long hot summer

"As long as we're dancin', we ain't fightin'! When blacks were rioting, a song by Martha and the Vandellas came on the radio: 'Dancin' in the Streets'! I think that song was deliberately promoted by the government, during that long hot summer, to distract blacks from taking care of serious business."

Wanda Coleman, in Re/Search #13: Angry Women

juking

A quote from The Fugitive Kind, the Sidney Lumet/Tennessee Williams film, via my dad, as delivered by Joanne Woodward:

"Juking? Oh! Well, that's when you get in a car, which is preferably open in any kind of weather. And then you drink a little bit and you drive a little bit, and then you stop and you dance a little bit with a jukebox. And then you drink a little bit more and you drive a little bit more, you stop and you dance a little bit more to another juke box! And then you stop dancing and you just drink and you drive. And then, you stop driving."

Tonight I didn't drive drunk or dance at all, but I requested some silly songs on one of them digital jukeboxes on a trip to the Showdown with Brian, so I think maybe, technically, I did some juking.

the best sesame street song ever

is "Me Lost Me Cookie at the Disco."

who wants to be men of the people

Because I made a promise to Bruce: For the record, I like the new Arctic Monkeys record. I'm not sure why Bruce wanted me to make this public statement, but I don't mind a bit. I'm still figuring out what I think about it more exactly and how much I like it but I definitely think it's a solidly enjoyable record at the very least, and as I get more familiar with it I might grow to like it more.

they're gonna crucify me

For all my music nerdery, I have one rather freaky blind spot: I know next to nothing about the Beatles. Well, that's an exaggeration. I know as much about them as any reasonably observant music enthusiast would without actually investigating them intentionally. But as I've been known to point out to people on a regular basis, I know more about the Monkees than I do about the Beatles. And I'm not that freaked out about it from a music knowledge standpoint. But lately I have been thinking that maybe I would like to actually listen to some Beatles records, not out of obligation but because I might really enjoy them.

last.fm dream girls

You know how there are those fake women on myspace? I have been wondering today if there could be fake last.fm women. There are these gorgeous women on there with ridiculously impeccable taste, and I just wonder if they could possibly be real. I just don't know what would be in it for someone to make a fake last.fm person. Still, I wonder if it's possible that a few of these women don't actually exist.

I guess when you think about it, a lot of us are sort of fake on last.fm. Any sites with a social networking component are going to encourage people to put their best face forward, pick the most flattering pictures, mention stuff that they think sounds cool in their personal info, and in the case of last.fm, potentially skew their listening habits (unconsciously, if not intentionally).

you are the everything

I've been going through some old personal papers and filing stuff and I found an old piece of paper covered in incredibly corny, angsty writing from when I was 14 or so, with lots of references to R.E.M.'s Green. That's as specific as I'm going to get, though. It was with a pile of R.E.M.-related clippings from all sorts of publications from Melody Maker to Seventeen, mostly circa Out of Time.

dirty 30

My twin sister and I celebrated our 30th birthday last night. We organized a small show that some of our musician friends played. It was lovely, though every time anybody said, "Happy birthday, Karen and Susan!" from the stage I felt really embarrassed. I know everyone was there to celebrate the big birthday but it just felt too generous for them to come out and play a show at a tiny little bar just for us. I feel like baking them all cakes or something. Who knows, maybe I still will.

question

Might one's relationship to pop music (in the popular sense) be related to how you defined yourself vis a vis your peers in your youth? Well, if you're the sort of person who is enough of a music dork to be reading this right now, and thus, likely a regular dork (to some degree) in high school. Personally, I came into my own as a music listener at a point when "alternative" was becoming mainstream. Music with transgressive trappings (most of which was actually painfully dull and unoriginal) was big business then and the popular kids at school grew out their hair and bought Doc Martens. I liked my share of "alternative" stuff (I watched 120 Minutes religiously with my sister) but increasingly I employed a couple of strategies to differentiate myself from the alternateen crowd. One--being more alternative than alternative. Getting into stuff that was weirder, more abrasive, or just plain obscure. Two--the twee backlash method. Just as the whole C-86 movement originally happened as a reaction to mandatory pseudo-rebelliousness, I reacted to mainstream music posing as the underground by getting into obscure music that was aggressively poppy, more "mainstream" than the mainstream. Sometimes to the point of sappy excess, saccharine sweetness.

This two-pronged approach still shows in the way I listen to music now. I tend to like things that are poppy or a bit on the inaccessible side, and if something is both, it will probably appeal to me even more. I've changed since high school, certainly. But that was a formative time for me and the context I found myself in, including the pop chart at the time and the particular high school I attended and all the reasons that I felt like a misfit among my peers and grew to embrace that through my music fandom, it all contributed to the direction I took at that formative time. It makes me wonder about other people's experiences and how they might have sent them in different directions.

schemata

So, in a comments exchange earlier I started talked about cognitive schemata and music. I just kind of started throwing the term around, but I realized I don't think I've ever actually read anything that applied that sort of cognitive psychology stuff to music listening. Well, I've seen some stuff in the popular press about "framing" and "cumulative advantage." It's hard to tell to what extent these concepts come from cognitive psychology or related areas (for once I miss all of the laborious putting-everything-in-context exposition I'm used to from academic pieces) because these are popular pieces. But if they're not from cognitive psychology per se, there's an obvious relationship there.

But I haven't happened upon any academic stuff using cognitive psychology in the way I'm used to it being employed with other media (mostly film) to look at music reception. Not that I'm so familiar with it in that context, either--I just have a passing understanding of some basics. But I'm going to try to do a little amateur cognitive psychology of music reception thing here. I'm making a list of schemata that might come into play when you first hear new music. In my dorky cognitive psych dilettante way.

knowing the difference between music and other sounds
recognizing familiar scales and modes
recognizing instruments
recognizing song structure (verses, choruses)
deciding the gender of a vocalist
recognizing time period (contemporary, old, retro)
recognizing genre (this could be broken down into a bunch of sub-categories)
recognizing proficiency or the lack thereof
varying degrees of lyrical comprehension
mobilizing any number of various schema for determining value
placing oneself in relation to the song racially/ethnically (comparing oneself to the artist and/or the seemingly intended audience)

Anyways, this stuff is all on the basic side...I'm thinking about some stuff along these lines but more involved, but I may need to read up on my theory before I can really formulate it.

first impressions

Dave commented on an earlier entry of mine with some really interesting links, including this one, to a blog entry about Paris Hilton's album that turned into an incredibly long comments thread with some juicy arguments about poptimism, which got me thinking about a lot of thesis-related questions. One of the themes that kept popping up on that thread was emotion and passion about music, visceral reactions, etc., versus intellectual concerns or rational reasons for liking things that are affected by the arguments of others. Especially first impressions and whether initial opinions are really open to change.

Obviously, some of this stuff is going to vary from person to person. So it got me to thinking about the way I usually react to music initially. I know that there are presumptions and prejudices, some of them based on intellectual or political ideas that I've internalized. Sometimes I am really ill-disposed to something because of things I know about a band or artist, or even if I perceive that they have a fanbase of people I have very different musical values from.

But most of the time, if I bother to actually listen to something, I have reason to believe that I might like it. There is so much stuff out there and I always have a backlog of things that sound interesting, so I don't feel like I have time for things I don't think I might like. So most of the time, I am expecting to find something of value and not waiting to be underwhelmed. But sometimes I am. Usually, if I don't like something I know it right away. It's very unusual for me to feel differently after that point no matter what new arguments I hear or how much rapturous praise gets heaped onto something by people whose judgment I trust or whatever. And sometimes I like something right away too.

But it's actually a better sign if I hear something for the first time and don't know how I feel at first. I get this vaguely uncomfortable (yet curious) feeling. Sometimes I find myself listening to something over and over even though it makes me feel weird to the point of kind of bothering me. Usually if I get this feeling about something strongly enough, I end up liking it eventually, sometimes loving it and obsessing over it for years, as in the case of Cypress by Let's Active, which provoked very confusing feelings in me at first. It's always nice to like something right off the bat. I don't have the energy to plunge into records that provoke really complicated feelings in me all the time. But the things that end up meaning the most to me are the things I have to work a little bit to understand, that make me stretch a bit in order to enjoy them.

outness

Sorry I've been AWOL for so long. I missed a day and then I felt like I should do something extra interesting to make up for it and then I just built it up too much and I felt like I couldn't post until I had something real to say. I don't have something super exciting to say today, I just thought I should get off my butt and post anyways.

I've been obsessed with the Associates song Party Fears Two lately and got a copy of Sulk as a birthday gift from my sister. So I've been reading up about them and collecting fun facts like the story that Billy MacKenzie was the subject of the Smiths song William, It Was Really Nothing (which seems to be fairly accepted although explanations--a romantic relationship with Morrissey, a close friendship with him, or just a fan-crush he had on Billy--vary widely). Anyways, I could say more about the Associates but I brought them up because today while I was googling around for references to Morrissey and MacKenzie I came across this blog entry about Mika's unwillingness to go on the record about his sexuality. (Someone had brought MacKenzie up in the comments .)

There are some really interesting points being brought up here, points which I started to bump up against in an entry I wrote a while back. I really don't know what I think about musicians and issues of coming out, or the ethics of talking about musicians' sexualities. Some musicians wear their sexuality on their sleeve. But others are less overt, and obviously that's ok. Still, you hear things. But how do you know if you can trust the things you hear? Even if you could, is it ok to talk about it in a public space like a blog? Obviously I am not the only person who feels weird about this stuff, because when I do web searches for references to musicians' possible queerness their biographies are usually conspicuously low on detail when it comes to their love lives. Just discussing this right now, I keep finding myself being tempted to give examples and then stopping myself, because even bringing up a given artist involves making assertions I'm not sure are ok.

The issues here are pretty much the obvious ones we all associate with coming out. On the one hand, it seems more politically responsible for musicians to be out. Hiding your queerness certainly doesn't seem helpful. But is it really fair for us to expect this? How much can we expect--how out is out? If you don't hide it but don't go out of your way to proclaim it, then unless you are pretty famous a lot of people may just not notice. It seems unfair that this burden of self-disclosure falls on queer artists and not on straight ones. This is a particularly loaded issue for women musicians, who sometimes struggle to be taken seriously as good songwriters, skilled players, etc. instead of being defined in terms of their personalities and personal lives alone.

These are all tough questions and the whole issue is complicated by them. In the meantime there seems to be a sort of informal consensus on how we do things. If a performer seems to be banking on some sort of queer persona (almost always a campy male) we are allowed to discuss his sexuality a bit. If they have obvious lyrical references or other clear statements it can be discussed. Otherwise, there seems to be a pretty strong taboo against naming the queer sexualities of musicians. If you can find references they are often from queer web spaces, on lists of gay/lesbian/bi artists sort of like those lists of vegan celebrities you find on sites about vegetarianism. It seems as though it's more ok to talk about it if you are queer (and out) than if you're straight, but just a bit more. Despite this reluctance to talk about the issue, when the subject of an alleged closeted queer comes up, most people seem a bit pissed off at the person for not being out. But if someone seemed to imply queerness and then goes on the record as straight (or gives some sort of watered down Brett Anderson answer like "I'm kind of bi but I've never done anything about it") or pulls an Ani DiFranco and settles down into a straight marriage after building a queer audience based on clear or implied statements of homo- or at least bi-sexuality, these things piss off the public as well.

It does seem as though having a certain kind of queer identity as a musician could be constricting in a way that coming out as a private individual is not. I mean, it could be constricting when it comes to the way you make music and present that music to the public. Though as in the case of a Brett Anderson or an Ani DiFranco, hinting at or explicitly identifying with some degree of queerness could also be a way of marketing yourself, or to use a less loaded term, presenting yourself to potential audiences.

As usual I seem to be raising more questions than I am answering and bringing up new topics before I feel like I've fully addressed earlier ones. Mostly I'm just really torn about the whole thing. As someone who cares about the representation of people with different sexual orientations in music, it would be nice to know where different musicians stand and to be able to talk about it publicly. But for the same reason I don't want to see people get pigeonholed or ghettoized, and even if maximum outness were undoubtedly for the best, I don't think I have the right to demand it of anybody. I don't know, I'm still thinking about all of this, but I would love to hear anything people have to say on the subject.

fear of a female planet

Saw Jana Hunter at the Mohawk tonight and I think I might be coming around to her whole deal. I didn't get it at first but I think I'm starting to.

Talked to a friend tonight about music video fantasies. Like, whether there were actually any music videos that we would enjoy living out or somehow inhabiting. The only one I could think of at that moment was Sonic Youth's video for Kool Thing. I'm open to other suggestions, but I think it would be hard to top.

wondering

Does liking the Von Sudenfed record make me an electronic music philistine?

dream date

The other night I dreamed I went on a date with Kelly Clarkson. I was making a bad impression, though--she kept rolling her eyes at me. I tried to think of things to do to impress her but that seemed to just make me more annoying.

confession

A while back, I downloaded and listened to a couple of tracks from the new Voxtrot record. To check and make sure that I still don't like them. I still don't. That's not the confession part. But I feel bad about the fact that I turned off audioscrobbler while I listened to them because I didn't want them to show up on my last.fm. I'm such a dork.

accessibility questions

Is poptimism really an ethic, as some people would have it, or an aesthetic? Is its impetus some sort of populist approach, a commitment to being unpretentious, a rejection of elitist (possibly racist, classist, sexist) assumptions, which leads one to embrace either music with a wider audience (according to some inevitably flawed standard) or music that is somehow demonstrably more accessible? Or does it come about due to an aesthetic appreciation (possibly on a rather personal, subjective level) of music that is considered "poppy," "corny," or kitsch, with political interpretations heaped onto it after the fact that then shape the course of the approach?

On a related note--how do we define accessibility? It seems like it has a number of very different components to it. There are some aspects we might posit are fairly universal. Things like simplicity, repetitiveness, and predictability (all tied together). Others are clearly arbitrary. I associate accessibility with major keys in the conventional Western 12-note scale, because of the culture in which I was raised. Minor keys sound darker to me, or tougher, and so forth depending on the context. Unfamiliar modes bring to mind foreign countries and a sense of alien-ness. As visceral and near-unshakeable as these associations are, they are culturally determined and arbitrary. But there are other conventional aspects of the music we consider accessible that are way more limited, historical-context-wise. For example, synthesizer sounds that were once normal to hear in pop music (say, twenty-five years ago) now read as dated, possibly campy or retro. Music that was seen as transgressive or shocking as recently as the 1990s has been thoroughly recuperated. And so forth. Making assertions about what is or is not accessible is very hard to do clearly and rigorously. Of course, so is making assertions about what is challenging or authentically avant-garde--a difficulty for anyone championing other value systems opposed to poptimism.

Does the fact that accessibility/inaccessibility is such a slippery concept mean that using criteria to evaluate music that are based on these ideas is somehow futile? I don't think so at this point, but I do think the imprecise, inconsistent, even downright impressionistic way these words get thrown around is the cause of a lot of confusion, confusion which obscures important questions about aesthetics and politics.

the infamous drunk post

Sang "Strange" by Patsy Cline in front of a bunch of strangers tonight. Not a huge crowd-pleaser but it reflected my mood and according to Sara people were making out to it so at least somebody got some enjoyment out of it.

cat funeral music

Back when my dear departed cat Maurice was still with me, my friend Chris came to visit me from Seattle and spent the afternoon in my apartment while I was at work. He put on a Sigur Ros album--I think it was Takk. Maurice apparently went up to one of my stereo speakers as soon as the album started and sat right in front of it for the length of the album. He went about his business as soon as it was over. Lately I've been thinking about having a sort of wake for Mo. When he died in March they gave me his ashes and I've just held on to them, but I think maybe I'm ready to scatter his ashes somewhere and do a little something to say goodbye. I might have to go out and get a copy of Takk to play at my little private memorial.

soundtrack

Listened to a mix from my friend Curran while cleaning out the closet today. It was very conducive. I've always liked The Madcap Laughs for washing the dishes. When I'm writing papers I can't listen to a lot of music because it's too distracting, but for some reason Christ: The Album and Music Has the Right to Children are both ok.