I tuned into the Grammys at the tail end of the broadcast, when Usher and Quincy Jones announced the award for Album of the Year. I didn’t even realize Foo Fighters, Vince Gill and Herbie Hancock made enough a ripple to earn a nomination. The fact Hancock won didn’t surprise me — Grammy voters go with the most familiar — but I wouldn’t recognize his album if it were blaring from someone’s stereo.
The Grammys stopped being relevant to me as far back as high school, but these days, the gap between what’s recognized by the industry and what’s playing on my media player is the size of a canyon. The game I play these days is to see how many nominees and winners I actually have in my collection. Not many, as would be expected.
I’ve gone so far as to root for bands I downright abhor to win the Best New Artist category. That category is the kiss of death for just about anyone who wins it. Amy Winehouse’s win should be of great concern to her fans.
But bashing the Grammys is a time-honored sport, and I was never any good at sports.
The Washington Post, however, has a great article about the classical Grammys, which seem to reflect the direction of recorded classical music more closely than its pop brethen. The classical nominees were quirky, a good number of them surprisingly including a lot of modern works. I don’t remember seeing so many of them nominated in a single year.
Many of these albums are also independent releases, a sharp contrast to the days when EMI, Universal and Sony dominated the classical categories. Joan Tower’s Made in America has been on my eMusic Save for Later list for a number of months now.
I’ve always looked up who won the Best Contemporary Classical Composition after the awards are announced — the Recording Academy sometimes gets it right, if Steve Reich’s 1989 win for Different Trains is any indication.
No, I was not immune to the grunge craze, but thanks to prolific magazine reading back then, I picked up on it about six months before it took over the world. I bought Nirvana’s Nevermind because an article mentioned Butch Vig produced it. I was already digging Smashing Pumpkins’ Gish, also produced by Vig, so I thought that was reason enough to check it out. A friend of mine thought the album cover was weird. Months later, he’d be listening to the album himself.
I find it funny that Guns N’ Roses’ Use Your Illusion and Nirvana’s Nevermind were released in the same year. The two albums pretty much bookend different eras — ’80s hair metal and ’90s grunge.
1991 was also the year I discovered the joys of anime theme songs, the root of what would be come a major source of coverage on this site. And my classical interests started to blossom as well.
At the time of its release, Blind Man’s Zoo finally found 10,000 Maniacs making music appropriate to Natalie Merchant’s increasingly dark lyrics. Previous singles such as "Like the Weather" and "What’s the Matter Here" seemed a bit too bouncy to be dealing with such subject matter as depression and child abuse.
"The Big Parade" and "Dustbowl" are two of the album’s most vivid songs, while "Headstrong" has a backbeat as stubborn as Merchant’s bullheaded narrator.
Then I went back in time to discover The Wishing Chair and started to perceive shortcomings in Blind Man’s Zoo. Merchant’s literary settings on that first album — a graveyard in "Lilydale", an old house in "Tension Makes a Tangle" — were concerned more with imagery than message. With Blind Man’s Zoo, the balance started to shift in the other direction.
As I moved my vinyl collection to CD in the ’90s, Blind Man’s Zoo didn’t make the jump. The album had fallen out of favor as the band itself started to run its course. It’s taken me 19 years to revisit this album, and I have to say — I was right the first time.
Blind Man’s Zoo is perhaps the band’s most focused album, if not one of its most powerful.
I haven’t checked my site statistics in a while, so when I did yesterday, I discovered someone leeching my bandwidth. In fact, my entire aStore design was copied wholesale to a number of other sites.
I figured if my bandwidth is going to be stolen, I may as well make it worth my time. With the magic of URL rewriting, I targeted the errant sites to access this image instead of the washed-out tape reel image that currently serves as the site’s brand.
The ability to view the source code of a web page is terrific for people who want to learn other designers’ methods, but for the clueless motherfuckers who can’t be bothered to be remotely original, it’s a convenient shortcut. I’m guess my laziness doesn’t reach that point because I can’t fathom why anyone would steal a design outright. C’mon — at least put some damn effort into covering your tracks.
When it comes to leeching, it seems most of my problems come from sites in Asia or Asian-themed fan sites. Why is that?
So I went through the entire list of showcasing artists at SXSW 2008 posted so far, and I’ve reached the conclusion that I do indeed want to get a wristband. Grumble, grumble. This year, I’m going to skip Japan Nite if it conflicts with any of the other showcases I want to see.
I don’t mind if everyone clamors to see Vampire Weekend or R.E.M. — just so long as they stay out of the shows I want to attend:
hey willpower I’m betting this showcase will be the gayest of the entire festival. I just hope whatever venue hey willpower plays that there’s enough room for the male dancers.
So Percussion This ensemble recorded Steve Reich’s Drumming, so I’m wondering if perhaps Reich’s interview has a tie-in?
Wing Yes! Wing! There’s a terrific write-up of Wing’s 2007 concert over at The Standing Room, and while I would probably never buy any of her CDs, I’d love to see her live. I might get a t-shirt, though.
Just when I was about to write off SXSW 2008, I scanned the list of showcasing artists, and toddle is listed. OMGWTFBBQ! I guess a wristband is in my future. Too bad my company bonus and tax return have already been spent on motherboard troubles early last month.
Had I the cash to drop on a badge, I could also attend the Steve Reich interview with Thurston Moore. I wonder if Steve Reich and Musicians are going to have a special guest showcase? That would be cool. Maybe someone can do an impromptu performance of Clapping Music.
Here are the bands from Japan so far listed, including those previously announced for Japan Nite:
aonami
Avengers in Sci-Fi
Damage
detroit7
Dokkebi Q
The Emeralds [Good fucking Lord, not again]
ketchup mania
Maki Rinka
Petty Booka
The Pillows [That showcase is going to be insanely packed]
Ex-Boyfriends’ first album, Dear John, has such a contemporary sound — that’s a euphemistic way of saying it’s, like, totally in with the emo kids right now — it feels like it could date fairly easily.
The immediately likable hooks and the brash energy give Dear John a fighting chance at endurance, but there’s no betting on fashion. And Dear John is tres indie fashion.
In With, the band’s follow-up, shows definite signs of maturity. It’s not so quick to reveal its strengths, and its amiability can only be appreciated with multiple listens. What it lacks in quick gratification, it makes up for in long-term rewards.
1990 was the year when my fandom of Nonesuch Records exploded, a fact demonstrated by the top three ranking albums on this list.
All three albums have a lot of overlap — John Zorn composed for Kronos Quartet. Bill Frisell and Wayne Horvitz were members of Naked City, but both also appeared on Robin Holcomb’s self-titled debut. Horvitz and Holcomb are, of course, married. That overlap got me curious about other releases on Nonesuch, which is how I ended up with a number of albums from Frisell, Horvitz, Kronos, John Adams, Steve Reich, Philip Glass and the Bulgarian Radio and Television Female Vocal Choir. Many of those albums are my favorites to this very day.
I crunched some numbers with my music collection database, and Nonesuch takes up the most space with 60 titles. Most of that are Kronos Quartet albums. Speedstar comes in second with 56. Cocco accounts for most of that number.
Major labels are pretty much indistinguishable from each other, but Nonesuch has maintained a very recognizable identity in all the years I’ve been listening to them. I don’t buy everything the label releases, but I’m more inclined to check them out.
Billboard.com reports Gang of Four is working on a new album with an eye for a self-release. The band’s original line-up reunited in 2005 and toured behind a rerecording of their earliest work. In the article, guitarist Andy Gill says the band was at first hesitant to record new material, but they ended up having so much fun playing together again, they started working in Gill’s studio. Drummer Hugo Burnham, however, is not participating due to unspecified health issues.
Gill describes the new material as more akin to Entertainment! and criticizes rock music in general for losing focus on the issues. "Rock ceded our voice to underground hip-hop, speaking out about social issues and American hegemony, but now even that’s gone," Gill said.
Back in 2007, I made a New Year’s resolution to post an audio file everyday for the entire year, and like most New Year’s resolution, I failed to keep it. I did, however, soldier long enough to get me to SXSW, which thus killed the momentum of the project.
So I’m bringing back an occasional "Listen" column when I come across something in the collection that catches my attention.
When I first started listening to Japanese pop music, I wanted to hear something a bit more rocking than the Macross Song Collection, something more along the lines of the Bubblegum Crisis Complete Vocal Collection, Vol. 1. Nagai Mariko’s WASHING came close enough to what I was looking for, although even in the early ’90s, I was craving for something along the lines of Cocco.
"Say Hello" is a more poignant take on the power rock that seems to have informed Nagai’s early career. I say "seems to have informed" because I never really explored any of her other albums. Judging from a few YouTube clips, she sang the kind of pop perfect for anime theme songs.
I’ve tried to sell WASHING at various points in the past with no takers, but now I think I’ll hold onto it. It’s such a contrast to the self-important stuff that takes up so much real estate on my shelves.
