ChordStrike

Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout

I recently had the mixed pleasure of reading the newest biography of the great Satchmo, entitled Pops: A Life of Louis Armstrong, by Terry Teachout. Having previously read Teachout's The Skeptic: A Life of H.L. Mencken, I'd expected a reasonably satisfying read, fueled by extensive research and delivered in rather pedestrian prose. As it turns out, that's exactly what the book offers.

My fellow blogger Dave Callanan named it one of the "Best Books of December" and had the following to say by way of justification:

"Crafted with a musician's ear and an historian's eye, Pops is a vibrant biography of the iconic Louis Armstrong that resonates with the same warmth as ol' Satchmo’s distinctive voice. Wall Street Journal critic Terry Teachout draws from a wealth of previously unavailable material – including over 650 reels of Armstrong's own personal tape recordings – to create an engaging profile that slips behind the jazz legend's megawatt smile. Teachout reveals that the beaming visage of 'Reverend Satchelmouth' was not a mark of racial subservience, but a clear symbol of Louis's refusal to let anything cloud the joy he derived from blowing his horn. 'Faced with the terrible realities of the time and place into which he had been born,' explains Teachout, 'he didn't repine, but returned love for hatred and sought salvation in work.' Armstrong was hardly impervious to the injustices of his era, but in his mind, nothing was more sacred than the music."

Frankly, I think that's rather higher praise than the book deserves, and Teachout himself all but recommends Armstrong's own Satchmo over the book at hand. Nevertheless, there's a lot on offer here for the trumpet enthusiast, the armchair jazz scholar, or the lover of musical Americana.

Among the most interesting sub-plots is the fluctuating opinions of Armstrong held by his fellow black musicians in the States. Dizzy Gillespie, for one, for years publicly declared Armstrong as just this side of Uncle Tom before eventually recognizing his trailblazing predecessor for the inarguable giant that he remains today.

Most surprising to me, though, was the fact that Armstrong was a life-long user and advocate of marijuana, to the extent that, in his early days, he even pushed it on a number of his sidemen before going into the studio. Teachout returns again and again to Pops' marijuana use, ladeling an almost disproportionate amount of ink on the topic. To wit:

"The word muggles was one of many synonyms for marijuana used by jazz musicians in the twenties. It was also called 'tea' and 'sh[*]t,' and those who smoked it were 'vipers'... [A]ll that is known for sure is that [Armstrong] started smoking it on a regular basis in 1928 and continued to do so for the rest of his life. He would later explain to an acquaintance that it 'makes you feel good, man. It relaxes you, makes you forget all the bad things that happen to a Negro. It makes you feel wanted, and when you're with another tea smoker it makes you feel a special kinship.' It was also, unlike alcohol, legal, though by 1931 twenty-nine states had outlawed its sale and use."

Those looking to pursue overt references in Armstrong's music should start with "Muggles"...

     -- Jason Kirk

Cock Rock: A Definition

The world needs more music critics like Charles Shaar Murray. Looking forward to the release of Jimi Hendrix's Valleys of Neptune (yes, a new Hendrix album!), I've been reading Murray's Crosstown Traffic. It's brilliant writing. Hendrix is the book's centerpiece, but there's a load to learn here for anyone who likes books about music. The subtitle of its best chapter yet asks, "So was Jimi Hendrix a sexist pig or what?"

Murray argues that "the sexuality expressed through the blues gradually mutated into the penile dementia of heavy-metal rock." And with what fervor. He exemplifies the point by comparing Muddy Waters' "You Need Love" -- warm, avuncular, intimate, relaxed, utterly sensual -- with Led Zeppelin's "Whole Lotta Love":

"Led Zeppelin, by contrast, come on like thermonuclear gang rape. The woman -- who, in Muddy Waters' song, is evoked as a real person with real emotions in a real situation -- is here reduced to a mere receptacle; an entirely passive presence whose sole function is to receive the Great Zeppelin (as depicted on the group's first two album covers: lumbering facetiousness posing as irony) with a suitable degree of veneration and gratitude. Even her response is superfluous: Zeppelin's vocalist Robert Plant virtually has her orgasm for her. After all, the satisfaction of the woman in the case is not intended for her benefit, but for his: it is the validation of his masculine prowess and the price of his admission to the alpha-male society. The stud-strut of heavy metal is a ritual by which men celebrate each other; it is not primarily intended for women, who -- at British metals shows, if not at their American counterparts -- demonstrate their understanding of the nature of the event by not showing up."

As Murray goes on to say, "The technical term for this stuff is 'cock rock'."

Read it and weep.

     -- Jason Kirk

Remastering the Beatles: An Interview with Abbey Road Engineers Allan Rouse and Paul Hicks

Mono, stereo, or both?  Or, to put it simply: how do you want to listen to your Beatles?

If you're a Beatles fan, chances are you know what I mean.  I'm referring to the Beatles remasters, which are slated for worldwide release on 09/09/09.  Along with the individual albums, there will be two box sets released: a mono box set and a stereo box set.  Ever since this news hit the 'Net, our Beatles discussion forums have been buzzing with activity.  Most people want to know the following: how will the remasters sound, what exactly went into the remastering process, and what are the key differences between the mono and stereo versions?

We were wondering the same thing, so our resident sound expert and Beatles aficionado Hugo Munday sat down with Abbey Road engineers Allan Rouse and Paul Hicks to learn more about the remasters and how they were produced.  Check out the interview below--it's a pretty cool listen for any Beatles fan.

--Bri Nguyen and Hugo Munday

Are Video Games Killing the Radio Star?

Check out this intriguing article in The Guardian for another view on why the record industry is facing problems. I'd recommend reading it in full (it's not too long, and if you have time also look at the linked-to article where Ben Goldacre scrutinizes some industry statistics), but in summary, the writer Charles Arthur suggests that it's the booming video games industry, not MP3 filesharing, that's the main cause of the record industry shrinking between 10-15% every year for the last four or five years. Arthur's argument is that levels of disposable income are pretty stable, but people are spending over three times more now on video games than they were a decade ago. So, something's got to give. He's drawn this graph with British figures:

When people are deciding how to spend limited amounts of money, it's no surprise that they spend it where they can't otherwise get free or cheap adequate replacements. The internet is full of free music -- legal and illegal -- and there's also lots of low-quality videos and films to view; but it isn't full of free Nintendo Wii games. And while games have got more innovative and more involving, and television and DVD technology has improved so that home movie viewing is better than ever, the major music technology innovation of recent years - the MP3 and the portable MP3 player - is a downgrade in quality which favors convenience over engagement. Put like that, it's no surprise that the big money is heading towards video games, DVDs are doing very well, and it's the CD market that's losing out.

So what's the best way to analyze such an important issue? With personal, anecdotal evidence, of course! As a male between the ages of 15-30, I'm in a key demographic for both music and gaming, and I can confirm that my games purchases have dwindled to zero while my CD and vinyl buying has grown to addiction-level heights. But if I was still into gaming, I wouldn't have the money to buy all the music I do - and if I bought three games a month (as said, the games industry has apparently tripled in size in the last decade), there's no way I could afford to buy music. 

Of course, people who pirate lots of music and never pay anything back are still stealing. Access to music isn't a right, it's a privilege, because musicians put a lot of time and money into doing what they do, and they need to be remunerated. But what this article suggests is that it's not a simple case of every illegal download equaling a lost CD sale; it's that music suffers from being the most easily available form of entertainment, generally, in a very competitive marketplace. It also perhaps offers hope that when the games industry stops growing and hits a glass ceiling, the record industry might also hit a glass floor, from where it can reassess and seek to grow again.

So, it might not be CDs and legal MP3s versus illegal MP3s, but CDs and MP3s versus games. Do you agree? How have your gaming habits affected the music you buy (or don't buy)?

What is music, Wolfram|Alpha?

You may have heard of the new "knowledge engine" called Wolfram|Alpha. Billed as a step above the search engine, Wolfram|Alpha--which enjoyed its public debut this morning--delivers answers to queries directly, rather than pointing users to websites that then, in theory, answer their questions.

According to its website, "Our goal is to accept completely free-form input, and to serve as a knowledge engine that generates powerful results and presents them with maximum clarity."

With high hopes, then ChordStrike sat down with Wolfram|Alpha for the engine's first music interview. The following is edited from an hour-long interview that took place this morning. For a full-length interview, try it yourself...

ChordStrike: How old is Keith Richards?

Wolfram|Alpha: 65 years 5 months

ChordStrike: So far, so good, Wolfram|Alpha. Who wrote "Once in a Lifetime"?

Wolfram|Alpha: Once in a Lifetime: The Extraordinary Story of the New York Cosmos
Result: John Dower | Mark Monroe
Basic information: Paul Crowder (co-director) | John Dower (co-director)
Release date | July 7, 2006 (3 years ago)
Runtime | 97 minutes (1 hour 37 minutes)
Writers | John Dower | Mark Monroe; genres | documentary | sport
Box office total | $ 144601 (US dollars) (unadjusted)

ChordStrike: Sorry, but we were looking for the Talking Heads. Turning to musicals, then, how far is it from Oklahoma to Chicago?

Wolfram|Alpha: 683.7 miles

ChordStrike: Accurate and precise! OK, smarty pants, what is Mariah Carey's best song?

Wolfram|Alpha: Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

ChordStrike: No problem. The question doesn't make any sense to us, either. When did Thelonius Monk die?

Wolfram|Alpha: February 17, 1982
Daylight information for February 17, 1982 in Seattle, Washington:
sunrise | 7:12 am PST
sunset | 5:36 pm PST
duration of daylight | 10 hours 24 minutes
waning crescent moon

ChordStrike: Whoa, TMI! So you like jazz, do you? What are the 100 Greatest Jazz Albums of All Time?

Wolfram|Alpha: Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

ChordStrike: That's OK. We have the list right here. Finally, we understand you have a pretty busy day ahead of you, but one more question: What is music?

Wolfram|Alpha: music (English word)
Definitions:Show examples
Noun: activity | musical activity (singing or whistling etc.)
punishment | punishment for one's actions
euphony | any agreeable (pleasing and harmonious) sounds
auditory sensation | (music) the sounds produced by singers or musical instruments (or reproductions of such sounds)
auditory communication | an artistic form of auditory communication incorporating instrumental or vocal tones in a structured and continuous manner
(5 meanings)
Word origins: Old French | Classical Latin | Greek
first recorded use: 1250 (759 years ago)
Typical word frequency: written | 1/6300 (rank: 593rd) 100% noun
spoken | 1/13000 (rank: 884th) 100% noun
(based on the 100-million-word British National Corpus
Pronunciation: (my\'oozik)

ChordStrike: Wow. Well, thanks for speaking with us today.

Wolfram|Alpha: Wolfram|Alpha isn't sure what to do with your input.

[How rude!]

     --Jason Kirk

The Fiery Furnaces Need Your Help!

 Brooklyn-based indie-rock duo The Fiery Furnaces have asked their fans for inspiration towards making a new album. They haven't run out of ideas -- they're a band famous for squeezing approximately three hundred ideas into every song, and they're about to release their seventh album in six years -- so it's doubtful they'll ever run out of ideas. The new album, I'm Going Away, isn't due until June 21, but the band have asked fans to look at the cover art and track titles and creatively describe what they think the album is going to be like. Then, these so-called 'deaf descriptions' will be "...remixed into a 'complete' fan-made, word-only, entirely-unrelated, alternate version of I'm Going Away," which will also be released on June 21. If you want to contribute towards writing the new Furnaces album, email your ideas to thefieryfurnacesemail at gmail dot com. There's no word on whether you'll receive a co-writing credit in the liner notes, but if your ideas are good enough, perhaps you'll get a "thanks."

FYI, the cover is above (click on it to enlarge), and here's the track-listing:

1. "I'm Going Away"
2. "Drive to Dallas"
3. "The End Is Near"
4. "Charmaine Champagne"
5. "Cut the Cake"
6. "Even in the Rain"
7. "Staring at the Steeple"
8. "Ray Bouvier"
9. "Keep Me in Dark"
10. "Lost at Sea"
11. "Cups and Punches"
12. "Take Me Round Again"

Any ideas?

--SoundUnwound

Say Anything's Song Shop - Wanna Be A-mused?

According to this recent blog post on Popmatters, the singer and songwriter of emo-rock band Say Anything has offered to write personalized songs for fans at $150 a pop. Max Bemis (pictured left) asks for a paragraph or two of autobiographical information, or details of a specific situation to be written about, and he'll write it into an acoustic song and record it for you. It's a Song Shop, which I haven't heard of before in popular music. When 99% of musicians are struggling to make money from their art, it seems to me like a great idea if he can pull it off to fans' satisfaction. Painters and sculptors are routinely commissioned to paint or sculpt specific pieces for specific customers, yet the convention for music has assumed that the musician must come up with their own completely original ideas for a non-specific listener. Why? This still requires a great deal of creativity from Bemis - he's given an angle to start with, that's all. And I don't think $150 is too expensive - there will surely be plenty of big Say Anything fans willing to treat themselves to their own personal Bemis song.

Another interesting aspect of this, pointed out by the Popmatters blogger, is that the rights of Bemis's songs are vested in his record label, RCA Music Group - including any song from his Song Shop. Presumably this means that if he writes anything particularly good, or if he struggles to fulfil his obligations for the next Say Anything record, then the song he wrote for you could appear on the next Say Anything album.

So, I have a few questions.

Firstly, which artist would you most like to write a song about you, if money was no object? It's not quite as easy as "who is your favorite artist?". For example, I doubt a Kraftwerk song would emerge with profound lyrics about your written scenario (fun game: give your own words to "Pocket Calculator" and try to make it sound serious); and if you chose Sigur Ros or the Cocteau Twins - well, you're never going to understand the words! Also, a lot of my favorite artists are dead, so that rules them out straight away. Many more of my favorites - Neil Young, David Bowie, Stevie Wonder to name a few - are well past their best, which makes me wonder whether I'd rather have a not-very-good song from a legend, or would I rather choose a contemporary artist who's more likely to write a song I enjoy? Finally, you also have to think about just what a songwriter might do to you in the song - Eminem would probably kill you (you may consider than an honor, to be killed by Eminem in a song), and Al Green would probably seduce you. Again, you may consider that an honor!

Secondly, would you be pleased or upset if the song was used on the artist's next proper album? I think it would be great, something to tell the grandkids about - though they'd probably just say "who?" and listen to something new and noisy, instead of whatever ancient stuff their grandpa liked! But others might be upset by it, especially if their song was about something quite private.

Finally, are Say Anything any good? Admittedly I know next to nothing about them. I don't really have $150 to spend frivolously, but then again, it is my birthday in two weeks!

Music Drawing is The New Music Writing

One of my favorite websites to read about music is Popjustice. It mainly focuses on British chart pop that I'm not really interested in, but it's written so funnily it always cracks me up. It's got no pretensions to objectivity or expertise - it's written in the style of an over-excitable teenager, with silly jokes, wide-eyed enthusiasm and unsubtle sarcasm. OK, that doesn't sound good, but it is! Recently, Popjustice printed a review of the much-derided new Chris Cornell album, Scream. Take a look. I hope you agree that's an AMAZING review.

So music writers are apparently struggling for work these days. Maybe they need to think a bit more creatively. Instead of writing about music, maybe they should try drawing about music?

Inspired by this innovative new form of reviewing music, I've had a quick play around with Paint and a spreadsheet to present three reviews of the new Yeah Yeah Yeahs album, It's Blitz!.

Firstly, what does it sound like?

You can imagine that, right?

OK, so let's move on to Review 2, which I have snappily titled The Applicability of Certain Keywords Beginning With "S" Throughout the Album:

 

Colorful.

But I think it needs more work.

Finally, is it actually any good?

In conclusion: really quite good.

It seems so obvious now that Popjustice has shown the way. If a picture tells a thousand words, then I've just provided three thousand words-worth of It's Blitz! analysis. It took me half-an-hour to do, and it took you about half-a-minute to read and understand. After all, in this tl;dr age, who wants to read a dissertation!?

Verbatim: Cintra Wilson vs. New Kids on the Block

Choosing a single quotation from Cintra Wilson is like having the objects of all your desires laid out in front of you--food, sex, friendship, music, ideas--and being told you can only have one. How do you choose?

In case you haven't happened upon any of the products of this screamingly funny, intensely brilliant writer, Cintra Wilson is a pop-culture critic and author whose first book, A Massive Swelling: Celebrity Re-Examined as a Grotesque Crippling Disease, is one of the most funny, damning, merciless books I've ever read. And--frankly--one of the best.

Capable of skyscraping praise for the art and music she celebrates, Wilson also wields a lethal arsenal of critical savvy, usually put to the page in side-splitting prose and imagery that's impossible not to react to. Viscerally.

A Massive Swelling boasts such incendiary chapter titles as "Las Vegas--The Death Star of Entertainment," "Crossing Boundaries: Towards a New Hermeneutics of Dumb Pimps Like Bruce Willis," and "As a Dog Returneth to its Own Vomit, So Doth L.A." But Wilson is no mere shock-jock, and while her revelations about pop culture occasionally restate the obvious, they do so in terms so hilariously biting as to render them almost canonical. To wit, this nugget about boy-bands from "Cock Rock for the Twelve-and-Under":

"[A]ll a savvy promoter with the naked greed of a pederast Svengali needs to do is find some mildly talented teens all lousy with fresh libido and stuck in some lame section of America, promise them a bucking, eight-second ride on the Magic Bull of Fame, and he or she can forge a sensational golden windfall as long as the kid stays on. After all that happens successfully, the stars might figure out that are giving 90 percent of their salary away to some carpet-chested cigar aficionado who tells them what they can and can't wear all the time, and decide they'd like to try their hand at 'going solo,' a career move that has only really worked , so far, for ... ex-New Edition R&B guy Bobby Brown, and now for Ricky Martin, ex Menudo-boy. [Keep in mind that this was published in 2000.] The managers of the new breed of band coming out must have the whole clause in the contract that says when the boys are too old and fat for the metallic plastic jumpsuits, and have squandered all 10 percent they owned of their careers, they are not allowed to appeal to any human tendencies in the manager and beg them for more cash to get back on their feet. There ought to be a Child-Corruption Czar in government, maybe. Somebody who can keep the pop machine honest, if not clean."

The above comes after five or so pages of real love letters--by women ranging in age from teens to a late-20s mother of two--penned to the New Kids on the Block during their hey-day as singer/sex-objects. Now that they're back, the New Kids--who, it should be noted, are neither new nor kids--have once again put aside such niggling roadblocks to stardom as shame and self-respect, all for the glorious opportunity to perform pre-packaged material for (presumably) the sad, sexually frustrated kids who have finally grown up to be the sad, sexually frustrated adults they were destined to be. Sure, it's been awhile, but we knew they had it in them.

The music is, of course, beside the point, because if there's one thing NKOTB is good at, it's proving that the captains of (this) industry can shuck just about anything at us, and as long as that anything has a glossy, easily digestible sheen around its rotten core of pure celebrity-as-product, we'll buy it.

Ultimately, I think judging people for what they consume is a useless endeavor, at best. But for those of us who revel in the sound of a brilliant mind as it skewers easy targets with percussive fervor and no reservations, the good news is that Cintra Wilson has a new book coming out in September. Yes, the same month as the new NKOTB offering. Ain't life grand?

     --Jason Kirk

Introducing: Verbatim

Music criticism is a sticky endeavor. The lengths to which musicians will go to seek out or avoid it, the efforts publicists undertake to secure it, the negligibly compensated years some endure to produce it--all yielding a literature with a shelf-life of near-zero--make for a cottage industry as vibrantly active as it is doomed to amount to little of lasting value.

(As a tossed-off barometer of this assertion, check out CMU Daily’s report of the Avail Intelligence study which recently found that “music fans no longer look to professional critics to tell them what music to listen to.” Check it out by clicking here and scrolling down to “NO ONE READS YOUR REVIEWS.”)

And so I introduce our new category, Verbatim, wherein we aim to bandy about quotations regarding music and the vast galaxy of language humans spin around and about it.

To pave the way, I quote Olaf Stapledon’s Last and First Men, the first of two books (along with Star Maker) that together form a volume that I call with confidence my favorite book, period. In this pair of very, very loosely labeled “science fiction” stories from the 1930s, Stapledon lays out no less than a history of the cosmos, told first through the story of 18 succeeding species of human intelligence, of which we, as we know ourselves, are but the first, rough draft (Last and First Men). Star Maker then documents Stapledon’s universal vision writ almost inconceivably larger, laying out an imaginative taxonomy of sentience that, before its long, dense tale is done, includes the stars themselves and much, much more.

The book packs more cause for hope and faith in humanity than anything I’ve ever read before or since, and I recommend it with edge-of-my-seat fervor and no qualifications. Despite having grown up in a devout Roman Catholic home, I’ve never come across another read that comes anywhere close to the reverent—indeed, scriptural—heights of Stapledon’s magnum opus.

To the point, then. From Last and First Men:

“As individuals ... we try to regard the whole cosmic adventure as a symphony now in progress, which may or may not someday achieve its just conclusion. Like music, however, the vast biography of the stars is to be judged not in respect of its final moment merely, but in respect of the perfection of its whole form; and whether its form as a whole is perfect or not, we cannot know. Actual music is a pattern of intertwining themes which evolve and die; and these again are woven of simpler members, which again are spun of chords and unitary tones. But the music of the spheres is of a complexity almost infinitely more subtle, and its themes rank above and below one another in hierarchy beyond hierarchy. None but a God, none but a mind subtle as the music itself, could hear the whole in all its detail, and grasp in one act its close-knit individuality, if such it has. Not for any human to say authoritatively, ‘This is music, wholly,’ or to say, ‘This is mere noise, flecked now and then by shreds of significance.’”

Join us. Bring your best musical quotations to the table. We’ll feast together.

Serving well…

     --Jason Kirk