

The savage breast

All you Bush-bashers have been picking on Condi for such trifling things as her national-security competence. Now, finally something that’s serious:

Condoleezza Rice may be a top diplomat who once aspired to being a concert pianist but she let her hair down a bit in Stockholm to meet the flamboyant rock group KISS.

“I was thrilled,” a beaming US secretary of state told reporters Friday after meeting lead singer Gene Simmons and his three band members at the waterfront Sheraton Hotel in the Swedish capital on Thursday night.

“For someone who likes the whole range of music, it was really fun to meet KISS and Gene Simmons,” Rice said on the plane taking her from a conference on Iraq in Stockholm to talks with Iceland’s leaders in Reykjavik.

A classical pianist would even consider what KISS does music? How disappointing. Coincidentally, I ran across this story soon after reading the Condi-KISS one:

NEW YORK (AP) — Noted neurologist Oliver Sacks has found common ground with the pastor of Harlem’s Abyssinian Baptist Church: Both men believe in the healing power of music.

Sacks, the best-selling author of “Awakenings” and “The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat,” shared the church stage Saturday with the famed gospel choir as part of the inaugural World Science Festival, a five-day celebration of science taking place in New York this week.

“It should be an exciting and unusual event,” Sacks said in an interview this week. “I will talk about the therapeutic and beneficent power of music as a physician, and then their wonderful choir will perform. … And the audience will make what they can of it.”

I presume they’re talking about real music, like Dvorak’s “New World Symphony” or Duke Ellington’s rendition of “Satin Doll” or folk or jazz or blues or some early rock. Not hip-hop. Not the teen queens. Not KISS. Ever. Alice Cooper, OK. Black Sabbath on a good day. “Iron Man” smooths me right out.

Duo

There aren’t many acts I’d go out of the way to see live anymore — that was another part of my life. But the Robert Plant-Alison Krauss tour would be at the top of the list. I first saw Krause when she was just a kid, on stage with Bill Monroe at Bean Blossom. And what was the point of anybody else doing heavy metal music after “Led Zeppelin II”? And they weren’t even exactly a metal band.

This is a fascinating marriage of styles, and the reviewers say the show is something special. Rockers will be disappointed that the duo go more in the direction of Alison’s root music than Robert’s, but, hey, they’re both, as producer T-Bone Burnette says, out of their comfort zones.

 

 

Idol chatter

A few Americans come to their senses:

It had to happen sometime: American Idol is showing signs of mortality in its seventh season.

Ratings for TV’s top show are down 7% to an average 29 million viewers for regular episodes and down 10% among adults ages 18 to 49, the main currency on Madison Avenue.

It’s still big enough for Fox to be the ratings champ, though. Might I suggest a night at a karaoke bar? The entertainment value will be the same, and you’ll get out of the house.

Still trying

Caught this on CBS’ Sunday morning show yesterday. Coldplay’s “Fix You” by Young@Heart. Go ahead and don’t cry. I dare you.

Mr. bad example

A rap star’s secrect past uncovered, and it turns out he was — ready for it? — not such a bad guy:

So there was no conviction. There was no prison term between 1999 and 2002. And he was never “facing 75 years,” as the singer claimed in one videotaped interview.

Remember when stars tried to clean up their pasts?

(via fark)
 

Bad rap

We haven’t had a “Department of the Obvious” report in a while, so let’s check in:

Rap music, which warned against the dangers of drug abuse in its heydays, now glorifies their illegal use, according to a new study. There has been an alarming six-fold increase in references to drugs in recent rap songs, the study found, leading researchers to warn that young people who tend to emulate rap artistes are “already at risk and need to get a positive message from the media”.

Next, they’ll be telling me that Soylet Green is people!

Seymour’s finest

Matt Welch at Reason doesn’t think to much of John Mellencamp:

If you were one of the hundreds of millions of Americans who successfully avoided watching the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame broadcast Monday on VH1 Classic, you missed one of the worst song-stretching exercises since Jerry Garcia went on to the Big Insulin Provider in the Sky — John Cougar Mellencamp transforming the three-chord yawner “The Authority Song” into a seven-minute advertisement for editing.

He also points out that the longtime Farm Aider has a lot of relatives around Seymour who receive farm subsidies: “George Mellencamp, for instance, was the 18th largest recipient of 2003-2005 subsidies in Seymour, with more than $142,000. James Mellencamp was 39th, with more than $90,000.”

Reserve my copy

I can hardly wait:

NEW YORK - Eminem is working on a book that’s “every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself,” according to his publisher.

Dutton Books, an imprint of The Penguin Group, announced Wednesday that it would be publishing the best-selling rapper’s “The Way I Am” this fall.

[. . .]

Offering a window on the star’s private thoughts on everything from his music and the trials of fame to his love for his daughter, Hailie, this title is every bit as raw and uncensored as the man himself,” Dutton said.

Shouldn’t complain, I guess; at least this is keeping him busy. He hasn’t had an album since 2004, and a spokesman says there is none in the works.

The savage breast

Oh, bushwa:

The New York Philharmonic’s unprecedented concert could herald warmer ties between North Korea and the United States. After three encores, some musicians left the stage in tears as the audience waved fondly.

Between horn fanfares and the flourishes of the conductor’s baton, the U.S. and North Korea found common ground in a concert Tuesday that spanned American and Korean musical traditions.

Whether the feeling lingers after the music will depend on the North’s compliance with an international push to rid it of nuclear weapons.

Classical music and nuclear weapons. Which wins? Hmm, let me think.  Each side wants a propaganda win, which is why this came about. I’m guessing North Korea wins, because the Western press coverage will be mostly like this, all full of weepily romantic drivel.

Still, probably worth it for us. Music, especially good music, is a universal language. Maybe we will have pushed a few in the audience over the edge, finally fed up with all their loony dictator thug denies them.

Idol chatter

I’ve never watched any reality TV shows, except a few minutes here and there when one of them was on right before another program I wanted to see. But a friend decided to check out “American Idol” this year (apparently, she was being left out of the conversation; that’s all anybody talks about the next morning), so I deicded to peek in, too. I won’t say it made my ears bleed, but, jeez.

I can see the fascination, especially in the early rounds. After you suffer through several bad singers in a row, it can be an almost transcendent experience to hear a halfway good one.

That same friend I and went shopping at Jefferson Pointe one Saturday afternoon. We had planned to finish the day at our favorite Mexican restaurant but found out it had closed, so we went over to the one at Park West and stumbled into Karaoke Night. Most of the singers were mediocre or worse, but it was good, silly fun for an unplanned evening. Then this old guy in a sweater and goofy golf cap shuffled up to the microphone. God, how horrible was he going to be? But he was wonderful — warm, mellow voice, like one of those old-time Big Band singers. And he didn’t oversell the song — just sailed through it like he’d been on stage all his life. The crowd gave him a thuderous ovation, and it’s a moment that’s stayed with me to this day. There must be moments like that on “American Idol.”

But about those bad singers. They are not just bad, they are not just awful, they are not just unbearable to listen to. They are weirdly awful in an almost supernatural way. And they have weird back stories. There is the kid who has been collecting his fingernails in a baggie, which he shows to everybody. There’s the one who’s never even kissed a woman. There was this guy:

Douglas Davidson, a 28-year-old student, says he has been trying “to restart my singing hobby since I was 16.” He says his father would catch him singing sometimes and tell him he hated him. Ooooo-kay. He walks around “warming up” for a couple of minutes. He shout-talks his way through “Livin’ on a Prayer.” It’s awful. He says he was rough on a couple of notes, and walks around “warming up” again. He starts another song, and it’s terrible, too. Simon tells him to stop and that it’s just not working. He ignores them all and keeps trying to sing. Simon: “No one in a million years is ever going to pay to hear you sing.” He starts walking and singing again. Security removes him. Simon: “Douglas, they’re going to take you someplace safe.”

That was some creepy television. I had known that the awful singers were delusional about their singing abilities. That’s all people talk about in the early shows, and how, after all, could they not be delusional to display their lack of talent before a national TV audience? But something I hadn’t understood without watching the show: Their lack of talent is not the only thing they are delusional about.  Some of these people seem to exhibit symptoms of serious mental illness. They are not just oddballs. Going on Idol is part of their sickness.  To trot them out for the sole purpose of national ridicule is more than just meanness or even cruelty. It borders on the unconscionable.

Or am I overreacting based on underexposure to the Idol phenomenon?

Rock it, Bill

Via Fark, one of the great moments in entertainment history, William Shatner performing — I guess that’s the right word — “Rocket Man” at a science fiction convention. It happened 30 years ago today.

In the groove

Happy birthday, one day late:

1949: The 45-rpm record is introduced by RCA. Can rock ‘n’ roll be far behind?

[ . . .]

More important, though, was the timing. When rock ‘n’ roll started taking off in the mid-’50s, the 45 proved a perfect format for this music. With one song per side (the “A side” being the projected hit and the “B side” being filler, which often became the actual hit), the 45 had the distinct advantage of being affordable for most young fans.

God, I feel old. You can tell a lot about people today by what they have on their iPods. The version of that when I was young was the stack of 45s we carried around with us from party to party. And what we have lost by not being able to talk about “B sides” anymore. Just think what that would add to the presidential-primary conversations.

Sound of music

David Byrne on the salvation of the music industry:

I love music. I always will. It saved my life, and I bet I’m not the only one who can say that.

What is called the music business today, however, is not the business of producing music. At some point it became the business of selling CDs in plastic cases, and that business will soon be over. But that’s not bad news for music, and it’s certainly not bad news for musicians. Indeed, with all the ways to reach an audience, there have never been more opportunities for artists.

[. . .]

Some see this picture as a dire trend. The fact that Radiohead debuted its latest album online and Madonna defected from Warner Bros. to Live Nation, a concert promoter, is held to signal the end of the music business as we know it. Actually, these are just two examples of how musicians are increasingly able to work outside of the traditional label relationship.

Just shows (to no one’s surprise, I’m sure) that Byrne is a little smarter about the music business than I am. When Radiohead offered its latest album as a digital download and let downloaders set their own price, I questioned his common sense.

I also like what he says about what music was before technology turned it into a commodity: “In the past, music was something you heard and experienced — it was as much a social event as a purely musical one. Before recording technology existed, you could not separate music from its social context. Epic songs and ballads, troubadours, courtly entertainments, church music, shamanic chants, pub sing-alongs, ceremonial music, military music, dance music — it was pretty much all tied to specific social functions. It was communal and often utilitarian. You couldn’t take it home, copy it, sell it as a commodity (except as sheet music, but that’s not music), or even hear it again. Music was an experience, intimately married to your life. You could pay to hear music, but after you did, it was over, gone — a memory.”

Duet

You may have already seen this as a link, somewhere else, but it’s still fun to see. That guy never sounded so good! And James Taylor wasn’t bad, either.

They’ll always pick ‘free’

Gosh, this is a shock:

LOS ANGELES (AP) - Radiohead let its fans decide how much to pay for a digital copy of the band’s latest release, “In Rainbows,” and more than half of those who downloaded the album chose to pay nothing, according to a study by a consumer research firm. Some 62 percent of the people who downloaded “In Rainbows” in a four- week period last month opted not to pay the British alt-rockers a cent. But the remaining 38 percent voluntarily paid an average of $6, according to the study by comScore Inc.

We all know the Web is changing how people experience entertainment, and everybody is trying to figure out how to handle it. Clue: Radiohead didn’t. 

Deep in Jena

OK, I take it all back. Neil Young’s “Southern Man” is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius compared with John Mellencamp’s attempt to find meaning in Jena:

An all white jury hides the executioner’s face
Is this how we are, me and you?
Everyone needs to know their place
And here we thought this blackbird was hidden in the flue

Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Oh oh oh Jena
Take your nooses down

So what becomes of boys that cannot think straight
Particularly those with paper bag skin
Yes sir no sir wipe that smile off your face
We’ve got our rules here and you’ve got to fit in

Ooh, that is so deep. There is video, if you can stand it.

Love potion

Forget O.J. and the stalking astronaut and the tasered college-student jerk, entertainment-news junkies. I have a Courtney Love bulletin:

Courtney Love wants to launch her own perfume but is worried nobody wants to smell like her.

The former Hole singer - who has battled drink and drug addiction - wants to lay to rest her rebellious image and reinvent herself before she brings out the signature scent.

Courtney said, “These days stars make money by marketing their own clothes and fragrances but I’ve been reading a lot of books and attending a lot of marketing conferences before I go down that route. No one wants to smell like Eau de Controversy!”

Put me down as one of those who do not want to smell like Courtney Love.

The beat goes on

My current hero:

(CBS4) FORT LUPTON, Colo. Violaters of the city of Fort Lupton’s noise ordinance were in for a big surprise this past Friday. The city’s judge sentenced citizens who have been busted for being too loud to 1 hour of listening to unpopular or unusual music.

In a courtroom with mostly young adult offenders, Dolly Parton’s “I Will Always Love You” played loudly on a boombox.

During the full hour of punishment, they were not allowed to chew gum, eat, drink, read or even sleep.

Most violators found the first few minutes funny. As time wore on with Karen Carpenter, Barry Manilow and Barney songs, they weren’t laughing anymore.

“At about 20 minutes into it, I was trying not to fall a sleep,” said violator Luis Cano.

Judge Paul Sacco carries out the punishment about four times per year. He said he believes the sentence fits the crime.

Not sure about that writer, though. The Barney songs fit the description, but I don’t think Barry Manilow, Dolly Partion or Karen Carpenter qualify as unusual or unpopular — except to those who like to inflict their own choices on the rest of us at ear-bleeding levels.

Two cheers

Woody Guthrie is one of my musical heroes, but he was, alas, a hard-core Communist. “This Land Is Your Land” was not a sentimental song of  American idealism; it pretty much presented the Stalinist view of land and property. Many leftists who came of age in the 1920s and 1930s, it is said, became party members or avid followers of the Soviet Union out of some misguided sense of collectivist altruism. For many, this was true. But so many on the left, especially in the artistic community, stuck with the Soviets long after the truth about the monsters was obvious, and they were never able to acknowledge their complicity. So, two cheers for Pete Seeger, a little late to the truth but willing to stand up for it:

 I was deeply moved that Mr. Seeger, now in his late 80s, had decided to acknowledge what had been his major blind spot - opposing social injustice in America while supporting the most tyrannical of regimes abroad. Mr. Seeger rarely performs anymore. But if he does, and if he sings this song, I suspect that few in the audience would have any idea of what it is about. And I doubt that any other singer today would cover it. Only an audience composed entirely of the now-aging old left veterans would understand it instantly. Undoubtedly, many of them would be shocked.

Seeger thinks the song he wrote about Stalin and the gulags might have been written by Woody Guthrie if Guthrie had lived long enough to see “the death of the Communist dream.” Nice thought, but it seems doubtful. Byt the time Guthrie died, there was ample evidence that that particluar dream — depending on tyrants to end oppression — was a nightmare.

A lousy trade

Unfair! We get Mellencamp at the coliseum, but Bloomington gets:

 Rock icons Bob Dylan and Elvis Costello will perform Oct. 19 at Indiana University as part of homecoming week celebrations.

Bummer. Being angry won’t solve anything. I shall try to be amused.

The sounds of silence

Don’t it always seem to go that you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone? You also don’t know how special something was until you’re overwhelmed with it.

For us to be able to enter the world that music creates for us, we need a silence within which to listen. It will be said in response that in many cultures music is not presented as an object of veneration within a temple of adoring quietude, but rather as part of the rush and tumult of everyday life; thus we should not need the expectant hush of the concert hall ourselves in order to go into our music. These are valid points that do challenge the clear subject/object separation that classical music traditions have tended to enforce.

In many world societies, however, there are still spaces—if only interior, or metaphorical, or temporal—set aside for contemplation, for noiseless recalibration of the soul, and in contemporary American culture there are almost none. Our social rituals are constrained by the incessant soundtrack imposed in our public spaces, and our places of worship, by and large, have given themselves over to a muzak-based sense of liturgy that tells us at every step of the way what to feel and with what intensity. Many of us, turning away from both mainline- and mega-church, have sought peace in new-age bookstores, but these, even with their palmists and meditation rooms, surround their patrons with a noxious haze of synthesizers, pennywhistles, and Inuit drums. But beyond shopping, what primary experience are we having here? Are we listeners seeking an archetype of beauty or seekers listening for the godhead? It turns out we are neither—though we may have been duped into one or the other conviction. We are simply consumers. The hope is that, like dairy cattle, we will become more productive if encouraged in our purchases by this kind of marginal musical discourse.

I’ve had the music for ”Viva Las Vegas” stuck in my head for days now. It wasn’t exactly one of Elvis’ best efforts, and now Viagara is using it in commercials. It’s impossible to escape such aural drivel these days. Our ability to appreciate silence is quickly disappearing, and what we have to listen to is destroying our ability to appreciate the difference between noise and music.

Then play on

The major effect of the digital revolution is the gradual disappearance of the middlemen. We no longer need retail stores when we can order anything online. We don’t need, alas, newspapers or other paper products when we can read everything on the Internet. Goodybe, too, to libraries and movie theaters. Today’s disappearing act: not just CDs, but the record companies that produce them:

A full-time career in music seemed unlikely for Chris O’Brien, or at least one that would pay the bills.

But these days, the 27-year-old Medford musician is selling thousands of albums online, along with downloads from his debut CD, “Lighthouse,” and he soon plans to offer T-shirts, tickets, and other merchandise on his MySpace page and personal website.

He credits at least part of his newfound business acumen to nimbit, a sales, promotion, and distribution company in Framingham that helps emerging artists build careers online.

“This is the era of the independent artist,” O’Brien said. “It’s easier and more doable than it ever has been. People are opting to remain independent because there’s a lot more money to be had.”

Nimbit is one of a growing number of businesses, including CD Baby and Musictoday, that have helped make it easier for independent musicians to make a living from their work and widely distribute their music.

This is good not only for the artists. It is also good for music fans — we will have many more choices at a much better price, the money formerly taken by the middlemen being split by the artists and us. It should be good for the music, too, fostering the kind of creativity we haven’t seen with the record labels and radio networks in charge. I look forward to the new folk music of the digital age, swapping songs back and forth online instead of around the campfires of the rail yards.