Critical Thinking

"There’s an art to doing anything with exceptional care, but it’s just gravy when the..."

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:30:29 -0700

“There’s an art to doing anything with exceptional care, but it’s just gravy when the thing—footwear, a review, a marketing plan—meets a practical need. Art proper exceeds or alters, or invents, its job description. That said, effective criticism usually has elements of performance art—a little song and dance, some stand-up comedy.”

- Peter Schjeldahl, responding to the question “Does art criticism count as an art form?” in his collection of art criticism Let’s See, p. 8. I ecstatically agree with everything he says here. I’m also a fan of song and dance, as well as stand-up comedy.

"Conservative and utopian ideologues agree that man must understand and control his environment; the..."

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:24:00 -0700

“Conservative and utopian ideologues agree that man must understand and control his environment; the questions are how, and for whose benefit. But pop culture defines man as a receiver of stimuli, his environment as sensory patterns to be enjoyed, not interpreted (literature and philosophy are irrelevant) or acted upon (politics is irrelevant). ‘If you want to understand me, look at my surface,’ says Andy Warhol. And ‘I like my paintings because anybody can do them.’ The bureaucrat defends standardization because it makes a complex society manageable. Yet he thinks of himself as an individualist and finds the idea of mass-produced, mechanized art incomprehensible, threatening—or a put-on. The pop artist looks at mass culture naively and sees beauty in its regular patterns; like an anthropologist exhibiting Indian basket-weaving, Warhol shows us our folk art—soup cans. His message—the Emperor has no clothes, but that’s all right, in fact it’s beautiful—takes acceptance of image for essence to its logical extreme.”

- Ellen Willis, in “Dylan,” originally published in Cheetah in 1967 and reprinted in a recent anthology of her rock criticism, Out of the Vinyl Deeps, on p. 17. How Blonde on Blonde led her to such a prescient discussion of postmodernism in rock music is anybody’s guess, but she did it and here’s the proof.

"The record’s weird. It’s different, and I don’t think it’s what anyone is..."

Wed, 14 Mar 2012 21:02:00 -0700

“The record’s weird. It’s different, and I don’t think it’s what anyone is expecting. Some people are going to be mad. Then again, some people get mad as soon as you put out a second record. Some people are like, I only like the answering machine tapes when they were leaving messages for each other before they had even met. All I like to listen to is Brent leaving messages for Brann saying, Hey man, I hear you’re looking for a guitar player.”

- Drummer Brann Dailor, discussing Mastodon’s The Hunter in Decibel magazine, October 2011, p. 68. Funny! But it still can’t beat Dawn, Buffy’s sister in Buffy the Vampire Slayer, proclaiming, “I’m very into Britney Spears’ early work, before she sold out, so mostly her, um, finger painting and macaroni art. Very underrated.” Poking fun at hipsters—still entertaining ten years on.

"They want too much. Last young girl I had said, ‘I want you to do it to me for two..."

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:44:59 -0800

“They want too much. Last young girl I had said, ‘I want you to do it to me for two hours.’ I said, ‘That’s your decision. You can get two hours of some bullshit, or you can get four and a half minutes of some dynamite.’”

- Tracy Morgan, expressing what I hope is at least a little modesty, in New York magazine, March 5, 2012, p. 10.

"Hair is the first thing. And teeth are second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he’s..."

Sun, 04 Mar 2012 19:40:00 -0800

““Hair is the first thing. And teeth are second. Hair and teeth. A man got those two things he’s got it all.””

- James Brown, in his autobiography The Godfather of Soul, p. 88. I’m bald, so this doesn’t bode well for me. I guess I better start flossing!

This is my daughter playing with my iPod. Click on an image to...

Sun, 12 Feb 2012 12:10:00 -0800

This is my daughter playing with my iPod. Click on an image to see them each full size.

The Musical Genius as an Invented Tradition in Josquin Scholarship

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 11:24:00 -0800

Term Paper, Renaissance Music, April 20, 2009:

By all accounts, the role of the composer in the Renaissance was very different from the role of the composer in the Romantic era. And yet, many scholars continue to force a Romantic, Beethovenian model of the suffering musical genius onto composers of the past, especially Renaissance composer Josquin des Prez. The typical narrative begins with evidence of Josquin’s greatness, and proceeds to provide evidence of this greatness outside of the historical context of the Renaissance composer. Some of these narratives, such as the ones discussed below, conform to larger trends in historical thought such as modernist historicism and invented tradition. I apply critiques of both of these trends to the kind of modernist Josquin scholarship perpetuated in the recent Josquin Companion, and use these critiques to unveil hidden political agendas prevalent in Josquin scholarship from the 1960s to the present.

In his introduction to The Josquin Companion, Richard Sherr recites well-worn evidence of Josquin’s timeless and universal greatness. Like many other Josquin scholars, he quotes sixteenth-century Swiss humanist Henricus Glareanus, who asserts that Josquin is a genius, and the equal of Virgil.[1] He also quotes Martin Luther, who claims Josquin is so masterful he can make notes bend to his will, unlike lesser composers who must resign themselves to the will of the notes.[2] Sherr also promotes Josquin’s commercial clout, explaining that the first volume of polyphonic masses ever printed was devoted entirely to Josquin’s polyphonic masses, thus proving Josquin’s popularity.[3] But ultimately, however, Sherr asserts that Josquin is great because his music stirs the emotions better than all other composers.[4] Therefore, all in all, Josquin is great because his music stands the test of time: it remains both historically and aesthetically important, and perennially popular and moving.

Since at least the 1960s, scholars have sought to quantify Josquin’s greatness by establishing a definitive canon of his collected works. This would allow us to define his style, and thus prove that he is in fact the greatest composer of his generation, if not of the Renaissance, or of all time. Unfortunately, many pieces attributed to Josquin are considered inauthentic, and much of The Josquin Companion is devoted to parsing through works attributed to Josquin to determine what should and should not be considered the work of the master. Given his assumedly high level of craft, the best pieces attributed to Josquin are considered authentic, whereas pieces considered inferior “surely could not be Josquin.”[5] According to Sherr, “even if all the works that people want to discard were removed and all that was left was the smaller repertory of works, those works would be enough to justify his contemporary and posthumous reputation.”[6]

And what is that reputation? Joshua Rifkin explains that

Josquin is remarkably versatile and inventive, more than any other composer of his time, and his inventiveness is to be found in all the genres in which he composed, from the constructive world of the cantus-firmus mass to the freer world of motets and chansons and even instrumental pieces. Further, this inventiveness is to be found at all levels of his musical output, from large-scale structure to the surface elements of counterpoint and melodic invention, down to the details of motivicity.[7]

Of course, Rifkin’s analysis requires the context of a defined canon of works, and the relationship of that canon to the canons of other, supposedly lesser composers. This is obviously the kind of analysis that perpetuates the need for an authentic Josquin canon. And within these canons, Rifkin praises Josquin for his versatility and inventiveness. Note that if you substitute Romantic era genres like “symphonies” and “piano sonatas” for “motets” and “chansons” in the above quotation, Rifkin could just as easily be describing Beethoven.

In her article “The Apotheosis of Josquin des Prez and Other Mythologies of Musical Genius,” Paula Higgins in fact claims that early music scholars apply the same “universalizing rhetoric of genius” to Josquin as is applied to Beethoven, and with troubling results.[8] Higgins explains that

The ideological refashioning of Josquin in the image of Beethoven has simultaneously shaped and derailed the intellectual trajectory of early music scholarship … by privileging a discourse of musical genius in the service of which, among other concerns, the composer’s canon is being decimated beyond historical recognition, and the richness and complexity of the musical culture of which he was a vital art risks being overshadowed and obfuscated by the disproportionate amount of attention invested in his singular accomplishments.[9]

In her article, she traces this “privileging of musical genius” back to Edward Lowinsky’s two-part article “Musical Genius—Evolution and Origins of a Concept,” published in 1964. Lowinsky argues that the concept of a musical genius begins not in the 18th century, but as far back as the Renaissance. As proof, for instance, he explains that the epithet “divine” was first applied to secular celebrities in the Renaissance, and the Renaissance was the first period of time when composers were described as having an extraordinary personal and psychological constitution.[10] Coincidently, these are all attributes of the 18th and 19th century idea of genius. As is well known, Josquin was described as having a difficult personality, melancholy and despair, and is reputed to only compose when he wanted to, and not when asked, and that he revised his compositions until they were “perfect.”[11] Lowinsky insists that, in the surviving descriptions of Josquin, “a picture emerges of an altogether original character, endowed with a strong temperament and a deep sense of obligation to his genius, an individual utterly unwilling and unable to compromise in matters of his art.”[12] According to Lowinsky, “Josquin des Prez was to the Renaissance musician the very incarnation of musical genius.”[13]

Tellingly, Higgins describes Lowinsky’s Josquin as “Lowinsky’s own intellectual construct, heavily indebted … to nineteenth-century German discourses of musical genius.”[14] Among these discourses is the perceived connection between a character who disregards the rules of social etiquette and a composer who breaks the rules of composition for expressive purposes.[15] There is also, of course, the Beethovenian model of the composer as a genius who obsesses over a piece of music until it is perfect, which is contrasted with the composer as craftsman who, like Obrecht, is famous for completing an entire mass in one day. In every example, Lowinsky discusses Josquin’s genius within the paradigm of genius established by Beethoven.

Though Lowinsky is not alone in comparing Josquin to Beethoven, his article is a perfect example of the trend of Renaissance scholars applying the model of the Beethovenian hero to composers as far back as the Renaissance. Though this comparison can be fruitful, analyses of documents such as Castiglione’s Book of the Courier suggest that the concept of the composer as a creator of a fixed musical art-object may be a fairly recent social construction, and not relevant to composers of the Renaissance. As Castiglione makes clear, music is some kind of activity rather than a fixed and tangible work of art, and a score is only one of several references a performer may use to create music during the Renaissance.

As Richard Taruskin relentlessly insists, the score is not always the definitive edition of a piece of music, especially of music in the Renaissance. As Taruskin puts it, “we tend to think of the Western musical tradition as a literate one, permanently preserved in written artifacts,” but we must remember that “the written artifacts have always been mediated by oral traditions.”[16] The score, as a product of a composer, is therefore merely one component in a complex and flexible musical environment—an environment that by all accounts was quite different in the Renaissance than the musical environments of the Romantic era or the present. However, despite this obvious cognitive dissonance, Lowinsky, et al., continue to perpetuate this master narrative of the isolated musical genius.

This kind of narrative is typical of a modernist historicism as defined by Karl Popper in his Poverty of Historicism.[17] Modernist historicism includes an historical perspective that seeks familiar trends over a long period of time, and in a variety of historical developments. Put bluntly, this kind of historicism will group disparate historical events into a fixed set of possible historical grand narratives. In contrast, contemporary historicism—which Popper confusingly calls “historism,”—seeks to understand historical doctrines within their own historical context. In other words, historicism wishes to understand historical events and artifacts within their own contexts, and not through the lens of the present. Of course, the lens of the present is unavoidable. As historian Charles Beard explains, “any written history inevitably reflects the thought of the author in his time and cultural setting.”[18] However, in the context of this newer historicism, it is understood that we can never truly understand or recapture the past, and though any historical reconstruction is flawed, it remains valuable. For our purposes, perhaps the main difference between these two kinds of historicism is in the historian’s awareness of how much he or she is projecting the present on the past.

In the case of the musical genius in the Renaissance, Lowinsky is clearly compiling any evidence available that will support his grand narrative and his political agenda. Like a modernist historicist, he begins with the fixed narrative of the genius, and then looks for evidence to support his fixed narrative. For instance, Higgins points out that Glarean’s remarks about Josquin’s genius, and difficult creative process, are interpreted out of context.[19] Higgins claims that Glarean

systematically uses the word ingenium to describe the creative gifts of Antoine Brumel, Gregory Meyer, Johannes Ockeghem, Heinrich Isaac, Ludwig Senfl, Jacob Obrecht, and Antoine Fevin, as well as Josquin. In every case, the translator elected to render the word ingenium as ‘talent’ or ‘skill’ for these [other] composers, whereas for Josquin, ‘genius’ is often substituted.[20]

Higgins also claims that though Josquin is praised by Glarean, and that Glarean does discuss Josquin’s more laborious compositional process, Glarean also praises Obrecht, and specifically praises Obrecht’s ability to write quickly and on command. Higgins concludes, “It is questionable whether ‘painstaking effort’ necessarily carried the aesthetic value that has been retrospectively attributed to it.”[21]

Obviously, Lowinsky builds his case beginning with a grand narrative of the musical genius, and not beginning with the historical evidence. This modernist historicism tends to recontextualized evidence that can fit into his narrative, and disregard evidence that does not fit in his narrative. As Higgins points out, this leads to “the richness and complexity of the musical culture of which Josquin was a vital art … being overshadowed and obfuscated by [a] disproportionate amount of attention [being] invested in [Josquin’s] singular accomplishments.”[22]

This modern historicist narrative makes sense when considering that Lowinsky begins his article expressing his political need for the musical genius to counteract an age of total serialism and composition based on chance operations—in other words, an age when the role of the composer is assumedly minimized.[23] I further interpret his introduction to say that total serialism is an antithesis to creativity, and that the minimization of the composer represents the symptom of a larger dehumanized bureaucracy. In this context, he presents the origins and concept of the musical genius as a means to counteract this bureaucratic trend, and to reestablish the Romantic-era paradigm of the musical genius and the cult of the art-object as an authoritative and authentic musical paradigm, especially in comparison to serialism, which he deems inauthentic.

This need to build a tradition rooted in something primordial to reclaim a space of authority is an historical trend discussed at length in the influential text The Invention of Tradition. In his introduction, Eric Hobsbawm explains that, historically, traditions that appear to be quite old can in fact be recent in origin, and quite often invented.[24] Hobsbawm defines an invented tradition as a set of practices, like in a ceremony, that perpetuate a society’s accepted norms and rules of behavior, and imply continuity with an historic past.[25] However, it is essential to note that this continuity is often factitious, or artificial.[26] In fact, these traditions tend to preserve a fixed and formalized practice within a society to counteract a dangerous and constantly changing modern world.[27] In many cases, it is a political action to maintain stability in a seemingly chaotic present full of disruption and obsolescence.

Invented traditions frequently occur when “the rapid transformation of society weakens or destroys social patterns for which ‘old’ traditions had been designed … or when … old traditions and their ‘institutional carriers’ … no longer prove sufficiently adaptable and flexible.”[28] Notice that Lowinsky constructs a lineage of musical genius back to the Renaissance—the very beginnings of our conception of the Western classical composer—and he does this in reaction to the changing role of the composer within serialism and music composed using chance operations. Beyond this, he is also writing in America, where composers are increasingly confined to academia, which can be interpreted as a break from the tradition of musical genius within the German romantic imagination.

In other words, in a moment of rapid societal transformation, Lowinsky panics and constructs a tradition of primordial musical genius to add weight and authority to his political agenda. When the Romantic musical genius role is no longer flexible or adaptable enough to succeed within modern capitalism, Lowinsky invents a tradition of musical genius that can be traced back into the depths of history, in an attempt to reestablish its viability as a worldview. In an era when the composer may be considered obsolete—which is admittedly an extreme perspective—Lowinsky promotes a fixed set of norms, rules and practices that create stability in a changing world.

Of course, Lowinsky is not alone—this analysis can extend to the authors of The Josquin Companion as well. In a situation where so little evidence remains of Josquin beyond his written works and the admiration of a few peers, scholars tend to flock towards something fixed and concrete—something tangible and knowable. With so little to go on, perhaps scholars turn to the idea of the genius to add authority to a field that requires a great deal of speculation and leaps of faith.

Though discussing Josquin’s greatness and connecting it to our contemporary model of the musical genius is understandable and has its own benefit, it seems negligent to assume that the ideas expressed in The Josquin Companion and in Lowinsky’s work capture the role of the composer in the Renaissance. As Rob C. Wegman explains in his chapter “Who Was Josquin?,”

The ‘true’ Josquin and his ‘authentic’ canon (if they can be recovered) … reflect present-day interests, and may not remotely resemble sixteenth-century perceptions of the composer… . The ‘real’ Josquin … is not knowable in any absolute sense: he is real only insofar as he is real to us, or to his contemporaries, or to himself.[29]

Rather than dissuade Renaissance scholars from discussing Josquin’s style, or the authenticity of his canon, perhaps Wegman and Higgins simply urge scholars to consider the assumptions they make concerning Josquin and his compositions, and make them transparent to the reader. Though considering Josquin through the lens of Beethoven is fascinating, as Higgins notes, it can be historically destructive.

Bibliography

Castiglione, Baldassare. “From Il libro del cortegiano.” In The Renaissance. Edited by Gary Tomlinson. Vol. 3 of Strunk’s Source Readings in Music History, rev. ed., edited by Leo Treitler. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1998.

Fenlon, Iain, ed. The Renaissance: from the 1470s to the end of the 16th century. Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire: Macmillan, 1989.

Garratt, James. Palestrina and the German Romantic Imagination: Interpreting Historicism in Nineteenth-Century Music. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002.

________. “Prophets Looking Backwards: German Romantic Historicism and the Representation of Renaissance Music.” Journal of the Royal Musical Association 125, no. 2 (2000): 164-204.

Goehr, Lydia. The Imaginary Museum of Musical Works: An Essay in the Philosophy of Music. Rev. ed. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Headlam Wells, Robin, Glenn Burgess and Rowland Wymer, eds. Neo-Historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History and Politics. Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000.

Higgins, Paula. “The Apotheosis of Josquin des Prez and Other Mythologies of Musical Genius.” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57, no. 3 (Autumn 2004): 443-510.

Hobsbawm, Eric and Terence Ranger, eds. The Invention of Tradition. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983.

Lowinsky, Edward E. “Musical Genius—Evolution and Origins of a Concept.” The Musical Quarterly 50, no. 3 (July 1964): 321-340.

________. “Musical Genius—Evolution and Origins of a Concept—II.” The Musical Quarterly 50, no. 4 (Oct. 1964): 476-495.

Sherr, Richard, ed. The Josquin Companion. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000.

Taruskin, Richard. Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995.

Walls, Peter. History, Imagination and the Performance of Music. Woodbridge, Suffolk: The Boydell Press, 2003.

[1] Richard Sherr, The Josquin Companion, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 2.

[2] Ibid.

[3] Ibid.

[4] Ibid., 4.

[5] Ibid., 8.

[6] Ibid., 10.

[7] Ibid., 8.

[8] Paula Higgins, “The Apotheosis of Josquin des Prez and Other Mythologies of Musical Genius,” Journal of the American Musicological Society 57, no. 3 (Autumn 2004): 447.

[9] Ibid.

[10] Edward E. Lowinsky, “Musical Genius—Evolution and Origins of a Concept—II,” The Musical Quarterly 50, no. 4 (Oct. 1964): 484.

[11] Ibid., 484-85.

[12] Ibid., 485.

[13] Ibid., 491.

[14] Higgins, 454.

[15] Lowinsky, 487.

[16] Richard Taruskin, Text and Act: Essays on Music and Performance (New York: Oxford University Press, 1995), 179.

[17] Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess and Rowland Wymer, “Introduction,” Neo-Historicism: Studies in Renaissance Literature, History and Politics, eds. Robin Headlam Wells, Glenn Burgess and Rowland Wymer (Cambridge: D. S. Brewer, 2000), 2.

[18] Ibid., 4.

[19] Higgins, 461.

[20] Ibid., 483.

[21] Ibid., 462.

[22] Ibid., 447.

[23] Lowinsky, “Musical Genius—Evolution and Origins of a Concept,” The Musical Quarterly 50, no. 3 (July 1964): 321.

[24] Eric Hobsbawm, “Introduction: Inventing Traditions” in The Invention of Tradition, eds. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 1.

[25] Ibid.

[26] Ibid., 2.

[27] Ibid.

[28] Ibid., 4.

[29] Rob C. Wegman, “Who Was Josquin?,” in The Josquin Companion, ed. Richard Sherr (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 46.

"With its perfectly crafted zingers, waves of pure heartbreak, and a visual thread count so dense it..."

Thu, 19 Jan 2012 18:07:39 -0800

“With its perfectly crafted zingers, waves of pure heartbreak, and a visual thread count so dense it may actually qualify as a controlled substance, ‘Downton Abbey’ is situated precisely on the Venn diagram where ‘prestige’ meets ‘guilty pleasure’: it’s as much cake as it is bread. And, sue me, I like cake.”

- Emily Nussbaum, from her review of the TV shows “Luck” and “Downton Abbey,” published in The New Yorker. She writes, “I like cake,” and thus provides an entire aesthetic philosophy whittled down into an admission with three simple words. I’m on board Emily. All the way.

Liner Notes

Sun, 08 Jan 2012 12:21:00 -0800

This Christmas I handed out two homemade mix CDs to friends and family: one has the unoriginal title “Alternative Nation,” and the other, “Robert’s Robyn,” recreates critic Robert Christgau’s preferred version of Robyn’s Body Talk. Three years ago I handed out fun single-CD histories of both rap and jazz, and this is my attempt to make it some kind of holiday tradition. I also asked my friend, visual artist Wes Stitt, to provide album covers for this year’s selections; the cover for “Robert’s Robyn” is posted above.

As you may expect, “Alternative Nation” is an overview of early ‘90s rock, which we called “alternative” back in the day, though that label doesn’t seem as necessary or descriptive now as it once was. Here’s the track list:

1. R.E.M., “Pop Song 89”

2. Nine Inch Nails, “Head Like a Hole”

3. Sonic Youth, “Kool Thing”

4. Pixies, “Velouria”

5. Nirvana, “Smells Like Teen Spirit”

6. Pearl Jam, “Alive”

7. Ministry, “Jesus Built My Hotrod”

8. L7, “Pretend We’re Dead”

9. Radiohead, “Creep”

10. Smashing Pumpkins, “Today”

11. Liz Phair, “Divorce Song”

12. The Breeders, “Cannonball”

13. Beck, “Loser”

14. Soundgarden, “My Wave”

15. Hole, “Miss World”

16. Pavement, “Gold Soundz”

17. Veruca Salt, “Seether”

18. Green Day, “Burnout”

19. Elastica, “Connection”

20. PJ Harvey, “Down by the Water”

Perhaps it would have been hipper of me, and maybe even easier, to compile mostly lesser-known favorites for this CD. But I decided instead to stick with the fairly obvious stuff, presented chronologically. Except for “Down by the Water,” the songs end in 1994, which is the year many of my friends and I graduated from high school. I expected the CD to be nostalgic, and I expected it to rock, but I didn’t expect so many of the songs to be feminist and political, and then, further, to present these lyrical themes so baldly on each song’s surface. While I read plenty of press at the time concerning the “apathy” of such songs and performers, I didn’t remember this apathy carrying so much philosophical and political weight. And where hits by Tracy Chapman, Midnight Oil, Springsteen and Mellencamp from the ‘80s brought attention to the Other who struggled to get by both emotionally and economically within a large, relatively wealthy Western society, these ‘90s writers scoffed at the validity of the entire Western system and presented mainstream society as the Other. They naturalized what was once considered the margins, both musically and lyrically. And many of them were funny about it. And smart. Super smart.

None of this is news, of course, but I was surprised to realize just how present this ideology remains in the musical artifacts. R.E.M. parodies small talk and the basic assumption that verbal communication is inherently effective in “Pop Song 89.” Sonic Youth ends the bridge of “Kool Thing” with the sarcastic, “when you’re a star, I know that you’ll fix everything,” which digs hard into the self-righteousness of such late ‘80s star-activists as Sting and Peter Gabriel. L7’s “Pretend We’re Dead” is a call to political action: the title hook is set up by, “they’ve got us in the palm of every hand (when we)” and continues, “they can’t hear a word we said/when we pretend we’re dead.” And I’m convinced Veruca Salt’s “Seether” is about the very real fear surrounding the untapped power of the feminine spirit.

And so on. Even less direct songs such as “Loser” and “Smells Like Teen Spirit” are wracked with disillusionment, and yet the speakers do not come across as powerless. At the time I figured the apathy discussed was a kind of resignation. But now I don’t think so. I think it was an assertion that a better world requires changes at a fundamental level. And in retrospect that fundamental change seems to have been a dislodging of the primacy of modernism in our daily lives. Not that we aren’t still trying to do things better, faster and stronger. But modernism isn’t the driving engine of mainstream society like it once was. Formally marginalized boutique cultures have an economic and social validity now that was not present in the 1980s. And I think this music provided a commentary for that change.

The second CD, “Robert’s Robyn,” was originally a gift to me from Robert Christgau. I met and interviewed him just after Christmas 2010, and before I left he handed me a couple of mix CDs. (I think these are CDs he was mailing to friends and family for Christmas that year.) Besides Robyn, he also gave me a Das Racist mix alluded to in the title of his review of their first two mixtapes. Anyway, I wanted to share this with my own friends and family because meeting my idol was a big deal, and I consider this gift from him a symbol of what I now consider a friendship. So here you have a small piece of an important moment in my life. The track list itself was later published in an essay for Christgau’s Rock & Roll & column at Barnes & Noble Review. Read the essay for an explanation of the CD.

Both mix CDs are burned from Apple Lossless files and are therefore CD quality. So enjoy! And Merry Christmas!

In Defense of my own Cockiness

Mon, 02 Jan 2012 11:39:00 -0800

To the apparent surprise of many of his readers, Robert Christgau posted a rather positive review of Rihanna’s latest album Talk That Talk on his Expert Witness blog two weeks ago. In the comments section, several of Christgau’s fans complained of how R.’s music is beyond terrible because 1. it is hopelessly derivative of other, better music, and, 2. tracks such as “Cockiness” and “Birthday Cake” are too overtly sexual to be of any aesthetic value. Me, I immediately put “Cockiness” and “Birthday Cake” on repeat because I find them both exhilarating on a formal level, and, truth be told, crass sex talk doesn’t really bother me very much, especially when said sex talk includes puns and wordplay. So I posted a rundown of musical events in “Cockiness” that I find particularly meaningful, and I presented my analysis in the best way I know how: via terms and methods associated with academic musicology. Here’s an excerpt:

I have a particular skill set, and music like “Cockiness” and “Cry Me a River” and “A Milli”—to choose three seemingly unrelated songs—make my brain get a buzz on in a way that I don’t read about too often. I streamed “Cockiness” for a third time today just to see if its novelty had worn off, but I still totally love it. I typed some notes as I listened, and here’s the cleaned up version:

The first thing I love is the 3 against 4 “chop. chop. chop.” sample that underlies much of the song; you notice it most when it is left unadorned right at the end. I love when producers do this at the ends of songs—Timbaland does the same thing with “Cry Me a River,” when he strips away each layer near the end to reveal the song’s astonishing, effortless complexity. I also love the fanfare horns and the “YOU!” samples that punctuate the lyrics in the pre-chorus.

Another fun surprise is the song’s structure. When you map it out, it’s not like, “wow, such complexity!” But where the different parts fall in the series compliments the whole brilliantly. It opens with a brief intro, then we get the main refrain, a verse with killer call and response in R.’s trademark vocal effect, a “pre-chorus” with the aforementioned horns and “YOU!,” and then the “I love it when you eat it” before returning to the refrain again to repeat the sequence. Then we get a bridge or “development,” then pre-chorus, “love it,” and outro breakdown. Each piece is very different, but each also fits together with the whole perfectly, and with harmony that is never actually performed; it is only suggested by the melody. Listen close and there is very little toned music aside from the voices, some of the sound effects, the “chop.” sample, and the toned bass drum. Which is kind of like “Single Ladies,” but with elements that sound less disparate to these ears. It reminds me more of “A Milli.”

I didn’t intend my post to stir up too much controversy, but it did, and the subsequent debate concerning the value and assumptions of such formal analyses of music was compelling and valuable if you enjoy discussing aesthetics. On Christgau’s blog, readers are able to thumb up or thumb down comments if they wish, and within a few minutes I had already earned a thumb down. I expected a few of these, but what I didn’t expect is for Christgau himself to immediately, and sharply, criticize the aforementioned thumb bomber, calling him or her “a know-nothing and an imbecile.” In a later post he explained that what I had written could not be refuted with just a simple thumb-bomb: that he believed my formal discussion of favorite musical events was a list of facts, and that—as long as they are accurate—could therefore not be disagreed with.

Just as compellingly, however, the thumb-bomber in question, who goes by the handle Jackson Cage, fessed up to his crime and subsequently wrote a strong defense of his opinion. He complained that my post was arrogant because of how I introduced myself as a musicologist with special skills—a detail I included so as to justify my inclusion of a potentially controversial formal analysis (see Not. Milo. Miles. post for an explanation). Jackson C., however, thought I was simply showing off how I could complete an intellectual task I expected others were not intelligent enough to do on their own, which irritated him. But, ultimately, he seemed most frustrated by how my analysis did not add up to anything of value—that I simply stated information about the song rather than actually cracking open the song’s meaning and larger value. At first I disagreed with this—I explained that the musical events create musical meaning in and of themselves, and that the matter needn’t be elaborated upon further. “Sometimes sounds are pretty when put together in a clever manner,” was the extent of my reasoning. And I left it at that.

But now I think Jackson Cage’s criticism pointed out a serious flaw in my reasoning, and now I agree my analysis was indeed missing something important. I was making too broad of an assumption concerning musical meaning and how that meaning is produced in my mind grapes. Though I still believe the formal elements in R.’s song are what arouse my cranium’s spongy head, I don’t think it’s just the confluence of these events that provides for me such a reaction—by which I mean that it takes more than just the impressive and efficient combination of musical ideas to excite me as much as this song does.

For example, in contrast, Elliott Smith’s “Waltz #2 (XO)” provides me with a similar intellectual stimulation because of how thrillingly the formal elements of it fit together and make up the larger composition. That buzz, however, is not as enjoyable to me as the one I get from “Cockiness,” and I don’t think it’s because “Cockiness” is the more formally advanced recording (though it may be). Beyond formal invention, “Cockiness” also provides the listener with more of the joy and exhilaration of the act of creation than “Waltz #2,” and perhaps that joy is what is so infectious for the listener who comprehends such formal elements. In contrast, though the Smith recording is just as formally meticulous and perfectly rendered, I find it impresses the listener with its precision and invention rather than encouraging the listener to participate in the thrill of the creative act. In other words, I find that the Rihanna recording encourages listeners to participate in the joy of clever composition, whereas the Smith merely asks us to marvel at it. For example, when I hear “Cockiness,” I envision everyone involved in the recording studio taking a victory lap and sharing high-fives. For “Waltz #2,” I expect there was more likely just a round of grins and maybe some positive nodding. Both responses are valuable, of course, but “Cockiness” gets the edge because I prefer to participate rather than to only marvel. (All of that said, perhaps “Cockiness” is the better song because it’s more fun, but I don’t even want to begin unpacking that line of reasoning.)

So, in summary, the formal elements I provided in my analysis are ultimately meaningful to me because of how they coalesce in Rihanna’s “Cockiness,” which, again, for me, reproduces the joy and excitement of the act of creation. And this is possible, in this instance, because the components of this particular musical artifact are presented in a manner that the sensitive ear can easily parse and appreciate (and enjoy). Taken a step further, these musical events can be deeply enjoyed, rather than only appreciated, which for me—and maybe you—is the icing on the cake.

"There seems to be something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares..."

Thu, 22 Dec 2011 11:03:00 -0800

“There seems to be something in the chill breezes which scurry through the long, narrow thoroughfares productive of rueful thoughts. Not poets alone, nor artists, nor that superior order of mind which arrogates to itself all refinement, feel this, but dogs and all men. These feel as much as the poet, though they have not the same power of expression. The sparrow upon the wire, the cat in the doorway, the dray horse tugging his weary load, feel the long, keen breaths of winter. It strikes to the heart of all life, animate and inanimate. If it were not for the artificial fires of merriment, the rush of profit-seeking trade, and pleasure-selling amusements; if the various merchants failed to make the customary display within and without their establishments; if our streets were not strung with signs of gorgeous hues and thronged with hurrying purchasers, we would quickly discover how firmly the chill hand of winter lays upon the heart; how dispiriting are the days during which the sun withholds a portion of our allowance of light and warmth. We are more dependent upon these things than is often thought. We are insects produced by heat, and pass without it.”

- Theodore Dreiser, in Sister Carrie, pp. 87-88. Hey, maybe capitalism and Christmas aren’t such a bad combination.

"The finale in an automated parking garage in Mumbai (yes, the movie goes from Dubai to Mumbai)..."

Sat, 17 Dec 2011 16:41:57 -0800

“The finale in an automated parking garage in Mumbai (yes, the movie goes from Dubai to Mumbai) suggests the rising and falling elevators of ‘Donkey Kong,’ and the suspense is heightened — as is everything else — by composer Michael Giacchino, who does more variations on Schifrin’s Mission: Impossible theme than Beethoven did on Diabelli’s.”

- David Edelstein, in his review of Mission: Impossible—Ghost Protocol, published in New York Magazine. More variations on the M:I theme “than Beethoven did on Diabelli’s”! Tee-hee!

"We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia. Every day and night we repaired to one of those..."

Fri, 02 Dec 2011 09:49:00 -0800

“We discovered and enjoyed the only true Bohemia. Every day and night we repaired to one of those palaces of marble and glass and tilework, where goes on a tremendous and sounding epic of life. Valhalla itself could not be more glorious and sonorous. The classic marble on which we ate, the great, light-flooded, vitreous front, adorned with snow-white scrolls; the grand Wagnerian din of clanking cups and bowls, the flashing staccato of brandishing cutlery, the piercing recitative of the white-aproned grub-maidens at the morgue-like banquet tables; the recurrent lied-motif of the cash-register—it was a gigantic, triumphant welding of art and sound, a deafening, soul-uplifting pageant of heroic and emblematic life. And the beans were only ten cents.”

- O. Henry, in his short story “The Plutonian Fire.” The quote is from p. 8 in Selected Stories of O. Henry, as published by Barnes & Noble Classics. Delicious descriptions of sound punctuated by the brilliantly unpretentious last line. Hilarious!

"[Ellen] Willis’s partisans aver that she got out [of rock criticism] while the getting was..."

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 14:30:13 -0800

“[Ellen] Willis’s partisans aver that she got out [of rock criticism] while the getting was good, while [Paul] Nelson’s mourn the loss of his genius. I believe the opposite. Nelson was right to get out. Rock’s hero quest has been a dead end since circa 1980 — there’s Springsteen, that’s one, and then there’s, well, Bono, who it’s impossible to imagine Nelson taking seriously for a host of reasons good and bad. But I think Willis would have been better off staying. She was a powerful thinker, and though she never wrote enough she almost always wrote well when she did. But as someone who spent 15 years extricating himself from her politics and is so glad he did, I say continued attention to her beat would have changed those politics for the better, sensitizing her to mass pleasures, countercultural anxieties, class antagonisms, and racial contradictions she lost touch with. Mere attention wouldn’t have done it, though — she would have had to enjoy it. And it’s my guess that for writers as gifted as Willis and Nelson never to have found language to describe music means that in the end they didn’t enjoy music for all it’s worth. When Ellen and I were feeling our way through the music of the ’60s, we scoffed at such notions. But we were wrong.”

- Robert Christgau, in his article “Pioneer Days,” just published online at the Barnes & Noble Reader. This leaves me completely breathless. He’s not my favorite writer for nothing.

"It’s no coincidence that Gen X’s greatest artistic legacy is probably grunge, which is..."

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 10:08:00 -0800

“It’s no coincidence that Gen X’s greatest artistic legacy is probably grunge, which is all about glorifying marginalization and alienation. Millennials, though, have been forced to live lives on the periphery, when they had always expected that they would be at the center. As [Noreen] Malone points out [in her article “The Kids Are Actually Sorta Alright”], the Fleet Foxes, led by 25-year-old Robin Pecknold, sing about thinking that they were ‘special snowflakes’ but finding that they are in fact ‘cogs in some great machinery.’ In contrast, the most famous musician from Generation Catalano is probably 34-year-old Kanye West, who actually is something of a special snowflake—and at the same time that he has released some of the best music of the last few years (and gotten very rich off of it), he’s also been engaged a very public battle with himself. Like West, Generation Catalano is never fully comfortable with its place in the world; we wander away from the periphery and back again.”

- Doree Shafrir, from her article “Generation Catalano” over at Slate. Recommended by Aaron Foster, a friend and cheese importer who is having his (deserved) five minutes of fame over at NPR as I type this. Malone’s article was published in New York Magazine.

"If the Red Hot Chili Peppers acoustically covered the 12 worst Primus songs for Starbucks, it would..."

Wed, 09 Nov 2011 08:01:00 -0800

““If the Red Hot Chili Peppers acoustically covered the 12 worst Primus songs for Starbucks, it would still be (slightly) better than this. ‘Loutallica’ makes SuperHeavy seem like Big Star.””

- Chuck Klosterman, in his review of the Lou Reed/Metallica collaboration Lulu at Grantland. For non-nerds: SuperHeavy is Mick Jagger’s recent (competing?) supergroup with Joss Stone, Dave Stewart, Damien Marley, and A. R. Rahman. Big Star released Radio City in 1974; you should own it.

"To speak of the numbers that underlie both musical plays and films is to speak of … the..."

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 06:02:00 -0800

“To speak of the numbers that underlie both musical plays and films is to speak of … the complex interplay of lyric and music, word sound and musical sound, verbal idea and musical idea that marks the best American film and theater songs … Americans hear and, consequently, understand these verbal-musical bundles automatically; the words and music of the best American film and theater songs fit so snugly that their conjunction seems ‘natural.’ Only by pulling words and music apart does one hear careful art coyly masquerading as simple nature.”

- Gerald Mast, in Can’t Help Singin’, pp. 3-4. “The interplay of lyric and music,” “word sound and musical sound,” “verbal-musical bundles,” and “their conjunction seems ‘natural.’” Yes, yes, yes, and yes. Words matter. Words are musical. Go forth. Tell others. I heart American song. It is the site onto which I demonstrate my patriotism ;)

EW Jazz Poll: Best Jazz Albums of the 1960s

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 14:13:00 -0700

Today I revealed the results of the Expert Witness community’s first-ever jazz album poll over at Robert Christgau’s MSN.com music blog. For this poll I asked voters to choose their ten favorite jazz albums recorded in the 1960s. Voters could define “favorite” and “jazz” however they wished, and were asked to allocate points to each of their ten albums as per the Village Voice’s Pazz & Jop poll’s points system. A full list of the EW Jazz Poll’s rules is available here. I wrote some pre-game commentary here, and some post-game commentary and individual ballots are available in the comments section of Christgau’s MSN blog. Below are the results, compiled from 29 ballots. Please note that Robert Christgau did not vote in this poll.

1. Miles Davis, In a Silent Way 238 (19)

2. John Coltrane, A Love Supreme 233 (17)

3. Charles Mingus, The Black Saint and the Sinner Lady 136 (9)

4. Miles Davis, The Complete Live at the Plugged Nickel 92 (7)

5. Albert Ayler, Spiritual Unity 80 (7)

6. Eric Dolphy, Out to Lunch 79 (8)

7. Duke Ellington, Meets Coleman Hawkins 61 (6)

8. John Coltrane, Live at the Village Vanguard 60 (5)

9. Duke Ellington, Money Jungle 58 (6)

10. John Coltrane, My Favorite Things 57 (6)

11. Duke Ellington, Far East Suite 43 (5)

12. Johnny Hodges, Everybody Knows Johnny Hodges 40 (4)

13. Bill Evans, Sunday at the Village Vanguard 40 (3)

14. Thelonious Monk, Criss-Cross 39 (3)

15. Oliver Nelson, Blues and the Abstract Truth 38 (5)

16. John Coltrane, The Complete 1961 Village Vanguard Recordings 36 (4)

17. Ornette Coleman, Ornette! 35 (3)

Roland Kirk, Rip, Rig and Panic 35 (3)

Charles Mingus, Mingus at Antibes 35 (3)

20. Gene Ammons, Boss Tenor 34 (3)

21. Miles Davis, Nefertiti 33 (4)

22. Jackie McLean, Let Freedom Ring 31 (4)

23. Duke Ellington, …And His Mother Called Him Bill 30 (4)

Thelonious Monk, Monk’s Dream 30 (4)

25. Pharoah Sanders, Karma 30 (2)

26. Dexter Gordon, Our Man in Paris 29 (3)

27. Herbie Hancock, Maiden Voyage 28 (3)

Thelonious Monk, Monk. 28 (3)

Sam Rivers, Fuchsia Swing Song 28 (3)

30. Booker Ervin, The Freedom Book 27 (3)

Cecil Taylor, Nefertiti, The Beautiful One Has Come 27 (3)

32. Horace Silver, Song for My Father 26 (3)

33. Andrew Hill, Point of Departure 24 (4)

34. Dexter Gordon, Go! 24 (2)

35. Paul Desmond & Gerry Mulligan, Two of a Mind 23 (2)

Lee Morgan, The Sidewinder 23 (2)

37. Sonny Rollins, The Bridge 22 (3)

38. Amalgam, Prayer for Peace 21 (2)

39. Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz 20 (3)

40. Jaki Byard, The Jaki Byard Experience 20 (2)

Benny Carter, Further Definitions 20 (2)

Ornette Coleman, At the Golden Circle Vol. 1 20 (2)

Sonny Rollins, Our Man in Jazz 20 (2)

44. Duke Ellington, The Popular Duke Ellington 19 (2)

Charles Mingus, Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus Mingus 19 (2)

Thelonious Monk, Live at the “It” Club 19 (2)

47. Wayne Shorter, Juju 18 (2)

48. Ornette Coleman, This Is Our Music 17 (2)

Miles Davis, Live in Europe 1967 (The Bootleg Series, Vol. 1) 17 (2)

50. Horace Silver, The Jody Grind 16 (2)

51. Sonny Clark, Leapin’ and Lopin’ 15 (2)

Gil Evans, Out of the Cool 15 (2)

Sonny Rollins, There Will Never Be Another You 15 (2)

54. Miles Davis, Filles de Kilimanjaro 14 (2)

55. Peter Brötzmann, Machine Gun 10 (2)

John Coltrane, Crescent 10 (2)

Recent album covers for the jazz group Mostly Other People Do...

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 14:43:00 -0700

MOPDTK, Forty Fort (2009)

MOPDTK, This Is Our Moosic (2008)

Ornette, This Is Our Music (1960)

Roy Haynes, Out of the Afternoon (1962)

MOPDTK, Shamokin' (2006)

MOPDTK, The Coimbra Concert (2010)

Jon Irabagon, Foxy (2010)

Sonny Rollins, Way Out West (1957)

Art Blakey, A Night in Tunisia (1960)

Keith Jarrett, The Köln Concert (1975)

Recent album covers for the jazz group Mostly Other People Do the Killing (and their saxophonist John Irabagon) parody more-famous classic jazz albums covers. And they make this jazz nerd giggle. Though there aren’t many of us jazz nerds, we remain strong. We are the <1%.

"[Slim] Gaillard stands as jazz’s premier comedian-eccentric, the hepcat as novelty artist to..."

Sat, 29 Oct 2011 10:31:00 -0700

“[Slim] Gaillard stands as jazz’s premier comedian-eccentric, the hepcat as novelty artist to end all novelty artists. Gaillard laughed in rhythm, barked in rhythm, clucked like a chicken in rhythm; he made up his own language, then adapted it to Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic, Incan; he was so fond of the suffix “rooney” (as in “You got the federation blues-o-rooney”) that when introduced to Mickey Rooney he asked what his last name was.”

- Robert Christgau, reviewing the Slim Gaillard compilation Laughing in Rhythm: The Best of the Verve Years in 1994. “He was so fond of the suffix ‘rooney’ … that when introduced to Mickey Rooney he asked what his last name was”—that, my friends, is some funny shit. Like an idiot, I didn’t realize Gaillard is the Slim in Slim & Slam. You might know “The Flat Foot Floogie.” If you don’t know it, what are you waiting for?