Jason Gross continues to tirelessly compile the Music Scribe Awards, and I envy his, uh, tirelessness. Some pix:
1. Amy Phillips from Pitchfork:
Listen to this PSA. Just listen to it. And then just try to tell me it doesn't make you want to put down the bong and start listening to rap music.
Full transcript below.
FEMALE VOICE: (Computer voice) Being popular was all I could think about last year. I wanted to, like, be cool with everybody. I listened to music that I didn't like and laughed at stuff that wasn't funny. I programmed myself to be a totally different person to everyone.
Computer voice starts to change into a real human voice.
FEMALE VOICE: But I wasn't myself. Now I'm not pretending to like indie rock or anything like that. And people think that's cool.
MALE VOICE: Live above the influence. Above weed. Check out abovetheinfluence.com. Sponsored by the ONDCP and the Partnership For A Drug-FreeAmerica.
Ha! Everyone knows you don't need to smoke weed to pretend to like indie rock.
2. uao: "Does Your CD Lose Its Value By the Bedpost Overnight?" (Blogcritics, December 28, 2005)
I didn't read this yet (looks interesting), but the title reminds me to write a post called "Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavor on the BEDBUGS Overnight"!!!! That's the name of this blog!!!!!
3. Skye Sweetnam's MySpace profile (oh wait, he overlooked this).
Others:
4. Jane Dark/whatshisface's year-end musings. Nice "Fergalicious" analysis:
24) “Fergalicious,” Fergie. At first it’s hard to know which crude Eighties triumph of trocheeic dimeter this is ripping off mercilessly; if it seems at first like “You Be Illin’,” but when the double-time electro kicks in halfway through, one twigs to the fact that it’s ye olde “Supersonic,” by JJ Fad. The metre varies for effect here and there (most peasingly in the “try an’ tell”/”clientele” rhyme), but mostly it’s intent on its extended, virtuosic trochees: “FERgaLIcious’ DEFiNItion: MAKE them BOYS go CRAzy” and on and on.Ever since rap’s rigid vocal metricality yielded to the conversational vernacularity of hip-hop — that is, ever since rap’s Rakim-midwived modernity — few songs have paid as much attention to classcial lyrical beat patterns as this, one of the most precise songs of the times.
And this (part of a) sentence:
..."Too Little Too Late," by JoJo, which hauls out Cher's AutoTune (and here we recall that "Believe," sung by a gorgeous octogenarian, was a pivotal moment in teenpop's story, collapsing the tween and disco audiences into a coherent mass)...
I think I kinda disagree with this, inasmuch as neither tween nor disco audiences are cohesive enough to "collapse" per se (and if they did it probably wouldn't be very coherent). But he's right in calling "Believe" a pivotal moment in the story, and I'd never really thought of it as such, not in those words anyway. Not sure if this pivotal moment effectively led to anything substantial or lasting, as the vocoder technique dated quickly enough and Eurodisco could find (and did find) its way into teenpop through plenty of outlets other than Cher (I'd need to double check my timeline on this). But it also makes me wonder whether or not "Believe" was ever an RD powerhouse waaaaay back in the day when they were playing the Jetsons theme and the Trashmen.
5. Eppy's new version of Clap Clap, with a link to this here site (back atcha), currently has his essay on Paris with an essay on Lindsay and Devendra coming soon. I go all longwinded n' stuff in the comment section of the Paris piece. No further comments.
6. Stylus column submitted, will not make the 2007 Brie Larson Literary Achievement Shortlist, but opened up some ideas (expanding on the stuff with Tom Breihan and anthropology) that I'd like to explore in the future by actually following them through. Like, doing some field work like I say HSM commentators shoulda done, if I can ever get out of the apartment. Of course you don't have to interview a buncha people, but since the premise of most of the reviewers of the HSM concert was, essentially, "well, let's look at this kiddie phenom -- what, you've never heard of this??" you'd think they'd be interested to know what the kids actually thought of the damn thing. Best I found was a blurb-ish article with one kid (and parent) interviewed. "It has a good message!" Which suggests this guy was asking the wrong questions, something like, "Do you think this film had a good message?" How about "Who's hotter, Zac or Drew?" "Are you a Sharpay or a Gabriella?" "When you play High School Musical at recess, who plays the part of Troy? Ryan? That mousy composer girl?" [More questions?]
More to come as it comes. Teenpop thread's down so here's a mess o' thoughts, too...I notice that Avril is back on the RD Top 30 w/ "Sk8r Boi," no sign of "Girlfriend" yet...fingers crossed! (Play my new song, muthafuckas! Stop coming on so strong and pretending like it's all in good harmless fun, beeotch!) Also, MR. C THE SLIDE MAN HAS A PROFILE PICTURE! RD is no longer a haven for UGLISTS. No sign of "With Love" in the Top 3, probably won't make a huge dent but I'll still quietly root for it, even though I'd have much rather rooted for "Play with Fire."
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