Mind the Gap: July 2008 Archives

Pity the Deerhoof fan with only Suzuki training to fall back on: The band's latest single, "Fresh Born," has been released via an über-hip delivery method the kids are calling "sheet music". 

Check out the competition and then upload your own version.

Remember that time you and the other kids in the neighborhood strung up a bed sheet curtain in the garage and put on a show? Oh, wait, that was my memory? 

Well, anyway, Counterstream Radio and New Amsterdam Records have lined up some musical madness for the final East River Music Project show of the season on August 16 (doors at 2 p.m.), and we hope it will earn a place on your personal summer concert calendar. Join us for sets from itsnotyouitsme, Mark Dancigers, Jacob Cooper's Timberbrit, Alex Sopp, and Matt Marks and the Li'l Death Band at the East River Amphitheater in NYC. Further details here.

*If I've been reading your concert PR and attending your shows for the last eight years, consider your attendance at this event mandatory. It's new music karma, baby.

Thought I'd coast you into the weekend with a little Baltimore Club. In a different context, would we be calling this a piece of great post-minimalism? Just sayin'.

Local connection of the visuals, the pro vs homemade video play, the completely confident delivery: I'm totally taken in by Rye Rye. So was MIA. I'm not feeling confident enough to even venture into live Bmore club (I'm too much a librarian type to shake it back up with any degree of cool), but I hope to get brave and stand unobtrusively at the back of the room some day soon.

Curious if it's protected by U.S. Copyright? Slide down the slippery slope with me.

My fav is to set it on "Between 1979 - January 1, 2003" and then click on the asterisk mouse-over. Copyright law comprehension is part of my job and, like income tax preparation, its complexity still blows my mind.

Spins you right round, baby, doesn't it?

(Thx for the lead, FJO)

Hunter S. Thompson was a twisted sort of role model for me to have had back when I was still wide-eyed Molly Sheridan, cub reporter, and I find that there's really not a lot of call for that kind of journalism (other than how to tip a whiskey bottle) now that my beat is the new music field.

But maybe there should be. There are plenty of musicians around who could provide the "say what?" and Quentin Tarantino could provide the composer-associated profanity. Yes, hyperbole, but instead of navel-gazing op-eds detailing the end of civilization as evidenced by the death of the newspaper critic--seriously, who knew a chair at the obit desk was the critic's heart's desire?--maybe it's time to get not a new topic, but a new angle on the proposition.

Greg Sandow has been writing a lot about how a rock vs classical critic tackles the live concert review, which has provided ample it-doesn't-have-to-be-this-way food for thought, and AJ's own fearless leader, Doug McLennan, has certainly embraced the show-don't-tell model of change.

The inbox delivers up plenty of enquiring-minds material--many of them topics I wish there was more time to explore in summer road trip fashion and at book-length word count if only there were no need to pay the electric bill. But though that may be what the writer desires, what does the reader seek? In a digital landscape where (setting aside copyright concerns for a moment) content presentation is wildly open to fresh reformation, what do cultural consumers want from their media about media? Is the concert review, the cd review, and the once-in-a-while profile piece really all there is? What would gonzo arts reporting be and what might it do for the place?

UPDATE: Doug has also posted some deep thoughts in response to Martin Bernheimer's recent "arts criticism was killed by the blogger on the Internet" essay in the Financial Times.

If you're up for a road trip, can I just point out how delicious this New Albion festival at Bard College looks? Makes me want to camp out under a tree for the duration.

For those whose complexions and gas budgets make attending summer concerts in the middle of the forest prohibitive, the Internet sneaks you in through a backstage entrance without requiring that you exit your living room. Hot tickets include the Aspen and Tanglewood festivals. Hours of fresh Elliott Carter await.

Internet musical melodrama gets "1,000 hits per second". 

As I've mentioned in this space before, stereotypes can be evil inhibitors of progress, but we all carry them around with us. In the spirit of intervention, I thought I'd throw a few things I've heard lately out into the road (and maybe under the bus).

• People of a certain age think louder music = better performance. This was actually pointed out to me a couple of days ago, and my mouth was half open to object, but then I promptly shut it. After all, I'm the sort of girl who goes to the symphony and wishes those 60 musicians were just so much louder. I think I appreciate subtlety, but I also love music cranked to 11. Did the amp stunt the eardrums of everyone born after 1975?

• Play it again, Mr. Carter. Whether it's Top 40 radio or an iPod on a constant playlist loop, most ears love the repetition of songs. John Zorn tracks? Not so much, apparently. I had a recent letter from a Counterstream listener: "In the past 8 months, you've played the same Zorn track three times between 5 and 6 a.m. Please rotate your programming." Well, then. When I love a song, I listen to it over and over again. However, I have never done this with a piece of "new music" unless I was reviewing a recording. Like working at the Dairy Queen and ingesting no ice cream, sometimes I think I avoid getting addicted because new music is my job. Secretly, I've often wondered if this makes me a fraud.

• Who's afraid of the Internet? Writers, it seems. First, the freakin' bloggers were going to take the pros out of the game. Now, the commenters criticize them to the point that they flee from the public persecution. The Internet is a dangerous playground. Not everyone always gets where you're coming from and the whole scene can get pretty crass. We could all just be Minnesota nice, but is there something to be gained intellectually when you know your fellow readers/writers won't hesitate to take you down a peg? Is that what a world that types 5 billion words every minute needs?

• The Long Tail might save us from obscurity, but it may hang us first. Chris Anderson gave us hope that even if we didn't sell a million records up front, our Best of Beethoven albums might come out ahead over a period of many years. Well put that confetti back in the tube, kids. The dude may have had things all wrong.

Over on Flyover, John Stoehr has written a post that asks a question we often contemplate individually about a behavior we never seem to quite challenge collectively: In an age of avant-garde music--by his definition work designed to provoke--how polite should the audience be?

This choice quote from the post got 'em riled around the office today:

During the peak of the avant-garde - during the careers of John Cage, Morton Feldman, Milton Babbitt - there was no concern about the audience. Audiences had always been there and would always be there, except when they weren't anymore. It's remarkable to imagine composers wondering why no one's paying attention to them while at the same time their work's value is measured by how much they can piss people off.

Rather a broad stroke to paint in terms of composerly motivation, I think, but it's also a strangely popular theme this week. Over on the other side of the pond, there's a little fistfight going on w/r/t some similar audience frustrations.

I don't think it's extremely challenging music that hurts so much as our silent taking of its punches when they clip our jaw. It's the middle of July, and yet we passive-aggressively hack like consumptives as our sole expression of irritation. Are concert hall audiences too repressed to riot any more? Polite is waiting till it's over so you don't ruin the piece for anyone else. But I would feel a cathartic release and leveling of scales no matter what I was subjected to if, when so moved, I felt at liberty to holler a bit at the end. It would be exciting. Maybe the woman next to me loved it. I would know what she thought; she would know what I thought. In an ideal world, maybe we could have drinks and debate it out afterward--and maybe she would be so excited by the music that she would pick up the check.

"Plus, you know, it'd be great 'cause you're a girl."

The comment was not atypical.

Sigh. I know where she was coming from. When the diversity call goes out in the new music field--when "just the usual dudes" just won't do--we often find ourselves playing an awkward affirmative action game. Though honestly, sex, race, creed, income bracket: Know anyone who knows this world and is _______? If it's not carrying around a Y chromosome and a light skin pigmentation, it often seems hard to find.

Now, don't get me wrong--I enjoy being a girl. But it can get tiresome when in your head you're just as smart and capable (if not eminently more so--we are talking about internal dialogue here) as your male counterparts, but you're the only lily floating around in the pond. How did I get here? And where is everyone else?

Since I've been watching new music, the blogosphere--hell, just life in general--I've been depressed to note that even while riding this 116th wave of feminism we're still crashing into breaker walls. Look at the list of bloggers on ArtsJournal. Notice anything missing? Not that I'm a saint here--my blogroll is quite light on the female touch as well. I swear I'm not discriminating, so what's going on here? Someone else noted recently that women commenters are scarce in blogland as well. I can vouch for that. But why do we keep quiet? Too shy? Too busy? Too depressed?

The re-issue of Liz Phair's Exile in Guyville got me thinking again about how far we've come, and yet how deceptively far away we remain. And how often it is that when women are most successful, it seems traceable to how well they fit into Guyville, not how well they play a game you can see is definably on their own terms. And it's particularly dangerous to me because it's so quiet a problem at this stage. What are women in the 21st century? Can they do anything they want? Or will the best of us just follow the blockbuster lead--play the game as it is already laid down, but this time in stilettos--while the rest sit home and eat yogurt?