Vanessa Grigoriadis misses the point…again
It’s a shitty time to be a writer. Magazines and papers are crumbling left and right, freelance money is evaporating, superb writers (and hangers-on like myself) are reduced to Net-dwelling bloggers. And yet, Rolling Stone keeps giving cover stories to Vanessa Grigoriadis, a writer who never met a subject she couldn’t condescend to. Her latest victim is current RS cover girl Taylor Swift. Now, Swift is easily the most important and groundbreaking mainstream country music artist since the Dixie Chicks, and arguably the most important female pop star since Avril (consider that Kelly Clarkson and Miley Cyrus owe a Avril a debt that Taylor does not). She is deserving of a penetrating, insightful profile, but Grigoriadis is hardly the person to deliver it.
Adventures in liveblogging: The 51st Annual Grammy Awards
So I’ve never done a live blog before, but having read those of blogs and publications with vastly wider audiences (including many real-time readers) than this one, it always looked like an enjoyable way to spice up special cultural events, specifically awards show. And so begins a grand experiment, one that will test my wits, my blog savvy and my blind typing skills. And hopefully produce a handful of worthwhile observations (and I’m sure a fair share of trite comments) in the process. At the very least, we’ll see how many of the previous post’s eight predictions come true.
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Dwelling on 2008 part 1: Predicting the preposterous Grammys
Some people, Dave Karger and Tom O’Neil come immediately to mind, have established entire careers predicting the Oscars. Because it’s a miniature industry, the Oscars are the easiest awards show to predict; the far less organized (and prestigious) major awards—the Emmys and the Grammys—are a lot tougher to handicap. However, that has never stopped me from making a valiant and often humiliating effort. So, to kick off my ever-delayed 2008 wrap-up (which, at this rate, should actually wrap up some time in July), here are my semi-informed (hey, I’ve intently followed the Grammys for twenty years), totally under-the-wire (this will be irrelevant in 24 hours) thoughts on eight key races: the big four, Alternative, Producer and two more that caught my ever vigilant eye. In other words, they looked intriguing, though not intriguing enough to actually be presented on the show, I’m sure.
PRODUCER OF THE YEAR (NON-CLASSICAL)
Danger Mouse
Nigel Godrich
Johnny K
Rick Rubin
will.i.am
An arbitrary list as usual, as none of these guys had particularly fantastic 2008 track records. Johnny K is your average corporate-rock knob twiddler, responsible for making Staind and 3 Doors Down sound even more sterile. Wins for Godrich or Danger Mouse would be as retroactive as Al Pacino’s Oscar, as neither had a remarkable 2008: Godrich did In Rainbows and little else, and Danger Mouse spent Modern Guilt and The Odd Couple on autopilot, leaving Beck and Cee-Lo to upstage him. Rubin helped Metallica return to relevance (less so for Weezer and Jakob Dylan). But, on the strength of “American Boy” and (let’s admit it) his incessant, occasionally holographic Obama campaigning, will.i.am will claim this one. Of these five, his profile was the highest in 2008, and that’s usually enough to snatch the Producer of the Year Grammy.
Ron Rosenbaum may be wrong, Billy Joel may be crazy
Last Friday, Slate ran an essay in which Ron Rosenbaum becomes the Zell Miller to Billy Joel’s John Kerry, a castigator so cartoonishly vehement, so intensely vengeful, that his attacks say more about the speaker than their target. In “The awfulness of Billy Joel, explained,” Rosenbaum launches an aimless and ineffective diatribe against the Piano Man, which as writing is sub-par (we expect better of Rosenbaum) and as intellectual argument is laughable.
TV on the Radio won Pazz + Jop…last week!
This year's Pazz + Jop cover
Pazz and Jop results were posted a whole week ago, and are thus old news in the blogosphere. But this here blog will be launching its best-of-2008 feature in February 2009, for reasons as diffuse as I’ve been sick for half of January, or I have a job and a life to maintain, or I have actual deadlines to meet, or it’s my fucking tiny pocket of the web and I can do whatever the fuck I want with it. Besides, the Internet makes history immediate, and as long as Christgau’s comprehensive website is running, Pazz & Jop (now Pazz + Jop, apparently), the Village Voice’s annual music critic’s poll, offers a historical snapshot of the year just past. Like most historical snapshots dictated by the whims of a small, fairly insular group, P&J can be infuriating and baffling, but the attempts of rock-criterati to make sense, even achieve consensus, of music-in-whatever-year is reliably enthralling.
Rock Hall to Gen Y: Your music doesn’t matter yet!
If there’s a mustier-than-usual odor emanating from Cleveland this April, it just might be the 2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame inductees. In keeping with recent patterns and eroding relevance, the 2009 class enshrines two freshly eligible no-brainers (Metallica and Run-DMC) alongside three great-but-not-groundbreaking oldies/classic rock acts (Jeff Beck, Little Anthony and the Imperials, Bobby Womack), acts whose talent is far less debatable than their influence. Despite exceeding three of the five inductees in most forms of measurable importance, The Stooges (passed over for the seventh time, worsening an already shitty New Year), Chic (rejected for the fifth go-round) and first-time nominees War were all snubbed. Furthermore, Wanda Jackson, though initially nominated as a Performer, was appropriately if suspiciously, inducted under the Early Influence banner. (She blazed more trails for women in rock than she did for rock itself.) Three seminal sidemen were also inducted: Spooner Oldham, and Elvis Presley’s Blue Moon Boys—bassist Bill Black and drummer D.J. Fontana.
Mayeral election
I’ve been periodically viewing CNN’s pre-Inauguration coverage, and noticing that they keep cutting to commercial with John Mayer’s “Waiting on the World to Change.” Because the historic new administration will apparently still make room for bland, horrendous music that struggles to make some sort of “deep” statement.
Obama’s first order of business ought to be a binding resolution that this song is a. horrible and b. meaningless. Beyond meaning that ol’ John is looking to bang activist chicks, and will resort to the most blatant pandering to do so. But then again, anybody who heard the Grammy-winning (what the fuck?!?) “Daughters” knows that Mayer is hardly above pandering.
I’ll still watch his variety show. Dude’s cracked more funny jokes than written good songs. Perhaps his entire career will eventually be revealed to be one wise-ass satirical mindfuck. A guy can dream…
They just don’t make music like they did five years ago…
Spectrum Culture has crowned the best albums of 2003! That’s right: 2003. How does a year-end critical consensus look with five years of context? Well, you can view the list here. (Full disclosure: note the byline on the no. 3 album). And compare with that year’s Pazz and Jop results. As if the man currently engaged to Zooey Deschanel needed another reason to celebrate, he apparently recorded two of 2003’s musical touchstones. And while I cannot deny Give Up’s brilliance (as much Tamborello as Gibbard, mind you), I’d swap Transatlanticism in favor of some choices from my ballot that didn’t make the final list: the Libertines’ Up the Bracket, Ted Leo and the Pharmacists’ Hearts of Oak, and the forever underrated Go-Betweens forever underrated penultimate album, Bright Yellow Bright Orange. Quibbles aside, this feature drives home that 2003 was a banner year for pop culture, especially music, one that may eventually rank alongside 1977, 1984 and 1994 for its fertile plethora of cultural breakthroughs. Should the albums list not sell you, just take a look at Pazz and Jop’s Singles list. Plus, 2003 was an amazingly busy death year, with Katharine Hepburn, Strom Thurmond, Bob Hope, Barry White and Gregory Peck all dropping within two very charmed months.
A critical look at the 2009 Rock and Roll Hall of Fame nominees
Conveniently coinciding with the end-of-year backtracking—best-of-2008 lists, award nominations and so on—is another annual tradition that looks back even further than last January. Twenty-five, 30, even 45 or 50 years further, to be exact. Every fall, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame announces its nine nominees for induction, and every winter, five of those nine are enshrined in I.M. Pei’s triangular Cleveland edifice. The only solid criteria? Twenty-five years have passed since the artist’s first recording. Beyond that, the selection and voting processes are a highly political, infinitely controversial process. (Some might say clusterfuck.) There are those who insist that during the Reagan era, music became too fragmented and diversified for any wide consensus to be reached, thus rendering the endeavor futile, and others who plead that every corporate rock abomination (Boston, Styx, Journey) deserves induction before acknowledging the 80’s, when “real music” died, man.
With the announcement of the five official inductees set to arrive any day now, here’s a look at the nine nominees, originally announced this past September, and how likely or appropriate their prospective induction may be.
Kanye West: the new Sly Stone?
In his 33 1/3 book on Sly and the Family Stone’s seminal 1971 album There’s a Riot Goin’ On, a highlight in a highlight-heavy series, Miles Marshall Lewis depicts late 90’s/early 00’s urban bohemia as the “Aquarian age.” He cites Erykah Badu, The Matrix and Napster as evidence of a sea change, a “second Sixties” that abruptly ended with the September 11 tragedy and the ensuing jingoism. Read the rest of this entry »
