Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Review: The Black Keys, "El Camino"


El Camino
The Black Keys
Nonesuch
12.6.11

Recently, myself, my younger sister, and a mutual friend had one of those "blind men identifying an elephant" discussions where we all realized we saw the Black Keys in a different light. Our friend identified them as blues-rock, I saw them as a garage rock outfit, and my sister considered them a blue-eyed soul group.

We were all correct, of course. Certainly Akron's answer to Detroit's White Stripes is all those things and more: they both know how to combine epic blues tropes with low-fi grit and a classicist pop sensibility. The difference is that the Blacks, perhaps owing to their respective areas of formation, are a little sweeter and churchier than the Whites, the steady Blind Willie Johnson to Jack White's dark, declamatory Blind Willie McTell. 

So it was absolutely no surprise that Danger Mouse, a producer who knows all about bridging the unbridgeable chasm between indie rock and modern R&B, was able to help transform these critical darlings into Grammy gold with last year's "Tighten Up" from the album Brothers. Now DM is back full-time, and the duo's recorded the follow-up in that modern-day mecca for hipster roots authenticity, Nashville. The result is a record as unprepossessing, yet as gaudy and fun, as the white trash chariot it's named after. Not to mention the equally cheesy cover which houses it.

It'd be tempting to say that the Keys were retreating on El Camino, downplaying their bid at pop gold to reinforce their indie cred. And to a certain extent it's true: there's no crossgenre jumping like "Everlasting Light" or the single which broke them big, "Tighten Up," nothing as immediately arresting and emotionally resonant as "Ten Cent Pistol" or "The Go-Getter." The crunch is definitely back, a more subtle (but no less loud) variant on the glitter sludge of everything from The Big Come Up to Rubber Factory. The subtleties are there, though, mostly in the mix -- the airbrushed bells and whistles adding ghostly menace to "Dead and Gone," or the slightly psych-bubblegum shiver that runs up the leg of the best thing here, "Sister," and the slick ironic go-go feel of "Stop Stop."

Those touches are unfortunately in short supply, overall, so while it's not a full march back into the cave, it's hard not to feel like the Black Keys are trying to reconnect with roots they never really had. Ironists they are not, but they also don't have the personality of their fellow indie kids who suddenly got popular -- their romanticism isn't strong enough to ground them like Kings of Leon, and they don't possess Jack White's blood-on-the-floor vision of personal relationships. They're great, rootsy ear candy, but that's all they are, and while there's enough lingering essence of Brothers to sweeten the deal and suggest they haven't forgotten everything they've learned, El Camino often feels like the most unnecessary of respectability bids, the kind that makes a group more anonymous rather than more real. Which means they may end up getting classified as garage rockers after all: their default move is to rock out.

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 62. Fun to go out and get drunk with, but you wouldn't fall in love with it.
Invention: 53. Not as trippy as Attack and Release, not as radio-ready as Brothers, not as adventurous as the Blackroc project. And not much of an identity beyond what it isn't.
Integrity: 68. The BKs never trade visceral punch for indie cred. Even when they maybe should.

Monday, November 28, 2011

The Loaded Question: The War on Christmas

Friday, November 25, 2011

A public apology.


I called you all here for this press conference to apologize. I want to apologize specifically to my true fans, the fans that let me do whatever I want because I'm famous, and who realize that because I'm famous, there's a reason for everything I do. I know that some of you in the media want to take me down, accusing me of setting that children's hospital on fire, and then shooting those blind kids in the face as they hobbled down the steps in fear. But that's what the media does, you know? They build you up and then they take you down. In fact, I helped them build me up, which makes them even more to blame, because them making me famous was obviously just another excuse for them to try and make me not famous. That's how the system works, you know? It's a crazy world.

You saw the tape. You can judge for yourself. I won't hide from this so-called scandal; I will be a man and be accountable and apologize, from the bottom of my heart, for some people taking what I did out of context and not realizing it was a joke. I'm here to burn down children's hospitals and shoot fleeing kids in the head. That's what I'm paid to do. It's my job.

Excuse me. I'm being told it is not my job. So I apologize. I'm sorry that people misunderstand what happened, especially people who are trying to destroy me. If I could take it back, though, I'd like to let everybody know that I would do it all over again. Because I have integrity. I'm honest. Who I am is who I am. I ain't gonna change for nobody. This is just like when I beat my wife up. Y'all didn't even ask why. Y'all all out to get me. But that's cool. I'm stronger than you are. I can take it.

I have been told that my boss is very angry at me for being caught. And for that, I also apologize to him, for he's the one paying me. If certain people wanna make something out of nothing by deliberately misrepresenting something I did, well, that hurts my boss and his company. And eventually, that hurts me. So I'm sorry for that. I don't like to be hurt.

I'm out there every night, trying to protect myself. People don't understand, this is a hard job. You probably have a really easy job at a gas station or something. When you're finished work, you get to go home. And go right to sleep, so you can go right back to work. Nobody's out to get you, at least not in the media. You don't know what it's like. This has been very hard on my family, but they are standing by me, because they need my money. That's right, I'm providing for my family. And I'm the bad guy? Whatever.

I also want to apologize to the victims for being there when I did what I had to do. I was just trying to protect myself. Y'all saw the tape. Them kids was running. What was I supposed to do? Let them live? I just trusted in God to guide me. I won't apologize for loving Jesus. Or for telling the truth. If you don't like the truth, that's your problem. The truth can't be stopped.

Speaking of the truth, I also want to come clean and say that I don't remember any of that other stuff that people say happened. If people wanna fling wild accusations, well, bring it on. I was made famous in order to do things, and I did things. Those other things have nothing to do with anything, which is probably why I don't remember them. Why would I spend time remembering things people can't prove? Does that make sense? I'm a busy man.

So, in conclusion, I just wanna say again, that I'm sorry that everybody took this wrong when they were trying to destroy me. I guess it's what you get for being better than most people, but I won't let it stop me from doing whatever I have to do. I just want to keep being famous, and rich, for doing whatever y'all wanna make me rich and famous for doing. If some kids get killed, I'm sorry. But to those who want me to apologize: fuck you. I'm sorry y'all want me to apologize, and I deeply regret that I have to say fuck you. We should just all put this behind us, starting right now.

I'm not taking questions.        

Wednesday, November 23, 2011

The New Dead Ball Era

The end of the franchise quarterback era? Maybe

We should probably just go ahead and agree that it's not working. Or, more to the point, not working for everyone.

Remember the Year of the Quarterback? That's what 2011 was supposed to be, the consummation of an entire decade where big-as-trees QBs with Superman-quality vision, teen idol good looks, and arms as precise and accurate as predator drones led their teams down the field and into Super Bowl glory. Defense? Ground game? Yeah, I guess if you like that sort of thing. But! But! Come on! Quarterbacks!

It's not as if the NFL was hurting for fans around the time 9/11 changed the world. However, the powers that be took their cues from the insanely popular dream teams of '90s basketball -- you remember, when everybody wanted to Be Like Mike? When sports stars tried to rap? When Looney Tunes did cross-branding? -- and injected some marquee glory into what had been a team game. Of course, not everyone gets to score in football, but hey, centers don't move custom jerseys. To take it to the next level, the league made a conscious decision to glorify the gunslinger.

They helped out by tightening the rules on what could be done to a QB, tossing around fun stats like the Quarterback rating, and hyping fantasy football as a jock wannabe's nerdcore fantasy. Suddenly, the field generals were blowing up the record books, and football easily became America's #1 pastime. Or obsession. These days, whenever a team that isn't "ours" takes the field, we say things like this: "Eli is going up against Vick." Or "Romo's taking on Brady." The quarterback became what the heavyweight champ was to the 70s, except his jab was the tight end and his uppercut the wide receiver.

Like boxers, however, QBs are proving to be mortal after all, even when handled with kid gloves. Worse, it turns out the position has so much weight on it these days, has come to depend so much on ridiculous, superhuman accuracy, that you don't have to smash your helmet into their jaw to make them ineffective. The Steelers and Bears' supposedly unstoppable express ride back to the playoffs has been derailed by broken thumbs. Peyton Manning's bid to beat Joe Montana's legend into submission failed because of neck surgery. Even Aaron Rodgers' record-shattering 2011 could have easily never happened, had last year's concussions ganged up on him.


It wouldn't be so damaging if owners hadn't put all their eggs in one franchise basket, depending on (and paying) these guys to be the weakest link. Peyton, who re-signed for 90 million even though he was 36 and undergoing his third surgery, now looks like he was running everything in Indianapolis but the ticket sales; what was a Superbowl powerhouse 21 months ago is now 0-10 and getting, somehow, worse. The Texans have gambled their first ever playoff hopes on Matt Schaub and lost, thanks to a foot injury so seemingly inconsequential he played on it for a whole half in order to beat a team that was 4-4 and in another division. The Eagles have spent one tenth of one billion dollars on a man who likes to run in traffic.

Yes, Tom Brady's wearing three rings. Big Ben's got two. Peyton and Eli probably sit around with Drew Brees, comparing their single rings when kicking around NOLA. That's just the point: those teams were all balanced, just as Green Bay is this year, not depending on passing alone to win the day. They had good-to-great run games and decent-to-good defenses, not to mention some genius, unorthodox play calling from the likes of Belichick, Cowher, and Payton. What might be called Quarterback Creep has infected the league over that time period, causing a lot of mediocre-to-bad teams to put their faith in a lot of inconsistent leaders. Joe Flacco. Philip Rivers. Donovan McNabb. Mark Sanchez. Tony Romo. All brushed up against greatness and had no idea what to do. Even newcomers like Josh Freeman and Matt Ryan look like the job is too big for them. Cam Newton and Colt McCoy are up to it, but can't make up for the dearth of talent around them.

Worse, when the starter goes down, the team seems utterly lost. What happened to rolling three deep at the position? How many fans can even name their second-string QB? When was the last time you saw an elite quarterback bow out when his team was up by, say, 28?

Then we have the case of Tim Tebow. Love him or hate him, he earned that Heisman. So what happens when he gets to the big time? The Broncos sit on him for two years while they try out another supposed elite, then when he finally gets his shot, he's so bad at the long pass that the offense totally redesigns itself around him. And you know what? It's been working. Not because of Tebow's line to God, or because Denver has so much talent, but because he's not passing. He runs half his plays and the defense picks up the rest of the slack, and it's so shocking that the rest of the league's forgotten how to deal with it.

Sounds like the Broncos know something the NFL's refused to acknowledge for the last decade: there's only so much talent to go around, and when you cut off the head of the beast, it dies. Stanford's Andrew Luck, this year's recipient of the Heisman hype, will probably live up to it better than Tim has, but for real job security, he should sign with a team that pays a little less and runs a lot more. These are the realities of the era we may very well be about to enter in football. Somewhere, Vince Lombardi is smiling.

Tuesday, November 22, 2011

Review: Rihanna, "Talk That Talk"


Rihanna
Talk That Talk
11.18.11
Def Jam

Everyone's favorite Barbadian R&B dancefloor diva has always been very specific about her goals, claiming early on her desire to be the "black Madonna." And she's followed that playbook even closer than she herself may have realized, or even wanted to: she starts in the clubs, making the DJ the center of her world, then expands out into shiny, big-league pop, gets a big-name boyfriend with anger issues, cuts a dark and dramatic record, then dives headlong into hypersexuality and hits a brick wall. True to her time and place (and Madge's work ethic), Rihanna did it in half the time. Now we reach the level Ms. Ciccone did in the mid-Nineties: love songs.

Not that RiRi is foolish enough to remake Madonna's own mistakes; Talk That Talk is a lot dancier than, say, Bedtime Stories, but if you shuffled it with Something to Remember and Music, you'd get the general thematic idea. Always expected to slow it down at least some of the time -- that's the "black" part of the "black Madonna" plan, because R&B stardom demands it -- she also glosses it up hard and keeps it positive, as if realizing that riddims and rage, in 2011, are not nearly as important as radioplay. Like Madge, the club is no longer her top priority. Pop rules.

Also like her idol, she has a problem getting real. Rihanna has emotions, mind you, she just doesn't let them into her work much. She's an entertainer first, unfairly tagged with the "ice queen" label because she didn't run out and do a bunch of angry songs about Chris Brown. She's not here to be deep, she's here to get you jacked up and then, maybe, to ease you down afterwards. When she tries for anything more, like Madonna coming up short on "Don't Cry For Me Argentina" or getting utterly lost in "American Pie," she disappears.

You wouldn't know unless you paid attention, though, not with the cream of the crop designing club beats and rich, gentle soundscapes for RiRi to wear like couture. Dr. Luke makes the opening ballad "You Da One" into a irresistibly choppy, poppy dedication jam. Stargate gives "Farewell" twice the import as Rihanna can with her voices. No I.D. does a great job at fashioning the faux-rock guitars of "We All Want Love" into a perfect romcom happy ending. Unfortunately, except for a pair of appealingly shallow (and non-Caribbean) jams in "Drunk On Love" and "We Found Love," that's about all there is to the ironically-named Talk That Talk -- even Jay-Z's turn on the title track feels like a retread. What sex there is gets short shrift. And at 11 tracks running 37 minutes, it's impossible to see how she can keep this on the radio until next November's obligatory album. If pop music doesn't quit being so perfunctory and incestuous, ambitious pros like Rihanna will become so anonymous they'll disappear right into the background. Madonna was never having any of that.

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 60. No fake attempts at being hard or kinky, but no new "Umbrella," either.
Invention: 50. She's at the stage where she's finding an interesting middle ground for all her stylistic ambitions...
Integrity: 41. ...but it'll just sound bland without a really distinctive producer.

Monday, November 21, 2011

The Loaded Question: Future Thanksgiving

Friday, November 18, 2011

Who's the New Girl? Episode 201: Rocketship X-M

Having both an unhealthy obsession with classic pin-up style, which is coming back, and Mystery Science Theater 3000, which lives on forever, I've decided to combine my two lusts and create yet another series, this one based around pin-ups of the lovely ladies that starred in the b-movies MST3K skewered so hilariously. I will be taking on every single one of the relevant episodes, in order, because I have problems. Enjoy!

The series begins here. 



One of the first movies to seriously advance the idea of America conquering space, but surely not one of its best, Rocketship X-M was the braindeadchild of executive producer Robert L. Lippert, who went on to torture Joike and the bots with films like Lost Continent, Radar Secret Service, and Last of the Wild Horses. Lippert had read in Life magazine about a proposed moon expedition, and rushed this turkey into production in order to beat George Pal's Destination Moon to theaters. He didn't quite make it, so, here, Lloyd "my lungs were aching for air" Bridges pilots his annoying crew to the moon, but misses it due to the threat of a George Pal lawsuit and winds up on Mars instead. Total filming time: 18 days. 

About that annoying crew. There's the usual lantern-jawed captain, the sketchy foreign scientist guy, the "comic" relief (an agitated Noah Beery, who compares everything he sees to Texas), and, of course, the love interest. Strikingly (but stupidly) everyone on the crew dooms themselves; our boy Lloyd is forced to hold said love interest and fantasize about their entire future imaginary relationship as they turn into a fireball, so at least they don't die alone. And whom does the Dude's dad cling to as he becomes crispy? Why, no other than...     



"The reason Miss Van Horn is making this trip is because
of her pioneering research with monatomic hydrogen."
"...and she's cute as a button."

Born Aase Madsen, the slightly-easier-to-pronounce Osa hailed from wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen and had little interest in stardom as a teen -- her passions were newspaper photography, and, later, film editing. But while studying under Danish director Alice O'Fredericks, she agreed to appear in two of her films, which were released at the exact time Hollywood was prowling Europe for new cheesecake. Osa was snapped up by 20th Century Fox, and by the time she was 20, she'd made a splash in 1939's Honeymoon in Bali (playing a Polynesian, of all things). 

Her film career in the 40s was steady, the highlight being her catfight with none other than Joan Crawford in 1941's A Woman's Face, and being multi-lingual, she also found herself doing work as an accent coach on the side. Fox's attempt to turn Osa into the next Betty Grable failed, however, not helped by audiences confusing her with other foreign femme fatales like Ilona Massey and, oddly, older American character actress Ona Munson. Her turn as a cold and angry, then suddenly weepy and emotional,  scientist in Rocketship X-M was her last major film role. She appeared steadily on television through the '50s, notably on the old Perry Mason series, and then left the business, returning to her hometown. She died in 2006 at the age of 91.    



Thursday, November 17, 2011

Too Big Not to Fail

Why a scandal like Penn State's was bound to happen

Of all the insane stories history will shake its head at while remembering the Joe Paterno / Penn State scandal, one stands out: when the story broke, the 84-year-old Winningest Coach In College Football history stonewalled the media all day, then returned home to find dozens of supporters waiting for him. To show their support, they sang the Penn State fight song:

Fight on State (GO!)
Fight on State (GO!)
Strike your gait and win, (LET’S GO STATE!)
Victory we predict for thee
We’re ever true to you, dear old White and Blue.


It's unclear what they thought they were fighting. Assistant Coach Jerry Sandusky's urge to have sex with boys he recruited through a foster program designed to give them a safe place to live and thrive? The resolve of Paterno, his immediate superior, to fail to take action for nine years after being informed children were being raped? The Penn State faculty's near-complete, practiced obliviousness to all this?

Those would have all been things to fight. But no, Penn State was fighting for itself -- to protect itself against the charges leveled at it so that those attending could continue to enjoy whatever sense of tradition, unity, and solidarity they got from being students there. The children badly abused by an authority figure, those who'd have to live with the molestation their whole lives? Unfortunate side effects.

Yeah, we're all furious about it. I'm not saying anything new. But when Paterno finished crying conspicuously in his front window, he came out to address the supporters, and said this:
We’re always going to be Penn State, regardless of what happens to certain people. We’re Penn State. I’m proud of you. I’ve always been proud of you. Cheer our football team on Saturday, all right? Beat Nebraska.
That's right. The focus was on beating their next opponent, and maintaining solidarity. The rapist and his conspirators, whatever vague things they may have committed, were relegated to being "certain people."

It's okay, though, because JoePa proved how much he cared with his next statement:
We’ve had some criticism of how we’ve handled some of the poor victims. My wife and I, we have 17 grandkids from 16 to 3 and we pray for them every night. And we’re going to start praying for those kids who got involved in some of those problems we've talked about. They don’t deserve it. We owe it to them to say a prayer for them. And make sure they understand that their life is one that can be enriched, one that they can make a significant impact on other people and do a lot of different things, as all of you can. So God bless everybody.
Clearly, the important takeaway for Joe is that he remember to pray. Praying fixes everything. The only thing worse, apparently, than systematically allowing child rape to occur on your watch for a decade is to not be worshiping Jesus. Do the "poor victims" get an apology? No. Just a prayer. I mean, we owe them that, right? Because it costs nothing to pray. And even less to talk about it. The lawyerspeak was particularly galling, relegating the abuse to the level of "getting involved in problems," as if the kids had all gathered together one night and decided to vandalize a storefront because they were bored. Disgusting.

The immediate parallel which leapt to everyone's mind was the Catholic Church, who has its own history of institutionalized abuse. Their response was even more appalling:
"It reopens a wound in the church as well," said [Timothy] Dolan, the New York archbishop. "We once again hang our heads in shame." Dolan made the comments in response to a reporter's question at a national meeting of bishops in Baltimore.
He said the scandal shows that abuse of children is not limited to any particular faith or to clergy. Still, he said the church has "a long way to go" in making up for its mistakes. 
Dolan declined to offer advice to Penn State University on how to deal with its scandal, because the church "has not been a good example of how to deal with this in the past," he said. "No one has suffered more than the Catholic community."
"Our love and prayers go out to the victims, the families and the whole Penn State community," Dolan said. "I know it's a bit of a cliché, but we know what you're going through."
Once again, you see the intentional disconnect. The victims are always, but always, lumped in with the criminals, and then with the community, so that their pain becomes "our" pain. Then come the excuses: Everyone does it.

Of course, the problem is not that pedophiles can be found wherever young boys (or girls) can be found. That's like saying that robbers like banks. What is neither normal or acceptable is the cover-up. From a journalistic standpoint, writers are always taught that the cover-up is worse than the crime, because the cover-up requires collusion. It requires multiple criminals and multiple crimes. It is institutional by nature.

And so we come to the institution. The central authority, that which becomes a religion to people, whether it's a secular or religious institution, because of what they're told and believe it represents. Because of what we need such things to be.

Institutions breed corruption, every one of them, if they're large and established enough. The actual thinking conservative -- not whatever Herman Cain and Rick Perry are supposed to be -- realizes this about government. The actual thinking liberal -- not the hippie in the drum circle -- realizes this about corporations. Athiests see it in every religion. Religious people see it in other people's religious institutions. No doubt students at The Citadel in South Carolina shook their heads in wonder at Penn State until they discovered that they, too, had a skeleton in their academic closet. 

Worse, institutions that are too centralized lose all sight of everything but the bottom line, becoming bloated and unwieldy and unable to move without first sloughing off a ton of red tape -- a hard lesson learned by FEMA's response, or rather lack thereof, to the victims of Hurricane Katrina. Political parties consolidate until they're so ideologically opposed they can't talk to one another, much less legislate.

It affects products and services on the most basic levels, too. The radio stations and record companies consolidate, making popular music sound uniform and uniformly terrible. Complaining to the manager at, say, McDonald's is a sick joke. The guy at Lowe's has never heard of drywall.

The institution always takes on a life of its own, given world enough and time. Power becomes centralized. Corporations become people. Unions become corrupt. Communism becomes totalitarianism, capitalism becomes corporatism, military leaders become dictators. "Defense" of one country suddenly becomes about invading another country. The flag and the uniform and the fight song become tools of oppression.

And the dystopia spreads outward to everything it touches.

By May of 1988, the allegations -- not rumors, allegations -- about Sandusky had spread, not just through the coaching staff, but to the University Police, the county DA, the university's lawyers, the Second Mile lawyers (that's right, a foster charity had lawyers), and the PA Department of Public Welfare. By the fall of 2000, those allegations had spread to the University's janitorial staff, and by 2002, even to the Penn State athletic director and its senior vice president for finance and business. By 2007, it had reached the Second Mile executive director, the Penn State president, and the university's wrestling coach.

Everyone knew. More than one person saw it with their own eyes. Yet no one said a word. The victims themselves were afraid to come forward. Because Joe Paterno is the Winningest Coach In College Football History. Not just good at winning football games (bringing in a cool $50 million a year to the University by doing so), not just the best at winning football games, but an icon, a man so popular he'd gotten a statue made of him without even dying first. You know, like Michael Jackson.

Paterno was, as the metaphor sometimes goes, an institution on campus.

Penn State, 1855.
If you don't think sports has devolved from a statement of community pride into a desperate secular religion, you haven't seen Detroit after the Lions lose. Or win. Detroit's still falling apart, too, even though the government bailed out its storied automakers not long ago. Also the banks. We apparently couldn't let either go under, despite their rampant corruption and poor business practices, because, well, they're institutions, now inextricably wired to every other area of the economy, like a tumor growing deep inside the brain of the body politic. That's what they mean by "Too Big to Fail."

The sense of small, tribal community that once raised barns, built schools, and formed town councils has now all but disappeared, replaced by a slavish devotion to institutionalization, secular religiosity, centralized power, to the symbols of things rather than the things themselves.

Worse, this kind of thinking is starting to infect individuals themselves, inducing them to think and behave like institutions. Corporations became people, in part, because people were willing to become corporations. When someone's daughter is murdered, they don't sit at home any more and mourn in privacy or with the support of friends and family -- they lawyer themselves up and hold press conferences on CNN, as if their pain were any different than anyone else in the same tragic circumstance. Celebrities talk about themselves in terms of "branding." We can always spot the real self-important douchebag at the party: he's the guy talking about himself in the third person, as if he were some separate entity that was cutting himself a paycheck. We are a nation of people living from the top down, desperately pretending we're at the top of anything. A nation of privileged sociopaths. And God or Joe Paterno help anything weaker than us that gets in our way.

It doesn't have to be this way. Anarchy is a dirty word in America, and lots of other places, but it's not about rioting in its purest, philosophical sense; it's about decentralization, about being flexible, about transparency, about organizing by what the community, and not the institution itself, requires.

Today.
It happens already. There's no other word for what happens every day on the Internet. It was the internet, you'll remember, that allowed the Arab Spring to happen by mobilizing people without prior benefit of approval by societal institutions. It broke the back of the music industry, allowing musicians to make profit without a middleman. Hackers do more damage than protesters. And when a corporate web page tries to force a new invasion of privacy on us, someone's right behind them with a script that undoes their insidious work.

Even "IRL," there are examples of decentralization that work. The local co-op. The credit union. The representative town meeting. Or in my hometown of New Orleans, for example, where charter schools cropped up after Katrina and provided a much better alternative to state-run educational you-know-whats. See, when a small school has autonomy, it not only does a better job mentoring its students -- much like teachers with small classes teach better than teachers with big ones -- but they also don't get big enough to produce any Sandusky incidents.

Hopefully we can all learn a lesson from that. Turns out all that corny Frank Capra stuff was right: in order to keep Bedford Falls from turning into Pottersville, you have to make sure Old Man Potter doesn't control everything. Bigger is simply not better any more.

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

She's back, y'all, and she's Black, y'all

...and she's Blackity Black and she's Black, y'all

About Rebecca Black's new video, "Person of Interest."

Usually, when we talk about an artist "maturing," we mean finding their identity -- not something that's necessarily unique, like art, but a slight but interesting variation on the current theme of pop, a mutation of the virus. Whatever gets into the marketplace and spreads, is strong; whatever dies off is weak. And it's not even usually a bad thing for the artist; in popular music, selling out at least gives you focus. And more often than not, it does utilize whatever particular talents that musician has.

In Rebecca Black's case, however, she has to first upgrade to mediocre. The disturbing news isn't that she's there -- she isn't for a while yet  -- but that this pop-culture in-joke is moving towards it at all. Just shows you what a little publicity can do; I mean, hipsters are always upset that being mediocre, in the entertainment industry, gets you automatic points towards being awesome, but thanks to the interwebs, being awful now gets you automatic points towards being mediocre.

I'm not beating up on Rebecca. We all know she just did what she was told, and she's either too determined or too nice or too oblivious to care that we know. Despite what you've been told over the past decade by a PR campaign Patton might have orchestrated, however, Britney Spears doesn't deserve this kind of attention either. There's nothing wrong with Rebecca that wasn't already wrong about pop music. No, it's the d-listers writing songs for Miss Black that are ruining her quinceañera. I mean, look at this. This is her new song, and it's called "Person of Interest."

(Remember that title. It becomes important.)






Shhh. Shhh. It's okay. I know you want to kill yourselves. That's normal. Actually, you know, that chorus wasn't half-bad, if you just -- damn you, industry! Remove your cock from my mouth!

Anyway, Rebecca is, as always, blessed with an insanely sunny smile, a guilelessness that verges on the eldritch, perfectly calibrated to blind you while her handlers attempt to rob you. She's like the Tim Tebow of pop music -- we know she's not ready for the big leagues, but, d'awwww. She's so nice. As with Tebow, however, Nice quickly graduates to Super Fucking Annoying. It just hasn't manifested itself in this particular -- Wait. Wait a minute. Go back over those lyrics.

There's a crime scene on the dance floor
Ring the alarm

Uh-oh.

There's a chalk line on the dance floor
In the shape of my heart
Crime scene tape on the front door
And you are
A person of interest

Oh God.

Can't deny you're implicated 
in a mayhem in my mind

There we go. Okay. Now that's professionalism. I had to check to see if it was bad. She's definitely graduated up from reciting her day planner.

Officer! Officer! He stole my heart! Get the UV light! I wanna see if he left sperm all over it!

Okay, like I said, I know this hurts. She has no right to inflict this on people, the privileged little mall rat! But before you judge, listen to her back story. Yes, she comes from money. But when she was just a little girl, her parents took her to the opera, and after it was over, they decided to take a detour down what was known as Metaphor Alley.

A Metaphor jumped out at them and demanded their money. Then he shot both of Rebecca's parents. And ran off.

Rebecca determined, there and then, sobbing on her knees in the rain over the bleeding bodies of her family, that she would avenge their death by personally seeking out metaphors and torturing them until they died, hiring amateur (very amateur) songwriters to craft her weapons and utility belt. That's right. Rebecca Black is to metaphors what Batman is to crime. That's a metaphor inside a metaphor inside a metaphor. A turducken of metaphors, if you will.* Which actually constitutes a fourth metaphor.

You are welcome.

Actually, I made all that up. Metaphors can't kill people. This vigilantism has got to stop. Who protects us from you, Rebecca? Who protects us from you?!  

*actually, it's an analogy. Shhh. Don't let her find out about analogies!

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Review: Lou Reed and Metallica, "Lulu"

Lulu
Lou Reed and Metallica
10.31.11
Warner Bros, Vertigo

Lou Reed has made a whole side career out of pissing people off. A former art student trained in music theory and a pop songwriter who chained himself to a cubicle and cranked out four-chord hits before he entered the Velvet Underground, Lou has always been a case study in how to use noise to manipulate others. As a result, there's probably not a single Reed fan who loves everything he's ever done: for every languid exercise in decadence like the Velvets' "Some Kinda Love" or "Venus In Furs," there's a caustic act of ear rape like "European Son" or "Sister Ray."

When he went solo, at a time in the music industry when seemingly all things were allowed, the divide got worse. Metal Machine Music was the big fuck you, a full hour of absolutely nothing but white noise feedback scooping out your brains, no songs, no beats, but Berlin has entered the historical horse race recently due to its extreme uncomfortableness masquerading as a rock album. Doomed lovers are a staple in entertainment, but you don't often get to hear their children crying as they're taken away. What Lou lacks in melodic range, he's always more than made up for in big clanging balls.

At first, Lulu looked like another exercise in sonic terrorism, and it is. But Lou's always taken an aesthete's approach to even the most rudimentary rock and roll -- he has to build up from a concept. He's also been one of the most literate guys to ever wear a leather jacket and snarl at a mic, and while that instinct doesn't fail him here, getting Metallica to back him while he spits out his spoken word results in his wobbliest foundation since Sally Can't Dance. Which, as you Lester Bangs disciples might remember, failed artistically because Lou was barely present when it was recorded.

Same goes here. The old man enlisted Metallica for this project after performing with them two years ago at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame 25th Anniversary ceremonies, feeling their sound was as tough as his aesthetic. So far, so good. And the project he put them to work on -- an adaptation of two German plays from the turn of the last century, which involve a socialite's descent into prostitution -- seems right up Reed's aesthetic alley. But Metallica are no improvisational art-rock band; their brutality is measured out in harsh barks, and even the more melodic, slower movements are repetitive and functional. The new songs, which are harsh and ugly in the extreme lyrically, are free-flowing musically; the result sounds for all the world like two radios being turned on in the same room. Metal Machine Music was a sonic assault unlike anything before or since, but the feedback was only competing against more feedback. Here, the brutality is at cross-purposes with itself. When it's dragged out to cinematic lengths, like the 11-minute opi "Cheat On Me" and "Dragon," the result is actually painful. And I've listened to all of MMM. For fun.

The few moments where James Hetfield breaks through and takes control, like the choruses on "The View," only remind us what might have been -- there's a pretty good, unselfconscious, old-school Metallica album buried under Lou's rants, and those rants might have made a compelling libretto backed by a band that values noise over riffs -- Sonic Youth, for example, who are from roughly the same period, share his New York roots, and know how to milk the drama of the spoken word to maximum advantage. Ironically, the master of '70s shock probably picked a band that was too tame to fulfill his vision, even as he no doubt envisioned roping in a whole new set of fans. As for his new friends, they ironically wound up stuck in a jumbled mess because they needed some direction. It's just as well no one's buying the result. What would have been next? Megadeth and Leonard Cohen?

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 36. Two interesting ideas fighting each other to a very noisy standstill.
Invention: 50. It's not for nothing that spoken word experiments like "The Gift" and "The Murder Mystery" are everyone's least favorite Velvets tracks. And they only competed with themselves. 
Integrity: 24. Beatallica has more.

Monday, November 14, 2011

Wednesday, November 2, 2011

TV Review: "Allen Gregory"

The most fascinating thing about the advance hate radiating from detractors of Fox's new animated show, Allen Gregory, is how it centers around the main characters being "unlikable." Which of course they are. This is Fox. Excuse me, FOX. Who wants to be likable? Seth MacFarlane now has three shows in the Animation Domination block, one of which features a "funny" rapist, one which features a racist redneck, and one of which, by its own admission, features an alien who cracks wise like Paul Lynde and cracks out like Andy Dick. So... really? The gay billionaire and his snooty, micromanaging son? Offensive?

All these things can be funny, when handled correctly, and usually on FOX they are -- when they occasionally falter, like Family Guy making fun of stroke victims, we understand they're erring on the side of, well, whatever a lack of caution is. They're supposed to shock us. It's Sunday night, we have to go to work in about ten hours, and a whole afternoon of football has gouged a migraine right into the middle of our head. We need some crazy people doing some crazy shit.

Allen Gregory will more than likely be rejected by FOX viewers any damn way, but not because it's too rude, God no. It's too urbane. Not for nothing did creator (and voice of the titular character) Jonah Hill premiere this (wonderfully pretentious) baby at Georgia Tech; it's clearly the network's attempt at working in its first [adult swim] cartoon, aiming for collegiates by co-opting the cool nerd who helped get them through high school. Crazy shit happens in Gregory, just like on any FOX show, but here it's, dare I say, cerebral: no endless callbacks to Facts of Life here, Dad, the jokes come in quick, low, and from the outside. For example: to break difficult news to Allen, his folks don't get him a dog or something; they tell him he won a Tony.

That difficult news: Gregory, in the show's main conceit, is an ascot-wearing little prick forced to go to public school. Standard fish-out-of-water stuff. Yet Allen has two daddies -- and as we find out, one of them is actually straight, merely drawn in to this world by Daddy's spending power. He's gay for the pay, and while the details are intriguingly vague, it's clear he's a business acquisition. Dad, it turns out, is every bit as prickly as (and strikingly similar to) [as] mainstay Jonas Venture. But while the Venture Bros. patriarch is a case study in the decline of American dominance (no, seriously), Mr. Gregory is the soul of modern American winning: he's utterly ruthless, emotionless, and shallow.

So, no  you won't be inviting these guys to your party, not even Allen, who's supposed to be having life lessons when the new experience makes him crap his pants (literally), but instead uses the whole incident as an excuse to conquer the school. Clearly they don't understand who he is. In that context, Allen's horrifyingly adorable crush on his much older, much heavier, buzz-cut principal is still wacky for wacky's sake -- again more like [as] than FOX, because it doesn't even pretend to make sense -- but also an indicator of his predatory nature. She runs the place? He must have her.

What this all means is that some of us, especially those who've been watching adult cartoons for years, would rather see unlikable characters with integrity than likable ones that break character all the time. Integrity in this case referring to these assholes' ability to stay true to their particular assholishness. It's not only more honest, it's less condescending -- twentysomethings, naive as they can be, have figured out its idiots like these who run the world, but are still capable of admiring their, dare I say, panache. ("Here's what's currently happening," he tells his new teacher. "You're being difficult. And I see this whole situation going smoother if you cooperate... thanks... you're a China doll.") We want their confidence, but not their sense of entitlement.

Indeed, these characters are already so entrenched that the writers can begin letting them impact their new surroundings. Will Allen learn that public school kids will hate him for acting like a hedge-fund manager in 3rd grade, especially when they realize it's his money that's making him weird? Or will he corrupt the whole educational process with said money, which would be another nice fat topical metaphor to chew on? It'll be interesting to find out... assuming they get the chance, that is. In the end, It's not the moral watchdogs but the Wal-Martians with Stewie stickers on their SUVs who will doom Allen Gregory to nothingness, put off by the glee in which it talks down to them. The rest of us like our jerks straight up; if you prefer to be not quite so dominated by your animation, that's your lookout.          

Tuesday, November 1, 2011

Review: Coldplay, "Mylo Xyloto"

Mylo Xyloto
Coldplay
Parlophone
10.24.11

Contrary to hipster opinion, there's not always something wrong with selling out. Bands -- especially those signed to a major -- are usually expected to toil away at whatever style of music's currently popular, which is why Coldplay got huge combining the retro cool of U2's expansive, shimmering arena rock and Radiohead's piano-driven apocalytica. Unlike those bands, however, Chris Martin and Co. never had much to say, reducing those strains to an impeccably airbrushed blend, rainy day music for teens who think they're more sensitive than they are. For a solid pop band with unnecessary pretensions, selling out can be an evolutionary step. There's always the danger of playing against your strengths, of course, but Coldplay's problem has never been sincerity; it's depth.

All of which is a way of saying that Mylo Xyloto, arriving as it does after one of those is-it-a-breakup hiatuseses, isn't a step forward or backward, but rather sideways. With a canny trio of producers that feature  Brian Eno alumnus Markus Dravs on one end and smart popmeister Rik Simpson (Natalie Imbruglia, Jay-Z) on the other, this atmospheric ear candy is sweeter and more intriguing than ever; it's really just the guys sped up and not so mopey, trading in their status as hipster boy-band for a shot at true pop. It's no Black Eyed Peas record. But you can listen to this one before the club.

There's a few short instrumental bridges and a concept of sorts to soften the blow (two lovers meeting in a dystopian gang of blah blah blah, you won't notice), but right from the top, this is not your older sister's Coldplay: "Hurts Like Heaven" sounds like its namesake, The Cure's "Just Like Heaven," mixed with the melodic arcs of Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill." Seems they were smarter than the hipsters figured: their sellout moves sound impeccably like their the sellout moves of their arthouse. The much-lamented Rihanna duet "Princess of China" is a letdown; sounds like she phoned this one in. But forget that -- she'd kill for the limo-ready sheen of something like "Paradise" or the lite-R&B ballad "Up In Flames," both of which mange to translate Chris Martin's signature sensitive moves into up-to-the-minute Top 40 gold.

As Mylo goes on, the band is canny enough to deposit some old-school Coldplay moves, like a pop-rapper who buries the gangsta shit in the middle of the playlist: "Major Minor" harks back to the experimentation of Viva La Vida, while the acoustic "Us Against The World" feels like a rejected Parachutes outtake. But never fear: "Charlie Brown" and "Don't Let It Break Your Heart" are waiting, sufficiently anthemic but shiny and emotionally upbeat. The overall experience is like The Joshua Tree and Watch the Throne playing at the same time, without the identifiable artistic fingerprints. Those of you who got through your college entanglements with X&Y will probably recoil from that concept, but it's to Coldplay's credit that they've figured out how to mesh the most exciting sounds of both without tripping over the sentiments of either. This is where it helps to have no sentiments. Only in 2011 could the world's biggest band finally relax and allow itself to enter the mainstream.

Graded using the Third Eye Method:

Impact: 65. The band's still a little too intent on navel-gazing to fully sell the glitter.   
Invention: 72. Making U2 sound like Radio Disney is actually pretty impressive, whether or not you think it's necessary.   
Integrity: 52. It's not all that necessary.