Month: September 2007

The Onion A.V. Club

If you don’t already visit The Onion A.V. Club on a weekly basis, you really should. I hesitate to write about it because it’s such a given for me (like fark.com or achewood.com), but I wanted to make sure you know about it. It’s really the Entertainment Weekly for thinking people. It’s also a snarky hipster hangout, full of pop culture list-making (17 Dangerous Cinematic Computers, 12 Delightfully Odd Concept Albums).

In a recent blog article, “I Have A Little Guitar,” author and Arkansan Noel Murray said, “the guitar has always been a mysterious instrument to me.” So naturally I emailed him to see if he’d be interested in a free guitar lesson sometime. He said he would, but it may be awhile before he has any free time. He also said it might be good material for another article. Hopefully we can hook up before I leave the state.

Tuxedos? Seriously?

If you’re like me, you don’t wear a tuxedo often. So me telling you about a tuxedo website would seem fairly pointless, and more than a little suspect[1]. This is a client of mine, but in my defense I’m just writing about them because they have some freaky bargains and I’d tell people about them regardless. I mean, where the heck else are you going to get a tuxedo coat for $15? The catch is they’re all specific sizes, and they’re rental inventory, so they’re used. They’re still in great condition, though. I almost bought one just because of the bargain factor. I now know where to go if/when I’m ever in the market for a tux.

1.) I promise that blogging about my clients will not become a habit, as I generally consider it to be soul-chillingly opportunistic in these blog-marketing-heavy times. I’m declaring special circumstances because of my congenital interest in bargain hunting. Feel free to call shenanigans on me.

Alytude

My friend Aly is a freelance writer in NYC and she writes a blog for SheKnows.com, a site apparently dedicated to hip girly swag. She writes about various new widgets and sundry whatnot, and offers free samples and giveaways pretty regularly. Check it out here. I already got a gift certificate to Panda Express which, by the way, doesn’t serve panda[1].

1.) Yes, I realize this joke amuses only me.

Writing About Music Is Like Two-Stepping About Flying Buttresses

Since I started writing about music for Arkansas Times, people have told me I should more actively pursue it as a vocation. Apparently it’s something I do well.

I’m not sure what the answer is, but I think it has something to do with the fact that I take my writing ability for granted. It’s not a skill I recall spending a lot of time developing (as I’m sure this blog’s more meandering and malformed entries will attest), at least not after high school. I remember turning in my first essay to Mrs. Lewis in 10th grade and her comments about how horribly lame my writing was; I took it to heart and became determined to write effectively from then on, which lasted until senior year. After that it was the only real marketable skill I had, which led me to become an English major.

Music has always been the thing I’ve spent the most time developing, yet I’ve never wanted it to become my career. To do that, music would have to become work, and I don’t think I could stomach that. Plus the music I love most has proven time and again to be the least commercially successful.

My tastes in music tend to revolve almost exclusively around pure music and not lyrics. I think I distrust words as interlopers into music. I don’t need words in music; I’d be just fine without them, for the most part[1]. All they really do for me is give me something to sing, a way to participate. Music has the power to make crummy words sound great (just as truly great words have the power to improve crummy music). Rhythm and harmony are so powerful that songs of complete gibberish can become classics (“Wooly Bully,” “Tutti Frutti,” “Louie Louie,” “Smells Like Teen Spirit”). SO many songwriters compose tunes with decent lyrics but boring chords and arrangements; my perspective is: if you’re not going to step up to the plate musically, then go be a poet and see how well your words do by themselves. Don’t sail by with music to pick up the slack. Anyway, all of this ties into the fact that I approach music from my own little peculiar musician-oriented vantage point, so I’m probably not qualified to write about music for regular folk.

So I had lunch with Ted Ludwig on Friday and he told me that I’m probably more qualified to write about music because my background as a musician helps me to understand music on a deeper level. Maybe he’s right. Maybe it’s a great idea, since I don’t mind writing becoming work. It hardly seems like work, actually. Of course, the downside is that if I were to devote more time to writing about music, I’d probably get assigned to write about some trendy band that everyone’s excited about but me. And these bands are legion. I can’t begin to count the number of times the entire world goes ga-ga over some band that just strikes me as horribly bland. Even most indie rock strikes me as irritatingly boring.

So I doubt I’d be of much use to the world of rock journalism. I have a hard time writing about things that don’t excite me. Maybe my niche is writing about the stuff no one else wants to. So far at the Times I’ve covered old school hip-hop, jazz, and eccentric indie rock. Maybe there’s enough on the fringes for me to stay occupied.

1.) And I would also be just fine without musicals, which allow for the possibility of combining crummy music, insipid lyrics, poor acting and lame dancing into one reasonably nifty package that impresses only those people who don’t particularly care about those four constituent art forms. Don’t get me wrong, though, when it’s done right it’s transcendent (West Side Story, Oliver!). But I’m rarely impressed by musicals in general.

Good Advice

Still reading through The Believer‘s Music Issue, I came across this great bit of advice in Gina Gionfriddo’s epic essay on the literary and psychological merit of Nine Inch Nails:

“In his controversial primer on fiction writing, John Gardner advises the miserable, misanthropic writer thus: If you see the world as a pit full of baby skulls, that’s fine; in fact, you may be seeing it clearly. But you do yourself no favors by taking up residence at the edge of the pit and writing – however accurately and beautifully – tome after tome about what a pit full of baby skulls looks like. Gardner advises that we address our writing to what can be done: how is a person to stay alive in a world where there are pits full of baby skulls?”

I’d like to paste that statement on the walls of America’s high schools. It’s not just for writers; it’s for everyone who sees the world clearly and is saddened. It encapsulates my own general take on the Universe: Yeah it’s crappy. Did you expect something better? Quit complaining and do something to improve it. Gionfriddo continues:

“[Reznor’s void] is, like Gardner’s pit of baby skulls and the Gothics’ torture dungeons, a room in our psychic house – let’s say the psychic basement – that we aspire to live with, but not in. Put a lock on it and you’re dishonest and naive; move your bed and stereo down there and you’re lost.”

I’ve seen a lot of people who have put locks on it (most Americans prior to the 1960’s, the Catholic Church), others who live in it (Goths, metalheads, drug users), and very few who successfully live with their psychic basement.