You and What Army

OVERHEARD: OVERSHARING

The time: 9:20 on a balmy summer evening
The place: The Prospect Park Bandshell
The players: a hefty thirtyish guy and his apparent girlfriend

Hefty guy: I have to make sure Facebook can't access my photos on my phone
Apparent girlfriend: Why?
Hefty guy: Because I don't want my dick-pics to go up there by accident.

THIS IS NOT (JUST) A PHOTOGRAPH: DEERHOOF'S DIY APOTHEOSIS

When things get so big, I don't trust them at all
You want some control — you've got to keep it small
— Peter Gabriel, "DIY" (1978)

    What you see in the photo below left is the camera that took the cover photo (above) of Deerhoof's excellent new album, Breakup Song.  The camera also happens to be Deerhoof singer-bassist Satomi Matsuzaki's cellphone.  She took the picture one night this summer on her street in Greenpoint.  On the face of it, it's kind of not a big deal.  But really, it's a definitive expression of a DIY movement that began with punk rock, and traces back before that by more than a century.
    The whole idea of punk rock wasn't to make snarly, abrasive music.   It was to be able to make music that the mainstream media would never allow.   And to do that, there had to be a lot of stuff besides musicians.   People had to build a parallel music industry: radio, retail, distribution, recording studios, venues, and print media.  Punk was about seizing the means of production.
    "That is so punk rock!"   In the most interesting sense, that doesn't mean someone is wearing a black leather jacket and a mohawk, it means that they've taken matters into their own hands and made a nervy and resourceful end-run around the usual way things are done. The beautiful thing is, anyone can do that, and in just about any field of endeavor.
    In the early days of indie rock, advances in technology were beginning to make possible just such defiant ingenuity: the photocopier became accessible to just about anyone, which wrought an explosion of fanzines.  Quarter-inch eight-track tape machines enabled more economical recording; soon, four-track cassette recorders appeared, letting anyone easily make multi-track recordings and thereby ushering in the lo-fi movement.
    Along with rejecting high-budget production values, indie rock analogously rejected the cult of technique, which enabled and emboldened a whole new type of musician — people who realized they could make soul-changing music even if they didn't have the chops of Emerson, Lake and Palmer or the studio budget of Steely Dan.
    Now, digital technology has advanced DIY exponentially further, to a virtually global reach and a virtually unlimited scale.   Photoshop, Protools, MP3s, blogs, podcasting, etc. have empowered the music underground beyond the wildest dreams of the '80s indie community.  It's now possible to record music, and distribute and promote it around the planet without prohibitively expensive equipment or the meddling of pricey professionals.   Musicians can be more truly independent than ever before.  Now an inspired indie musician can use her cellphone to take the lo-fi but undeniably artful photograph for her band's album cover.  The future is here.

THE MUSEUM OF MODERN ART: NOT FOR KIDS

     There's no sign at the entrance to the Museum of Modern Art warning parents of the potentially corrupting stuff within.  But inside the museum, tender young minds will encounter a depiction of naked prostitutes, a couple kissing in bed, a dog's bollocks, or, even though the artist insists otherwise, a tobacco pipe.  (Whom are they trying fool?  A tobacco pipe is like pornography: I know it when I see it.)  The place is a veritable moral minefield.  Why hasn't anyone spoken up about this?
    Well, thanks to the introduction of the Museum of Modern Art's excellent new iPhone app, which features an extensive catalogue of the Modern's holdings, this intolerable wrong has been righted.  Apple requires all iPhone apps to have a content warning, so we now know: the Museum of Modern Art is "Rated 12+" for the following:

• Infrequent/Mild Profanity or Crude Humor
• Infrequent/Mild Sexual Content or Nudity
• Infrequent/Mild Alcohol, Tobacco, or Drug Use or References
• Infrequent/Mild Mature/Suggestive Themes

     It's official: Picasso, Matisse, Rauschenberg, Rist and the rest, they're all naughty.  Even if it's infrequently and mildly.

THE EFTERKIDS ARE ALRIGHT

     Saw a beautiful little show last night, dubbed "Efterkids."  A six-piece string section from P.S. 859 (aka the Special Music School), a K-8 school for gifted kids in Manhattan, played live to a couple of videos by the Danish band Efterklang, who just released a new album, Magic Chairs, on 4AD. It was so sweet and moving, this cranky old rock journo admits he almost got a little teary.
     I don't like to make such direct comparisons when an artist has such a clear and particular vision, but to shorthand it, Efterklang has the monotonal grandeur of the National, Radiohead's reinventive rock textures and the spooky hinterland grace of Sigur Ros. But there's a twinkling charm at its core, something those other artists lack. Efterklang is navigating that increasingly busy channel between rock and classical, and their music is lit from within by a gently incandescent soulfulness. (You can hear their song "Modern Drift" here.)
     Before the show, the Efterklangers spoke to the audience and musicians via Instant Messenger, their smiling faces beamed large on the 20-foot screen. They had learned how to play music in public school, too, and their delight about this event was palpable, even through 4,000 miles of internet connection.
     Then, with a grown-up conductor leading them, the kids ran through "Full Moon" and "Natural Tune" twice along with a specially made video of Efterklang playing in a studio, minus the strings. It's pretty tricky for any musician to play along to a track, maybe more so for those who are used to the fluid tempo variations of classical music; in most situations like this, the conductor would have a click track in his or her headphones. So the kids were a little tentative the first time through, but the second time they nailed it. They played them twice because the performance was being recorded for a "4AD Session" that will go online next month. You'll have to pay a small fee to watch the video, but it'll be worth it: the money goes to the Special Music School.
     The hi-tech, 21st century-ness of it, combined with the remarkable poise and chops of these kids, was fascinating in itself. For the players, I'd guess this was a refreshing change from the usual classical repertoire and it must have kindled the idea that classical music can be a living thing, contemporary, able to interact with modern technology. Things like this, along with the success of the Wordless Music series, suggest a very bright future for new music.
     But what hit me emotionally wasn't just the music, but the contrast between the moody, grown-up band on the screen, making this plaintive music, and the relative innocence of the twelve- and thirteen-year-olds seated before us in a little black-box theatre in Lincoln Center. As Efterklang sang lines like, "I don't know if it's coming back/I gave away the faith/and I don't know if it's still around," I thought about how the kids probably couldn't fully relate to the emotions in the music, and how bittersweet it was that they soon would.
     Efterklang is just about to begin an American tour. I'm seeing them in New York and I recommend you catch them in your town.  Schools who are interested in doing an Efterkids event should contact Adam Farrell at 4AD.

WHAT'S UP WITH THIS VINYL FAD?

    So what's up with this vinyl fad?
    A while back I threw a party at my apartment. A few guests noticed that I had a vinyl copy of George Harrison's 1970 masterpiece All Things Must Pass. "Oh, can we play this?" they asked. "Sure," I said, "that's a great album, but let's just play the CD." But they specifically wanted to play the vinyl, even though a CD was so much easier and no one at such a loud party could possibly tell the difference anyway, much less care.
    My party guests are not alone in their vinyl fetishism. Nielsen SoundScan says vinyl LP sales were 1.9 million in 2008, which is the largest total since they began recording sales in 1991. (Although remember, vinyl was already well on its way out in 1991.) Vinyl sales are expected to hit 2.8 million this year.
    But why?  Vinyl fetishists rave about the "warm sound" of LPs, but could most of them — at least any of them over age 25 or so — really tell the difference between an LP and a CD in a blindfold test? And even then you'd need a high-end stereo rig to truly appreciate the distinction. Yes, commercial MP3s sound noticeably bad, but again, most people probably could not tell the difference between a vinyl pressing and a FLAC, AAC or 256 bit-rate MP3.
    Sometimes, yes, the CD version sounds worse than the vinyl — but that's not the fault of the CD format, that's the fault of cheap, lazy, disrespectful record companies who won't shell out for a proper CD mastering. (Try an A/B test of the old and new issues of Beatles CDs and you'll hear the difference between good CD mastering and bad.)
    And vinyl fetishists conveniently leave out the fact that LPs have surface noise, clicks, pops and outright skips, which are far more of an intrusion on the listening experience than any perceived shortcomings of the CD. They'll say the pops and clicks have "become part of the music for me." Well, guess what: They aren't part of the music.  They're noise, the very thing you least want in a recording.
    So why the vinyl fetish? Well, one attraction is the ritual.  Playing a record involves carefully, reverentially removing the record from its sleeve, placing it on the turntable and gently lowering the needle onto the spinning platter.  It's a process, more involved than sliding a small, shiny disc into a black box or pressing your index finger to an iPod.  It's a pain in the neck for the casual listener, but for the big-time music fan, it reflects a level of engagement and reverence in keeping with their devotion.
    Then there are folks, mainly collectors, who are literally so heavily invested in vinyl that they can't stop now.  Other people just like retro technology, others enjoy the association with DJ culture.
    But I think there are larger, deeper forces at play here. The other day, I was listening to the NPR show On the Media, and they did a piece about why a lot of people are refusing to get vaccinated for H1N1. Here's what Ben Goldacre, a physician and the author of the "Bad Science" column in the UK's Guardian newspaper had to say:

"I think in some respects, also, it’s kind of an act of protest on which people can take a stand. When the MMR vaccine scare really kicked off in the U.K. in 2002, it was shortly after we were sort of going off to wars that were very, very unpopular, and I think, in some respects, people might have felt, well, there’s nothing I can do to stop my country bombing, but I can take a stand on vaccines. It almost becomes a kind of poetic response to unrelated problems."

    So maybe this vinyl fetish thing is along the same lines, where people are redirecting rebellious feelings away from what they have no control over — whether it's mismanaged corporate bail-outs, endless, misguided wars, or the incessant baying of stump-ignorant teabaggers — and towards something they do have control over: their own consumer choices. Maybe the vinyl fad is a backlash against overwhelming corporate power, the kind of power that buffaloed us into buying CDs and now MP3s.  The t-shirt pictured here, which is actually available for sale, says it all.  Is buying vinyl really just a feeble little attempt at sticking it to the Man?

SPIN THE BLACK CIRCLE… AGAIN… AND AGAIN… AND AGAIN

     Gee whiz, how many articles about the return of vinyl have there been in the past year?  Billboard and Wired started the ball rolling in late 2007, and the echo pieces just keep coming. (Even though people have been writing these pieces for at least 14 years.)  It's attaining the perennial appeal of all those "women in rock" stories that have cropped up since the late '70s.
     Sure, it's one of the few growth areas of the music industry and therefore worthy of note, but the glut of stories must also be a function of the age of the people who control mainstream music media like the L.A. Times, who published one just this week.  They're old enough to remember when vinyl was the only music format and still haven't quite gotten comfortable with those newfangled MP3s.  Vinyl's slight return gives the oldsters some validation, not to mention soothing those nagging feelings of getting old.
    The thing is, I bet most of those middle-aged ears are too shot to hear the difference anymore, but then playing vinyl was always kind of a ritual anyway.

p.s.:  The story keeps right on rolling.  Or spinning.  And here's another one from the New York Times.

CHEAP SHOTS: WHY TAKE CELLPHONE PICTURES AT SHOWS?

    The other day on WNYC's show Soundcheck, they had a debate about whether it's OK to take cellphone photos at rock shows.  Personally, I  think it's fine as long as you're not one of those jackasses who keeps his (and it's never her) phone aloft throughout the show, taking movies and blocking my view.  It's none of my concern if you're more interested in getting a good photo than experiencing the show.
    But they never got around to talking about why so many people take cellphone photos in the first place.  Ten years ago, a tiny minority of people took pictures at shows, and they usually got asked to stop.  Obviously, that has a lot to do with the fact that now virtually everyone has a low-res digital camera in their pocket, and there's nothing venue security can do about it.  But there's more to it than that.
    Why do people feel compelled to take almost totally useless pictures of rock shows?  (Can anyone tell me who the bands in these photos are?)  I'm sure some of them put the pictures up on their blogs, but I'd bet the proverbial house that when the memory on the camera-phone gets filled up, the ill-composed snaps of that totally rad Jack Johnson show from three months ago are the first to get deleted.
    Maybe people just have an irrepressible urge to document.  And I'm the last one to poke fun at that.  A lot of cellphone movies wind up on Youtube, but the sound and picture are terrible -- does anybody watch them if they don't feature something ghastly like the lead singer punching out an audience member?  Still if you have a long, prestigious list of shows under your Youtube alias, that could bring some perceived cred or at least pride.  It's the 21st century equivalent of thumbtacking concert tickets to your dorm room wall.
    Perhaps we can benefit, as always, from a few lines by the English poet Raymond Douglas Davies:

People take pictures of the summer
Just in case someone thought they had missed it
And to prove that it really existed

    Taking pictures at shows is like making your own souvenir, so it's participatory and somewhat unique – everyone gets to take their own shot.  And when you're paying close to a hundred bucks a ticket, plus parking, Ticketmaster gouging, and gas, you darn well want something that proves you were there.  So there's the incontrovertible evidence, right there on something as personal as your cellphone.  Or maybe it's like throwing sneakers at the stage was 15 years ago -- a way of erasing the distance between the performer and yourself.
    On a related note, I wonder if waving opened cellphones at concerts is more energy-efficient than waving lighters.  I suspect it is.  And waving lighters is pretty much restricted to people who smoke, so using cellphones makes power ballad appreciation accessible to more than just people who are committing gradual suicide.  Then again, cellphones just don't have the romance of an open flame.

AS AMERICAN AS ORGIES AND APPLE PIE

    Just read about the Pensacola, Florida, obscenity case where the defense is hoping to use Google search stats to prove that more people check out porn on the web than is commonly acknowledged. The plan is to compare the number of searches for terms like "orgy" with terms like "apple pie."  That's brilliant.
    I went to the ever-fascinating — and now perhaps legally admissible — Google Trends and looked at the frequency of searches for "apple pie."  And the graph is so regular from year to year, it looks just like an electrocardiogram!  It's relatively quiet until a small, gradual spike in the fall, when apples come into season, a massive spike for Thanksgiving, and then another smaller spike for Christmas.  No wonder they say, "as American as apple pie" – its consumption peaks wildly during our national holiday.
    Then I Googled "orgy," which is the first time I have ever done such a thing. The activity is fairly regular, but there's a huge spike in early September of 2006.  Any idea what that was all about?  I Googled "September" and "2006" and "orgy" and couldn't find out anything, although the first hit contained the following sentence:  "The bizarre circumstances in which Mr Chin became a quadriplegic — a fall during a 1999 sex orgy with a transsexual — were also aired in court."
    I couldn't narrow down the search results more specifically than the state of Florida, and it's not clear whether the y axis is the same on both graphs, but it sure looks like the residents of the Sunshine State search for "orgy" much more than they search for "apple pie."  I hope all those filthy pervs rot in jail.

CRAVEN NEWS NETWORK

      CNN.com used to be a fairly reputable news source.  Now it panders to the Laci Peterson crowd, presumably in a cynical attempt to nab some of that Fox "News" market share, and it's just pathetic, part and parcel of the dumbing down of the US electorate.  Here are some examples of actual top-of-the-fold headlines on CNN.com:

X-Men illustrator dies in Superman pajamas
November 28, 2006

Woman allegedly set boyfriend's groin on fire
December 4, 2006

Mountain lion attacks rare
January 28, 2007

Falcon charged with animal abuse
February 19, 2007

Two clowns shot dead during performance
February 21, 2007

Thongs, fishnets called harmful to young girls
February 23, 2007

Wife yells on 911 tape after husband shot lover
March 28, 2007

Virginia Tech wounded confront deep scars
April 29, 2007

Man bites dog to rescue puppy
July 4, 2007

Baseball shot directly into man's groin
December 10. 2007

   And there are many more marvels of journalistic brilliance from those craven pander-bears in Atlanta.

EAR CANDY

In the midst of the press coverage of the Zune launch, one thing has struck me, and I know it marks me as a geezer: I have not seen one piece that's compared the audio fidelity of the Zune vs. the iPod. Now, I know that MP3s (or whatever format these players use) are not exactly exemplars of sonic excellence to begin with, but surely some players sound better than others, and even more surely there must be some difference in the quality of the headphones that come with them. Back in the day, high fidelity was a big deal, a significant aspect of the listening experience; any serious music fan was, to some extent, an audiophile. That's all gone by the boards. Now, music fans walk around with those awful standard iPod headphones – they don't care a jot about frequency response or stereo imaging, they only care about the convenience, portability and perhaps prestige of the player. Musical snob appeal has shifted to the size and quality of one's collection, not the size and quality of one's woofers. Given the choice, I fervently endorse the former priority, but doesn't it strike anyone as strange that here we've developed this astounding feat of miniaturization, the MP3 player – thousands of albums that fit in your pocket -- and yet we're practically back to pressing our ears against cheap transistor radios?