Month: December 2006

Punk Rockers = Low Self-Esteem?

Mick Jones of The Clash had this to say in a recent Onion AV Club interview:

Well we certainly appreciated the Sex Pistols, yeah. They were quite influential just on a personal level. I was a great music fan, and always wanted to be in a band. I followed music intensely, from a very young age, and Sex Pistols showed me that music was something anyone could do.

I hear that a lot with punk and indie musicians: the realization that music is something anyone can do, as though there were some barrier beforehand that gave them the impression that they couldn’t do it. Jones is essentially saying “Anyone can play punk music,” which contains within it the assumption that there are other musics that not just anyone can play.

Maybe punker rockers all have low self-esteem and looked at those other musicians as people doing things they could never do. Or maybe they were simply lazy and thought music would be hard so they never gave it a try until punk music, apparently the easiest rock genre, came along and showed them the way. It’s no wonder, then, that punk rockers so eschew musical virtuosity; it’s the stuff that comes from that other world of music that they thought was too hard to do.

It’s not my intention to insult punk rock or its practitioners; I’m just wondering about the psychological roots of their chosen genre. I suppose in the 70’s (and still today), as the Big Rock and Roll Machine was coming into its own, taking over more and more arenas with bigger recording sounds, that kids would look at that inflated circus and assume that the mechanics of music were just too much for a kid to understand. Because rock and roll isn’t just music; it’s theater and sporting event and circus and fashion shoot. Strip all that away and it’s just guitar chords and lyrics, and that’s what punk wanted to do: strip out the other junk.

However, punk left theater in (few musicians are as theatrical as Johnny Rotten, Joey Ramone and Joe Strummer), and then fashion snuck back in as all the kids were determined to dress “punk,” and so the circus came back to town. So maybe what we need is a genre of pure music, with no attendant fashion expectations. That would most likely end up being jazz, though.

And that would definitely be too hard to try.

For Those of You Keeping Score at Home

Here are the CDs I got at the big Closing Sale at the Nashville Tower Records last Friday:

The Kings of Diggin’ – Compiled by Kon & Amir and DJ Muro
PJ Harvey – Is This Desire?
Planet X – Live From Oz
Mates of State – Bring it Back
Placebo – Once More with Feeling
Petra Haden – Sings The Who Sell Out
The Fiery Furnaces – Bitter Tea
Secret Machines – Secret Machines
Wil Calhoun – Native Lands
Al Green – Let’s Stay Together
The Mars Volta – Amputechture
Don Caballero – For Respect
Hooverphonic – Blue Wonder Powder Milk
Porcupine Tree – In Absentia
Vivian Campbell – Two Sides of If
Tim Kinsella – Crucifix Swastika
Head Automatica – Popaganda

Unhealthy Questions[1]

Whatever your stance on God, Richard Dawkins’ book, The God Delusion, makes an important point about The Big Questions like “what is the meaning of life?” and “why does the universe exist?” Dawkins says:

“Just because a question can be asked, doesn’t mean it deserves an answer. The mere fact that you can frame an English sentence beginning with the word “why” does not mean that English sentence should receive an answer. I could say, why are unicorns hollow?”

Language can make things tricky. Many questions are loaded with hidden presuppositions. Just ask lawyers. I especially hate it when I see courtroom dramas where the attorney instructs the witness to simply answer “yes” or “no,” as though the truth can be fully conveyed in binary. Bad questions abound, and so being aware of their existence really helps you to fend against them.

Of course the source of those Big Questions is the pre-linguistic emotional process of humans trying to make sense of a confounding universe, so Dawkins isn’t saying that our yearning for the universe to make sense is invalid, just that our inquiry needs to be more articulately stated. Other questions such as “how did the universe begin?” and “what made those amino acids form the first protein?” are perhaps more likely to get us on track toward a greater understanding of existence.

1.) Note that I didn’t say “bad questions,” because I’m a firm believer that the words “good” and “bad” are the philosophical equivalent of blunt objects. They can cut through nothing and inflict only trauma.

What Have I Been Up To?

The last few weeks’ highlights:

Went to Stuttgart after Thanksgiving with Superflux to play the big annual Duck Gumbo. It’s like a large rural frat party/Madis Gras. In its own way, it is awesome. Pictures from last year will help give you an idea. I’ve only just now remembered that I briefly met Anthony, the proprietor of Little Rock Blog. He’ll give you the low down better than I. There’s even a picture of me – I’ve finally made it in there!

Last Thursday Bryan and I went to Nashville for a gig. We thought we might stay a few days but his Nashville-connected buddy couldn’t make it. We stayed with the buddy’s parents, who happen to be the President and First Lady[1] of Belmont University. Now, the idea behind our gig was that we would play the student union cafe joint, and the post-basketball crowd would filter in to pack the place. Turns out we had no sound guy so when the game was over we weren’t playing. As a result we started 30 minutes late and played to a crowd of maybe 20, three of whom were paying attention and specifically there to see us (the aforementioned parents plus my friend, the gloriously talented Shelley Raymond, whose CD you all need to buy right now from CafePress). Getting to finally meet Shelley was really the main reason I wanted to take the gig, which involved using up two vacation days from work.

The next day we stopped by yet another Tower Records Going Out of Business sale. This time I only spent $191. Then we headed west, stopping in Memphis so that I could introduce Bryan to the joys of Midtown, especially Shangri-La Records and Xanadu Music and Books. We also checked out the formerly legendary, now near-dead Strings and Things[2], which went bankrupt early this year, and has since re-opened under different management. This time, though, they have no major contracts, so no Gibsons, Fenders, Marshalls, etc. You can thank Guitar Center’s arrival for that. I had expected Strings and Things to withstand the Internet and Guitar Center onslaught, but they made some unfortunate decisions to expand right when GC arrived. So they’re pretty much toast. Sadness.

All last weekend was spent working on a mix DVD that I’m giving out to some people for Christmas. I also picked up a few dozen classical LP’s at the storefront of the former Anthro-pop (more dead music store booty). Rod left them outside with a FREE RECORDS sign, so I snatched up a hefty sum. I spent most of yesterday listening to nothing but Sviatoslav Richter while converting VHS videos to MPEG, and reading The Real Frank Zappa Book. I never left the house. Good times.

1.) If they don’t call them that, why don’t they? They should.

2.) Web address expired.

Frank Zappa: Dead and Still Ahead of the Curve

It was something of a minor revelation to me when I read Chuck Klosterman’s bit in Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs about how John Cusack’s movies have set too high a standard for modern romance. For me, it was an important realization that even good movies can be bad for you. Everyone raises a stink about violence and sex in movies, but isn’t unrealistic romance just as dangerous and psychologically damaging?

I bring this up because I am currently reading The Real Frank Zappa Book and came across this choice passage, which outlines an assumption embedded in all of Frank’s work since his debut in the early 60’s:

“You’re a young kid and you hear all those ‘love lyrics,’ right? Your parents aren’t telling you the truth about love, and you can’t really learn about it in school. You’re getting the bulk of your ‘behavioral norms’ mapped out for you in the lyrics of some dumb f*cking love song. It’s a subconscious training that creates a desire for an imaginary situation which will never exist for you. People who buy into that mythology go through life feeling that they got cheated out of something.”

Good work, Frank. You’ve been dead over ten years now, and you’re still smarter than the rest of us. I’ve seen so many people who seem dissatisfied with their love lives because they apparently had unrealistic expectations about what their relationship was supposed to be.  Particularly dangerous is the female ‘princess’ myth that the goal of life for girls is to find a prince and live happily ever after.