Everything Flows

Writer, listener, beer enthusiast. All thoughts and agitations are my own.

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Holy Hell! Pinkerton Turns 20 - Spectrum Culture

Like most of the things that you liked in high school, Pinkerton hasn’t really aged well.

I’m working on something Weezer-related for the next week or two, so I thought I’d share this piece I wrote about one of my favorite albums from my high school days and how icky it feels to listen to it again. I surprisingly know a number of people who still hold this album up as one of the true holy grails of music; is it a coincidence that they’re all single dudes who lack a level of emotional maturity? I’ll let you decide that.

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DIIV: Is the Is Are

The Brooklyn-based band seems either unwilling or incapable of taking the artistic steps to make music that isn't just more of what they've done before.

I don’t think I’ve ever heard a record like this. I don’t mean that it’s unique; musically, I’ve heard dozens of records like the overlong, jangly mess that DIIV are putting out this week. What I mean is that I’ve never heard a record so hyped by its own creator that turned out so...average. Usually, when an artist says something like “this record is going to mean a lot to a lot of people,” it ends up being a total disaster. Is The Is Are just turned out to be another DIIV record. Tell me why I’m supposed to care.

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22, 37, 52

22. Have you ever caught a guitar pick, drumstick, got a setlist, etc.?

I have friends who have gotten guitar picks from the likes of J Mascis, Lou Barlow, Doug Martsch, and Ted Leo, but I don’t think I have one myself.

37. Did you start listening to an opening act after you saw them in concert?

Many, many times. Mostly bands that don’t exist anymore, like Big Troubles, KristeenYoung, Colossal Yes, the Immaculates, and maybe a few others. The biggest one I can think of in this category is probably Smith Westerns, who I saw open for Real Estate and Cymbals Eat Guitars back in 2009.

52. Favorite song you’ve heard live?

I’ve seen Yo La Tengo three times, and I can only recall them playing “Sugarcube” once, but it fucking ripped. Also, Pavement doing “Gold Soundz” live was a moment to check off the bucket list.

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6, 40 and 49

6. What is your next concert?

Honestly? I have no idea. Getting out to shows has gotten more difficult with 9-5 hours and slower metabolism. I’m sure I’ll see another concert at some point, but nothing’s been planned as of yet.

40. Have you seen your favorite artist in concert?

Probably not. A lot of my favorite artists broke up before I was born, so that is a bit difficult. I did see R.E.M. before they broke up, but that was on the tour for their worst album and it was all kind of disappointing.

49. Do you post a lot about a concert you’ve attended on social media or very little?

Back when I was in college, this was something I probably did a lot. Nowadays, I barely have the time to use most social media platforms at all. Not owning a smart phone may have something to do with that, as well.

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Concert Asks

I saw these on twitter and liked them a lot. I thought they’d make a fun ask game for tumblr! I don’t take credit for these questions.

How many concerts have you been to?

Have you been to any festivals?

Which artist/band have you seen the most live?

First concert you went to?

Last concert you went to?

What is your next concert?

Which artists/bands would you love to see live?

The farthest you’ve traveled to go to a concert?

Best opening act you’ve seen?

Worst opening act you’ve seen?

Have you met any bands/artists at a concert?

What’s one thing you have to bring to a concert?

What’s the most you’ve paid for a ticket?

Best concert you’ve been to?

Worst concert you’ve been to?

Have you been in a social media post an artist posted after a show?

Funniest concert memory?

Do you buy your tickets as soon as they go on sale, after, or the day of?

Have you ever been noticed by an artist at a concert?

Have you met any internet friends at a concert?

Which concert that you’ve been to has had the best stage setup/production?

Have you ever caught a guitar pick, drumstick, got a setlist, etc.?

Favorite concert venue?

Least favorite concert venue?

Which do you prefer: indoor or outdoor concerts?

Which do you prefer: clubs, theaters, arenas, or stadiums?

Have you ever missed school or work to go to a concert?

Have you ever been surprised with tickets from someone?

Who do you enjoy going to concerts with?

General admission or seated concerts?

Have you been to multiple dates for one tour?

Have you been to concerts 2 or more days in a row?

Have you ever received free tickets from a contest or an artist’s crew?

Have you been front row and/or back row for a concert?

Have you ever gotten sick, bruised, or broken a bone after a concert?

Have you ever had surprise guests at a concert you attended?

Did you start listening to an opening act after you saw them in concert?

What’s the latest you’ve got home from a concert?

When is the earliest you’ve arrived to a venue for a concert?

Have you seen your favorite artist in concert?

Longest you’ve waited in line for a concert?

Have you ever attended a concert alone?

What’s the best part of a concert in your opinion?

Have you ever heard/seen an artist soundcheck before their show?

What’s the biggest venue you’ve been to a concert at?

What’s the smallest venue you’ve been to a concert at?

Have you ever had side stage seats?

Which venue have you been to the most concerts at?

Do you post a lot about a concert you’ve attended on social media or very little?

Has a concert or tour you were planning on going to got cancelled?

Have you seen a band in concert before a member left the band / they broke up?

Favorite song you’ve heard live?

Have you ever seen an artist/band play an album in full?

Which artist would you refuse to see in concert?

What’s the craziest thing a fan has done at a concert you’ve been to?

Which venue(s) would you love to go to for a concert?

Have you ever been to a concert at a venue that no longer exists?

Have you ever lost something/got something stolen at a concert?

Have people made fun of you or laughed because of how you were acting at a concert?

Have you ever been kicked out of a concert?

Has an artist thrown or spit water on you?

Have you ever seen a security guard dance to a song at a concert?

Have you seen any acts you don’t like at a concert?

Have you ever passed out or thrown up at a concert?

Have you seen any artists in concerts that you don’t like anymore?

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Starman

The way we talk about pop stars, it’s sometimes easy to forget that they’re temporal beings, humans with lives that begin and, sadly, end. These titans of popular art become constants, so much so that it’s difficult to grapple a world without them. That was especially true of David Bowie, a man who aspired to be all things for all people and may have come closer than anyone to actually doing just that. Looking at the outpouring of grief that came immediately following the news of his passing, I’m struck by not only his popularity, but how he managed to touch so many people in different ways.

Bowie was one man with a family and a life of his own, but he was something different to each of the people who loved him and his work. He was the glittery, androgynous rock star; he was the plastic soul man; he was the reclusive, thoughtful art-pop genius; he was the elder statesman of cool. Perhaps that’s why this death hurts so much more than it should: everyone had their own David Bowie, and everyone lost their own David Bowie.

Today, I find myself drawn to lines that Bowie wrote in 1972, lines that he sang on television with his arm draped on Mick Ronson’s shoulder in a subtle form of rebellion. Without knowing it, he wrote about himself and the impact he would eventually have on millions:

There’s a starman waiting in the sky He’d like to come and meet us But he thinks he’d blow our minds There’s a starman waiting in the sky He told us not to blow it ‘Cause he knows it’s all worthwhile He told me: “Let the children lose it Let the children use it Let the children boogie”

You certainly blew my mind, David. Thank you.

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2015: Records I Liked And Other Things That Happened

Almost a week into the new year, and I think enough time has passed to look back on 2015. I more or less left music writing as a full-time job, which is a relief; I’d rather do this at my own pace, keeping in mind what I love about doing this. It’s definitely better to have put some distance between myself and the sausage factory.

As far as music goes, I wasn’t thrilled with a lot of records last year. Some greatly disappointed me. Below is a smattering of what really stood out:

- Kendrick Lamar’s To Pimp A Butterfly (AKA intentional commercial suicide in service of great art, part 1)

- Carly Rae Jepsen’s EMOTION (AKA intentional commercial suicide in service of great art, part 2)

- Algiers’ Algiers (Saw them play in February with Jerry Paper and they blew me away. I hope they go on to even greater things. Jerry’s good, too.)

- Earl Sweatshirt’s I Don’t Like Shit, I Don’t Go Outside (If he can keep it together, Earl will be bigger than any of his Odd Future cohorts, and he deserves it.)

- Oneohtrix Point Never’s Garden Of Delete (It’s kind of a Burial knockoff, but it’s a great Burial knockoff.)

- Skylar Spence’s Prom King (Evan Sawdey declared this to be the best pure pop record of 2015, and I can’t really argue with him there.)

There are some others, but those were the real standouts to me. Everything else is available on the Spotify playlist here.

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The 80 Best Albums of 2015

From genre-busting electronic music to new highs in the ever-evolving hip-hop scene... from R&B, country and jazz to rocking and popping indie... 2015 was a stellar year for new music.

I didn’t like a lot of music in 2015. (I tried, though. Honest.) Maybe my relationship with music is changing now that I’ve stepped away from doing the music journalism thing full-time, but it just wasn’t connecting with me the way it used to. I did like some things, though, and I wrote about one of them (Shamir’s Ratchet) for PopMatters. I’ll be talking about more stuff I liked later this month. (Expect a lot of Kendrick Lamar and Cary Rae Jepsen).

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Ride: Nowhere25 | Spectrum Culture

The last few years have been a curious ride for Ride. This was a band that bottomed out so spectacularly that Andy Bell’s '00s gig as the bassi

Very happy to get to write about one of my favorite albums. Nowhere is a special record, up there with Loveless in terms of the kind of shoegaze that lesser bands try and fail to imitate. It’s one of those albums I can’t get tired of, no matter what.

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Greatness, Not Perfection

After a week’s deliberation, I like the new Grimes record. It’s good, albeit a bit frustrating. I do wish people would calm down about the effusive praise for it, if only because it’s embarrassingly clear that a lot of writers are making up for missing the bandwagon.

This has happened before with a number of artists, but it’s worse in this case given how important and brilliant of a record Visions is. The problem, of course, is that it’s music that wasn’t explicitly aimed at the top 40, nor was it made for guitars. It’s a reminder of how niche of a genre electronic music still is, despite the overtures of music writers claiming they “get” EDM or whatever.

As such, Art Angels will forever be a decent record remembered as a great record because the power brokers in the music world forgot about the really great record when they were busy raving about...Tame Impala? The reunited Swans? I know hindsight is 20/20, but maybe it would help to get a little less nostalgic for times we didn’t live in.

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This might be my favorite song by them/one of my favorite songs ever. Still gets me years later.

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'A Town Called Malice': What's Happened to Working-Class Music?

Is it possible that the very idea of the working class doesn't exist in popular music today -- as if it's been erased?

I honestly wished I had written this first, but I’m glad that somebody did take the time to ask this question.

As someone who writes primarily about indie rock, I’m used to reconciling the fact that many artists come from a place of privilege. It’s one of the facts about music in general: most artists (especially the successful ones) are either really rich or really poor, and it’s easier to “make it” with massive resources at your disposal than it is to make it with none at all. What is troubling--and what Robert addresses here--is the lack of music that speaks to the working class, and it’s not just an issue of the artist’s background. Across the board, musicians seem concerned with the well-to-do. Between the insufferably mannered art-school bullshit that modern indie has become to the rise of “lifestyle” rap as personified by convenient enemies Drake and Meek Mill, there is no voice to the voiceless anymore.

Some of this may be a result of the American refusal to acknowledge that social class divides are real and harmful, but even taking that into account, we had music that spoke to the poor at one point, be it early hardcore or even the early pangs of gangsta rap. Now, we have a lot of people obsessed with themselves, and they all seem to have trust funds or more disposable income than you or I could ever hope to have. And I have to wonder why we’re okay with this.

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Singles Going Steady

While things have been busy lately, I’ve still found time to kvetch about music on the Internet, most recently as part of PopMatters’ Singles Going Steady feature. If any of you have read the Singles Jukebox (and I suggest you do), it’s like that. Here are a few personal favorites:

I fawn over the new Chromatics single.

I make fun of the classic-rock bloat of My Morning Jacket.

I write again about the mighty Algiers.

I remember that Panic! At The Disco exist and that I’ve always hated them.

There’s some other stuff there, too. The writers are all excellent, no matter how often I disagree with them. Get to it.

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DIY and its effect on our projected quarterly earnings.

If you’re the kind of person who actively wants to be cynical about the world...I can’t imagine how you exist, but you must be like a hog in shit this week after everything that’s happened with Martin Shkreli and his attempt to literally grab AIDS patients by the ankles and shake them down for all the money they have like a schoolyard bully. As it turns out, Shkreli’s one of those “cool” awful rich people who goes to shows at Bowery Ballroom and uses his fortune to back Geoff Rickly’s Collect Records imprint (until very recently, it seems). Thus, my generation of music writers and obsessives is faced with an instance of real-world issues piercing the self-contained bubble in which they live in an abrupt fashion. And I can’t say I’m encouraged with how they reacted.

For those who may only be familiar with Geoff as the frontman for Thursday, he moved to Brooklyn in recent years and started two new bands (United Nations and No Devotion) and a label. Like anyone else trying to move forward with a music career in Brooklyn, Geoff has ties with writers and editors at the various publications that have moved into the city. For the record, I don’t begrudge Geoff for this; it’s the sort of thing he has to do for his own band and for his label. Given the dire situation that indie labels are in in terms of sales, press attention is especially valuable nowadays. I don’t even begrudge Geoff that much for bringing in Shkreli as an investor, though he probably should have kept an eye out for the red flags that popped up before this pharmaceutical business.

I do, however, take umbrage with the music press who seems loath to criticize Geoff (who did make his own bed, after all) over this. When it really comes down to it, Geoff chose to go into business with a guy with a shady business history and an especially skewed moral compass whose actions may cause direct and real harm to thousands of people. Yet all you hear from a fairly sizeable sect of music writers (who seem to have done no digging on Shkreli or his relationship with Geoff because that would require actual journalism) is how Geoff is a great guy who deserves respect.

Sorry, but no. I don’t buy it. I don’t need to know how nice of a guy Geoff is, and I don’t need to respect him for making a shitty, short-sighted business decision. Exactly how Geoff Rickly isn’t put under the same microscope applied to Viet Cong over the issue of their band’s fucking name is beyond me. (Yes, apples and oranges, but each issue carries some amount of journalistic heft.)

Then again, what should I expect from a scene whose concept of a “DIY punk” show involves a Converse sponsorship? No reason to worry about who gets paid or what they do with that money as long as the party keeps going, I guess...

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Revisit: Dr. Dre: 2001 | Spectrum Culture

For all of the credit given to him as a producer and a musician, Dr. Dre’s greatest accomplishment may be the way in which he tightly controls

I wrote about Dr. Dre’s pathological control over his image and an album I think he may regret releasing. I was a little surprised that it has aged as poorly as it has, but it does explain why it took Dre forever to make an album again. (And even then, it was a tie-in for his surefire hit of a movie, so...)

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Thoughts On That Confusing, Frustrating Pitchfork Advertorial About The Best Songs Of The 1980s

- Look, I know Pitchfork has a sweet deal going with Apple Music to set up the “music experience” of this listicle, but Sweet Jesus, do they have to make it so obvious that they’re cushy with Dr. Dre? Do they really expect us to believe that “Straight Outta Compton” (Hey! That’s the name of the movie!) is a better song than “Fuck Tha Police?” Or “Fight The Power?” Or even “High Plains Drifter?” Come on, guys.

- I love me some Prince, especially “Purple Rain,” but I can name five or more Prince songs that are better than “Purple Rain.” To proclaim it the best song of the whole decade implies only a cursory understanding of both Prince and the 1980s.

- Similarly, I would argue that “There Is A Light That Never Goes Out” is more representative of the Smiths and their influence than “How Soon Is Now,” but that could be an American bias.

- I think Ian Cohen might be the worst writer Pitchfork has ever had on staff. He never says anything of substance about the music he writes about, and he seems starved for direction when writing about anything that doesn’t fit in his limited worldview. The fact that he couldn’t write about Joe Jackson’s “Steppin’ Out” without name-dropping the Grand Theft Auto soundtrack is embarrassing.

- There are plenty of omissions, but ones that immediately come to mind are “Always Something There To Remind Me” by Naked Eyes, “Pump Up The Volume,” by M/A/R/R/S, and “Shock The Monkey” by Peter Gabriel (which somehow got left off in favor of fucking “In The Air Tonight.”). More will come to me, probably, but that’s to be expected with something like this.

- No, Pitchfork, this wasn’t a good enough selling tool to get me to pony up for Apple Music. Sorry, bros.

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There’s something simultaneously sad and uplifting about this song. I’ve found myself in a place where I keep replaying it to myself, but it never, ever seems to get old.