Xark!

The Last, Great Hope for Musical Sincerity

Several years ago, I read Johnny Cash’s memoir, Cash: The Autobiography.  Of the many passages that stood out to me, the strong one came from a very brief section in which Cash was discussing the songs and style of country artists.  With just a tinge of “old man-itis,” he noted that while country artists of the past wore clothing and sang songs that reflected the materiality of their lives (i.e., those jeans and cowboy boots were part of their labor; songs about poverty reflected their lives), it was more the case now that the style and the themes were a requirement of the genre and no longer reflected lived experience (i.e., those jeans and boots are not reflective of a working life). 

While I’m not interested in defending “authenticity” in music or elsewhere, and while I have no cause to romanticize the past, I do want to spend a moment reflecting on, for lack of a better word, sincerity.  I want to reflect on this in relation to music in specific because, for my money, there is no art form that can so richly tap a wide array of emotions.  And tapping into those emotions from time to time—aurally and otherwise—is valuable for a number of reasons. I also want to reflect on it because I witnessed a performance last night that has changed my thinking somewhat and has given me hope.

Over the years, I have found it more difficult for music to open my emotional cylinders in quite the same way it did when I was young, and, honestly, I miss its therapeutic function.  Some of the reasons it no longer works are obvious: age jades.  Regardless of the buoyancy of your personality, emotions don’t tap as easily—or at least in quite the same way—when you’re middle-aged as when you’re young.  But I think it’s more than that: pleading guilty to my own case of “old man-itis,” I want to suggest that Cash is right.  It’s difficult to perform sincerity when you’re so strongly self-aware that you’re performing.

Building a Better Nashville Star

While Nashville Star is now in its sixth season, this is the first year that it has appeared on broadcast network television, appearing on Monday nights on NBC (having been on USA through the first five seasons).  For those who haven’t watched it, Nashville Star is a country music step child of American Idol (hereafter, AI)--which is sort of odd in that Carrie Underwood, one of the current darlings of pop country music, emerged on American Idol. 

While I am a fan of American Idol and a sometimes fan of pop country music, I did not watch Nashville Star until this season.  The set up is similar to AI in that the early show shortens the list of procedures from the masses down to a smaller number (12 in the case of Nashville Star) and the following weeks—all with themes—allow “America” to vote to eliminate one singer each week.  While there are a few minor differences in the format, the show is very similar to AI. 

All in all, it’s an adequate show and fairly entertaining.  While there is no one with the charisma of Simon Cowell, John Rich does a wonderful job as the sarcastic centerpiece in the judges’ chamber.  Country music newcomer, Jewel (yes, for those who haven’t been paying attention, she’s hitting the country charts now) is far more thoughtful and useful than Paula Abdul and singer-songwriter Jeffrey Steele actually gives advice beyond “That was pitchy, dog.”  The singers are hit and miss, just as on Idol, but you can find yourself getting emotionally connected to the show. 

That said, the show does have some glaring problems that, if corrected, could make for a strong rival to American Idol.  Here, then, I propose, five ways to improve Nashville Star:

Tim McGraw's Profound Sound

I was listening to my iPod the other day when--and this is one of those artists about whom I often lie about having in rotation—I heard the first few notes of Tim McGraw’s Red Ragtop.  I smiled.  I couldn’t help but smile.  I love that song. 

Let me be clear: I don’t love that song in a way that simply makes me want to shake my head along to a beat; I don’t love that song the way one loves a guilty pleasure (although I suppose there are elements of that emotion in my experience); I don’t love it the way I love hearing an artist for a minute or two in the throes of nostalgia; no, I love that song in the way one loves one of the top fifty greatest songs they’ve ever heard.

Trumpet of the Living Dead

While I have more than a passing knowledge of most of the jazz canon from the 1950s to the 1980s, I never became much of a Chet Baker fan.  While I listened to his work with Gerry Mulligan, there was something about the . . . well . . . the lyricism of much of his playing that didn’t appeal to me.  Indeed, I always had something of an unearned snotty attitude about west coast jazz.  Nonetheless, it was with some excitement that I went to see the “revival” of Let’s Get Lost, the 1988 Bruce Weber documentary.  Evidently, in anticipation of a new print going to DVD for the first time this year, the film is making its rounds at art film houses, and it arrived in Nashville just this week.

My reactions to the film were wildly different than I had expected.  I had read that the film provided a poignant portrait of Baker, counterposing images of Baker as a young James Dean with a trumpet with contemporary (1987) images of an older Baker, ragged from a lifetime overuse of speedballs and alcohol.  While some question the veracity of the film’s narrative (i.e., the film makes it seem as if Baker’s life was in complete decline while, according to some accounts, his career was on something of a late upswing in the mid 80s), the accuracy of the narrative—hell, Baker himself--was the least of my concerns as I sat in the theater shaken by the awful physical transformation one sees between the young and older versions of him.

In which I give props to Mariah Carey

I'm not a Mariah Carey fan (which is not to say that the woman lacks the pipes), so when I saw the headline that she had just passed Elvis for second-place in the all-time list of No. 1 singles on the Billboard Hot 100 (Carey has 18; the Beatles had 20) I was prepared to be annoyed. But here's what she said about it:

"I really can never put myself in the category of people who have not only revolutionized music but also changed the world. That's a completely different era and time... I'm just feeling really happy and grateful."

That's really a perfect statement in the context of the accomplishment. Elvis and the Beatles lived in a time when you could be a mass-market hit AND still drive the culture in innovative ways. No one has ever accused Carey of trying to do that, but there's something refreshing about a pop star who recognizes that she's a pop star and doesn't attempt to be pretentious about it.

To put Carey's accomplishment in context, think of it this way: Her No. 1 hits represent the most successful plurality in a massive, fractured, Long Tail audience. She is not driving the culture or innovating on the fringes: Carey is a talented, attractive vocalist and a reliable brand with broad name recognition.

Is she your favorite singer? Probably not. Do you hate her music? Probably not. Can you name three of her 18 songs? I can't. But you know who she is, she has a nice smile and sports a perfectly maintained (surgically enhanced) body that still drips youthful sexuality. And that's what it takes to get a No. 1 hit on the Billboard Hot 100 these days.

The obvious question?

Who gives a shit about the Billboard Hot 100 anymore?

The South Carolina Hit Parade

The South Carolina Hit Parade from Dan Conover on Vimeo.

Jack McCray has been building a reputation for decades as Charleston's foremost authority on jazz history, and that's the way most people know him. He's the guy who wrote the book, literally, on local jazz (Charleston Jazz, Arcadia Press, 2007), and given his background as a writer and editor, it's easy to give him that label and move on.

But trying to put a simple label on Jack is invariably stupid. If you love jazz, do you just write about it? Or do you help create it? Promote it? Spread it?

Jack has produced other events, but his latest project might be his most ambitious. He's booked the top venue in the city and overseen the construction of an honest-to-God big band.

Reason? Because Charleston's contributions to jazz have been deeply connected to the big-band tradition. His show, The South Carolina Hit Parade, is two hours of music from South Carolina jazz innovators played by South Carolina jazz musicians.

I think Jack is doing something historic. The problem? Since so few people understand the context of Charleston's previous jazz history, the value of this event isn't widely appreciated... yet.

Jack and I have been sitting next to each other at work for about a year. I pulled him aside yesterday and did this quickie interview. As always, Jack is just interesting.

(For the record, I'm sure Jack would want me to point out just how collaborative all this is -- he repeatedly tried to list all the musicians and partners involved in this project, and I invariably cut them out for time. Sorry, Jack.)
                           
The South Carolina Hit Parade, March 22, 2008, at the Charleston Music Hall, from 7-9 p.m. Tickets are $40 at the door, $30 in advance at etix.com.

Personal Politics and the Unwritten Future

Julien Temple's documentary, Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten, about the career/life of Clash and Mescaleros’ frontman Joe Strummer is, to be generous, an engaging collection of sometimes rare video clips and new interviews that offers an adequate introduction to the singer and irritatingly dogmatic politico.  To be more frank, it—like The Filth and The Fury, Temple’s Sex Pistols’ documentary—is something of a cobbled together mess of new and vintage clips that leaves someone like me—a Clash fan from jump--fairly bored.  Not that I can’t find a way to talk about it; I can always do that; it’s more that I wouldn’t want to encourage you to go see it. 

About the documentary itself:  while it is no doubt a nice pleasure to watch documentary clips of the Clash throughout their career (nothing warms a middle aged heart more than mass mediated self-absorption), and while it was both informative and charming to learn (and see) Joe’s early life and upbringing as well as his life post-Clash (about which I knew little), the composition of the story telling was baffling. 

Temple tells Strummer’s story by interposing archive footage of Strummer with interview clips of a variety of unnamed friends sitting around campfires in different global locations. When you know the person being interviewed, and understand their connection to Strummer, this is charming.  When you don’t know the person and/or don’t know their connection, this is distracting and irritating (“Who is that bearded guy?” “Why is Johnny Depp being interviewed?”)

And away we go

It's the end of the world as we know it and I feel fine. REM

Once,  the biggies controlled the pipelines, deciding whose content was disseminated and how.  But no more. Thousands of little conduits are siphoning the power from the few and allowing art and information to flow up, over, around to audiences, albeit smaller ones, everywhere.

We've witnessed the phenomenon of Radiohead's Web-only album release. Here's another example of a breach in the wall: Ingrid Michaelson.  The NY-based singer/songwriter's road to fame, if not quite stardom, ran through MySpace, where her music was found by TV types, scoring her an Old Navy commercial and a few seconds on Grey's Anatomy.  Now she's gaining traction as an indie darling, with coverage in the likes of The New York Times and  Rolling Stone. Her second album, Girls and Boys, has been rereleased and is doing nicely on Billboard.com (meaning there's radio play) and iTunes.

Why is this so cool? She's never been signed to a label.

Oh yes, the end is coming.

Manchester Orchestra Takes the Night

I’ve always imagined that one of the most disheartening roles one can be asked to fulfill is that of the unadvertised opening band.  You know the situation:  you’ve purchased tickets to see a headlining band, and you’re pleased that you’re also a fan of the support act that will come on just before them.  These are the bands for whom you’ve purchased the tickets, and these are the bands that most everyone in the crowd is prepared to see; the show is built around their success.  A week before the show, you notice that the promoters have added a third band to the line-up (or, at least, they’ve added them to the advertising).  While you may have known of the band were you still a hyper in-tune undergrad, now the name just confuses you. 

The band in that position?  Man, that’s got to be rough. 

Here’s their job:  if the ticket says the show starts at 7:30, this band starts at 7:30.  While they want to play with enthusiasm and win some converts, it’s a tough task.  Not only will most of the seats not be filled until sometime after they’ve quit playing, but most of those arriving are busy chatting with friends, getting settled, purchasing drinks and, mostly, they’re just so damned excited about the headliner that their inclination is to wish this first band would spontaneously combust if it would help get you off the stage more quickly.

Filling that Gap, People-style

The band Radiohead has released their new album, "In Rainbows", via digital download, as I'm sure many of you have heard. I received my download pass last night (about 2am), and was impressed by how smoothly and efficiently the whole experiment worked. Within a few cyberseconds, the album was on my computer.

But one thing immediately struck me -- no cover art! This pretty much blew my mind. It's almost impossible now to find a product that doesn't pay close attention to its packaging, but in the world of music, the album cover is a sacred and inseparable part of the whole; often equaling and sometimes surpassing the experience of the music itself. What other medium can do a minimalist gesture like the Beatle's "White" album and have it recognized as an artistic statement? Sure, there are good and bad album covers -- but no cover at all? That seems to go against the soul of music consumerism as I've come to know it.

And the technology has followed this trend. The first generations of iPods were music-only, but subsequent models brought the ability to show the cover art, to the point now where the latest iPods let you navigate solely by album art, demonstrating how the technology has finally caught up with listeners' sensibilities. We need our cover art.

No no, Radiohead -- this will not do.

Left with this gaping gap in my new music experience, I did what any thoughtful person of my generation would do, which was to Google around and see if someone had solved my problem for me. I was thrilled when I came across a site with tons of homemade cover art for "In Rainbows." Some of these designs are incredible, and all clearly are labors of love. Now I'm spoiled with choices as to which one I want to pick for my iPod!

And this leads me to wonder: Although there are claims that official cover art for the album is coming soon, was Radiohead a bit cleverer than I had given them credit for? Releasing a pay-what-you-want album to the masses, and then encouraging fans to produce and distribute their own cover art.... Could this be the most participatory music experiment of the digital age? Stroke of genius, or happy coincidence? Either way, I got to experience an album and my thoughts about music in general from a new angle, and am thrilled by the creativity and energy of those others out there on the other end of my Wi-Fi.

Rockin' good news.

Look at Me!

Faith Hill still doesn't get it.  Neither does the Tennessean.

As anyone with any interest in country music will remember, at the 2006 Country Music Association Awards, Faith Hill fumbled.  If you didn't see it, youtube did.  Here's the situation:  as the audience waited for the announcement of the winner of the Female Vocalist of the Year Award, cameras focused on all five of the finalists.  When the name "Carrie Underwood" was read, Faith Hill looked at the camera, mouthed the word "What!" and looked as if she were storming away from the camera. 

Over the next several days, while she was being condemned on-line and elsewhere, a number of people rushed to her defense, noting that Faith was clearly joking, that she had a wacky sense of humor in general.  While I initially thought she may have been serious,  I took her at her word that it was joke.  As far as I have seen from my seat in fandom, Faith Hill is a nice enough person with a good number of friends who speak highly of her ethics and behavior.  So, I do indeed trust that she was joking.

Farrah's Katrina Ballads/CNN mashup

Cooper & Landrieu - Katrina Ballads from OPP on Vimeo.

For those of you who haven't seen this yet, this is the mashup Farrah Hoffmire made of a performance of Katrina Ballads at the 2007 Piccolo Spoleto Festival and the original CNN footage that inspired the passage. I think it's brilliant. Farrah and Mitchell run this on a loop in a viewing booth at the events they stage on OPP's Hurricane Katrina Media Tour (which, by the way, is going on tour with Ani DiFranco in November).

Life in a Metal Box

One of the aspects of the shuffle function on the iPod is that I have learned to value most is the way it often encourages a rethinking and rediscovery of the “meaning” of music from my past.  I not only have the common experience, then, of being nostalgically drawn to the past when I hear a significant song from my past, but I have also had the experience of rethinking the merits of some performances on their own grounds.

For instance, I sometimes discover that I have a great appreciation for all the individual songs that make up an album which I didn’t find particularly strong as a whole.  The parts are greater than the sum.  Take R.E.M.’s Green, for example:  while I liked the album just fine when it came out and in the subsequent years, it was never something I put on to play very often in full.  However, every time one of the songs from Green plays at random, I’m not only pleasantly surprised but fairly amazed at how much I like the song.  The melodies are moving, the sound emotionally complex in a way that some of their other albums are not.  Nonetheless, I continue to find the experience of listening to the full CD to be a bit dull, a bit too repetitive. 

iWhiners

As I'm sure many of you have seen, there has been quite a bit of controversy in the iWorld over Apple's recent announcement that they were dropping the iPhone's price. Although it is true that this price cut comes not too long after the iPhone's debut, I'm also having trouble believing that people didn't "expect" a price cut. Yet, to read some of the reactions to the news, you'd think Apple had pulled off the biggest swindle since Springfield bought a Monorail.

After initially taking a hard line against the iWhiners, Apple has since loosened up a bit and offered to try to make things "right." I find myself agreeing with Steve Job's views that, while it is important to be considerate of one's existing customers, the technology game is played fast and being an early adopter of technology should not be for those with weak stomachs, small wallets, and giant tear ducts.

So, while I think that Jobs and Co. devised a brilliant apology package (store credit instead of a rebate) that shows why Apple is still at the top of their game, I believe the early adopter iWhiners should still be ashamed of themselves, and take a moment to think about the impact of their complaining.