February 2005 Archives

"...I thought one of the rewards of becoming rich was not having to Warholinate your art..."

I saw some of this, but checking the blogs, here's my favorite report so far: "White trash cred expires after the first award, Hils...." Where are the jokes about Sydney Lumet's daughters? Props to RW for walking on with his mouth taped, then doing some of the racy jokes anyway, coming off like a once-was all the same.

To pay tribute to Johnny Carson, Rolling Stone reruns its 1979 interview by Timothy White. How's that for lame? Me, I come out somewhere inbetween Kenneth Tynan's New Yorker profile and Harry Shearer's Credibility Gap food fight. Which is to say, Thomson has the last word.

And here's my favorite link on you-know-who.

from the GRAND POOBAH OF THE DISMISSIVE FOOTNOTE, I give you Luc Sante on Dylan:

"Chronicles works so well in part because in writing it Dylan apparently found a formal model to adhere to or violate at will, and if he did not have in mind any specific nineteenth-century account of callowness and ambition, maybe he conjured up a cumulative memory of dusty volumes found on friends' bookshelves in Greenwich Village or in the basement of the bookshop in Dinkytown he worked in as a student. He also found an outlet for his inclination to counter his audience's expectations. Readers, guessing on the basis of interviews and movies as well as the hydra-headed mythic image that has grown around Dylan over the decades, might have expected his memoir to be variously inscrutable, gnomic, bilious, confused, preening, recriminatory, impersonal, defensive, perfunctory, smug, or even ghost-written. Instead Dylan had to outflank them by exercising candor, warmth, diligence, humor, and vulnerability. If there is ever a second volume, he may have to contradict himself yet again."

My own theory about CHRONICLES: after rejecting the overgrown ms., an ambitious editor figured out how to salvage the project by stitching together various episodes that worked out of sequence, both as a way of giving the narrative some herky-jerky form and to emphasize the associative way Dylan's memories and hunches fit together. Wish I could prove this. You gotta love the way Dylan SKIPS THE SIXTIES, there's a red herring for you...

Hooked up my new Airport Express downstairs, put it through the old Sony receiver and KLH bookshelfs I just had refurbished and it sounds nice and warm and cushioned. The drawback to AX is: it will broadcast only to your computer or to the remote location, not both. There will probably be a hack for this soon enough.

MY GRAMMY WISECRACK: Will somebody please, PUHL--eeeze, put a sock in Bono's mouth?

PREDICTION: i-Podding is NOT the next big thing.

MY GRAMMY WISECRACK: Will somebody please, PUHL--eeeze, put a sock in Bono's mouth?

PREDICTION: i-Podding is NOT the next big thing.

Eat your heart out, Bill Flanagan.

ALWAYS GOOD FOR A QUOTE: George Michael, in today's NYTimes:

George Michael says pop music is dead. Speaking yesterday at the Berlin International Film Festival, where he presented his autobiographical film "George Michael: A Different Story," he said, "I think my own genre is dead," The Associated Press reported. Mr. Michael, 41, said he wanted to "try to move my career into a different form. I don't know what that's going to be yet."

Too bad Georgie had to compete with today's Greenspan quote:

The Fed chief acknowledged, to a question from New York Sen. Charles Schumer, a Democratic foe of carving private accounts from Social Security, that the accounts wouldn't address Social Security's long-term financial woes. "In and of itself," he said, "it surely doesn't alleviate the current problem." That would require tax increases and benefit reductions, he said, though he didn't endorse any particular proposals... (from WSJ).

We take no satisfaction in intersecting the Dean's list with Youssou N'Dour and Courtney Love, but how could I totally space out SMILE? Just put him up top. The Langford is on my wish list, way behind there, and I'll have to check out Todd Snyder.

BIG CLICKS in the order that I checked off the complete ballots page:
Rob Sheffield (Hold Steady totally rocks... Rob you're gonna LOVE Reigning Sounds...)
Greil Marcus (made me pull out PJ again, and swoon)
Ann Powers
Milo Miles [way ahead of us as usual, the lone critic voting for J.U.F.'s Gogol Bordello Vs. Tamir Muskat, placing it No. 1]
Leland Rucker
Charles R. Cross
Tom Smucker
Eric Weisbard
Douglas Wolk and
Jon Pareles (Juliana Hatfield? Bjork?)
Where have you gone Jimmy Guterman? Gil Asakawa? John Leland?

Only two critics voted for Dan Zanes's PARADES AND PANORAMAS, which sucks but it came out really late, didn't even make my list, but makes Lawrence Kay a weird co-conspirator. The click that satisfies is the Danger Mouse vote, you feel like you're in good company. Richard Riegel is the only other critic to list Rocket from the Tombs, and he put it at No. 9, which means I gotta run out and snare Chi-Pig (his No. 1). I was the only one to place Bottle Rockets? That's harsh. Maura Johnston shares my affection for Aveo's BATTERY, and the first name of my sixth-grade girlfriend.

UNDERSTATEMENT OF THE YEAR

From John Leland in the NYT: "If old songs create more profits than new ones, in a business that claims to sell newness as hipness, then the business is at odds with itself..."

Nick Tosches on how "...glibberish kills":

"Think about it. If a great writer's words are deemed to be worth nothing between the covers of a book, why should they be deemed to be of value on the back of a book?"

"When writers and would-be writers asked him to read and comment on their work, William Faulkner used to tell them that he only read the bible—a lie finer by far than those of which blurbs are made..."

IN THE CLEAR (Nettwerk America, March 1st)
The Ivy advance arrived, and it's a hummer. Honey disconnect the phone.

PRINT WIMPS
More bathroom reading.

See this entry, below:

TR: What WAS the original context of connecting these pieces, silly boy?

MR: DISSONANCE. i.e. heaven on earth

MORE ON THAT PESKY WHITE HOUSE SCANDAL:
So let us get this straight: The top Democrat in the Senate loses a race where the GOP sets up a phony blog that passes along news reports from a pseudo media organization, written by a reporter given White House credentials under a fake name.

(also: BEST TAG LINE: "Like Kryptonite to Stupid...")

Bush committed fraud during the debates. Lindorff ran this story in Salon, but what I want to know is: why isn't this STILL a story?

I can appreciate the broader factors weighing on the paper’s top editors, particularly that close to the election. But personally, I think that Nelson’s assertions did rise above the level of garden-variety speculation, mainly because of who he is. Here was a veteran government scientist, whose decades-long career revolves around interpreting imagery like features of Mars, who decided to say very publicly that, without reservation, he was convinced there was something under a president’s jacket when the White House said there was nothing. He essentially put his hard-won reputation utterly on the line (not to mention his job) in doing so and certainly with little prospect that he might gain something as a result—except, as he put it, his preserved integrity...

If a major university had given this guy a degree and later found that he had an earpiece on during his oral exams, they'd rescind his diploma. We, as this man's employers, deserve at least an explanation. Very dispiriting to think there are Republicans covering this up even now.

MR writes: I mentioned "Day In the Life" in the same breath as "Rite of Spring," and the "Eroica" in class today. Free chicken wings if you can guess the context for all these...

TR: Uh, context here is simple: false endings.

MR: Neat idea. I've never thought of the Eroica's ending as false. There are about a zillion fat tonic chords leading up to the final one. Does that ring false to you? Stravinsky's nubile maiden gets metaphorically screwed (gets dead, too), so I can see how that's a radical departure from bourgeois truth--besides which the final rhythms are just wacko. Oh, no, you're making me think. Academics have to see a dermatologist after they think.

Miko oh no

TR:You're SO EASY. The Eroica ending is a PARODY of FINALITY.

RITE OF SPRING is one long BEGINNING. We haven't even figured out where's it's still leading us.

"Day in the Life" is another PARODY of FINALITY, REPLETE with FALSE ENDING into the INNER GROOVE. (Get it?)

Oyaz, Oyaz....

MR: Something can be a parody and also true.   Eroica IV is both the finale ne plus ultra and also a send-up of finality.  That's not what I would call "false.

TR: you feel the need to say this... to a BEATLE scholar? How far exactly to you expect me to defend my flippant remarks? Beethoven is OBVIOUSLY both a parody and a transcendence, I'm bowled over that you need me to get explicit about that. (Can you imagine such a thing as a Beethoven "fade-out"? I'll bet any such would have been superlatively imaginative and mind-blowing, and we can't get CLOSE to imagining it...)

Do you mean all Prokofiev or "merely" the "classical" symphony, which I think is doubly brilliant as both parody and ultimate tribute album to an era, a style, a way of organizing sound, even as he half looks down on it. Which itself isn't really typical of him: he's the MOST classically-structured of modern-era composers. Do you know the extent to which I WORSHIP the notation paper Sergei wrote upon?

When do we stop using the term "modern"?

And PEPPER itself was a "false ending" to the Beatles' era of "live" performance (the "live" reprise of the title "closing" the concept part of the album, giving way to the penultimate studio production up to that point, except for "Tomorrow NEver KNows" off their REAL moosterpiece), especially since Jimi Hendrix debuted "Sgt. Pepper" the song the week after the album was released, and they did play on the rooftop 18 months later in completely different form, so the "live" ethos was still hovering over their ambitions...

Stop me before I kill more...

Alotta Vagina

MR: I'm bowled over that you need me to get explicit about the fact that everything I said ("something can be a parody and also true") was a way of praising YOUR criticism.

Naturellement, all of Prokofiev. You're right about him being altogether classical (only Ravel and Bartok may be more so). What's so amazing about Sergei is that he could also outwit Stravinsky at his own primitivist game. When was the last time you listened to "Ala and Lolly"? An absolute knock-out, as far removed as possible from the classical/Apollonian side.

OK, let's stop using "modern." How about "Alfranken"?

Never could be (see?) any other way.

Sweet Scythian

ASSIGNMENT DESK

A new White House house press corps scandal emerging, blurbed for today's Here and Now. On the heels of this, from pressthink, Jan. 19:

Elliott reported again today on the furor in public relations circles caused by the Armstrong Williams corruption case, in which one of the leading PR agencies, Ketchum, which is a big firm (1,100 employees) funneled $240,000 from the Department of Education (DoE) to Williams, the conservative syndicated columnist and television host, who was paid to promote the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB)...

The subtext of this item is: PR flacks make a lot more money than beat reporters. Where is the story exposing the hypocrisy of an administration that simultaneously scorns the press, its tactics and influence, and then pays it off? And where is the story about how cheaply such journalists are bought, what salaries are compared to PR firms and most administrative posts, and why any journalist would be sell their soul for such pittance?