Tuesday, January 17, 2006
Crabby
Man I was feeling crabby all day. I'm talking Lucy Van Pelt but without the motivation to even bother pulling out the football. I may as well have just sat in bed all day as I would have accomplished the same amount of work. As it turns out, a good cure for crabbyness is a Marshall 100 watt superlead cranked up to where your ears bleed! Thank you James Marshall. Now if we can just gave one installed in my office, I'd be set.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Just Shoot!
“We had divided the world into two categories: there was flyers and there was the gig. You’re either doing the gig, which is like an hour of your life, or everything else to get people to the gig.” …Mike Watt (Our band Could Be Your Life by Micahel Azerrad)
The photo shoot for the February 18th Rudz show went surprisingly well. I woke up early to run to El Carrousel on Hilcroft to get some tamales for the troops; it was a bit of a trip but a dozen really good tamales for $7.00 is hard to beat. I made it back and, to my surprise, everyone pretty much made it on time: The Jonx, The Powers of Light and Darkness, Linus Pauling and the Red and the White. The Jonx arrived first. Nice lads and you have to admire a band that refers to their car as the Jonxmobile. The Red and the White appeared not long after. You have to love a band whose first conversation with you is one in which they try to convince you that one of the most expensive coffees in the world is excreted from an animal’s ass. [It turns out it’s true - see this about.com article] John Cramer arrived with family in tow while the LP4 arrived here and there. Steve, easily the most rock and roll member of the LP4, was hardly happy about having to arrive for a photo shoot at 10:30am. To wake up before midday is such a rarity for him that I believe that the ancestors of the Ngati Kahungunu iwi of New Zealand were said to greet such an unusual event with trepidation if not despair. Combining the early awakening with the fact that he had a 1pm studio session was simply a recipe for one bitchy dude. Luckily, he was tired enough to make his frequent announcements of “You got me for another XX minutes.” almost inaudible.
The shoot itself was pretty straightforward. I’d grown tired of the hacky idea of taking a still, painting, or photo and putting text on it. Photos seemed be a good way to highlight, not just the closing band but, all the bands and since Rosa just got into photography it seemed foolish not to try this approach. Here the idea was pretty simple, have the opening band (John Cramer’s solo effort The Powers of Light and Darkness) be the main focus simply to turn the whole poster-listing thing on its head. We decided to cast John in the Toshiro Mifune role and have the other bands “go at him”. Simple idea, but try and get 3 bands and one guy to follow instructions and it can be a bit tricky. The classic example was Will (of the Red and the White) menacing John by putting his hands in his pocket or hiding behind Lucas. But I will say that it’s pretty hard to do a shoot when you are in the East End of Houston with guys slowly driving by in pick-up trucks looking at you like you are from planet Pendejo or Maricon. Such is the price of trying to get people to come to a rock show.
The photo shoot for the February 18th Rudz show went surprisingly well. I woke up early to run to El Carrousel on Hilcroft to get some tamales for the troops; it was a bit of a trip but a dozen really good tamales for $7.00 is hard to beat. I made it back and, to my surprise, everyone pretty much made it on time: The Jonx, The Powers of Light and Darkness, Linus Pauling and the Red and the White. The Jonx arrived first. Nice lads and you have to admire a band that refers to their car as the Jonxmobile. The Red and the White appeared not long after. You have to love a band whose first conversation with you is one in which they try to convince you that one of the most expensive coffees in the world is excreted from an animal’s ass. [It turns out it’s true - see this about.com article] John Cramer arrived with family in tow while the LP4 arrived here and there. Steve, easily the most rock and roll member of the LP4, was hardly happy about having to arrive for a photo shoot at 10:30am. To wake up before midday is such a rarity for him that I believe that the ancestors of the Ngati Kahungunu iwi of New Zealand were said to greet such an unusual event with trepidation if not despair. Combining the early awakening with the fact that he had a 1pm studio session was simply a recipe for one bitchy dude. Luckily, he was tired enough to make his frequent announcements of “You got me for another XX minutes.” almost inaudible.
The shoot itself was pretty straightforward. I’d grown tired of the hacky idea of taking a still, painting, or photo and putting text on it. Photos seemed be a good way to highlight, not just the closing band but, all the bands and since Rosa just got into photography it seemed foolish not to try this approach. Here the idea was pretty simple, have the opening band (John Cramer’s solo effort The Powers of Light and Darkness) be the main focus simply to turn the whole poster-listing thing on its head. We decided to cast John in the Toshiro Mifune role and have the other bands “go at him”. Simple idea, but try and get 3 bands and one guy to follow instructions and it can be a bit tricky. The classic example was Will (of the Red and the White) menacing John by putting his hands in his pocket or hiding behind Lucas. But I will say that it’s pretty hard to do a shoot when you are in the East End of Houston with guys slowly driving by in pick-up trucks looking at you like you are from planet Pendejo or Maricon. Such is the price of trying to get people to come to a rock show.
Wednesday, December 14, 2005
Rock Radio Part II: Why the commercial rock product, it’s creators, and its consumers suck
There are a host of reasons why the Music on Clear Channel’s the Buzz sucks ass but I can generally point at some particular problems – a lack of history, Blackness, and ingenuity.
To begin Rock radio is so racially segregated that it doesn’t even know it’s own history. This is music made by people for people who think that the prime mover, the big bang of all music, was Kurt Cobain. Nothing happened before and certainly nothing Black ever occurred in rock music.
When I learned guitar, I worshipped Willie Dixon and Chuck Berry. Chicago Blues, for example, rolled out some of the greatest riffs ever and I sure as hell couldn’t ignore it even decades removed from the original recordings. Sure Led Zeppelin was stealing riffs from Dixon. Sure ZZ Top throws a knowing wink to John Lee Hooker. 70s Rockers may have had a lot of sins but at least they knew their history and openly acknowledged it enough to inspire their listeners to seek out the originals. Yet on The Buzz you have bands all seem to want to ignore anything Black. Listening to this station you’d think that Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Hazel and Sonny Sharrock never existed. How Rock became so white that James Hatfield was once quoted in Rolling Stone as saying something like “Black people can’t play metal” and nobody called him on it, I don’t know. The result is a music so disconnected from its history and so segregated that it has become the equivalent of a 10th generation copy made from a copy of a copy of a copy that was...well you get the idea.
But take away the history and there could at least be some innovation if only by dumb luck. Unfortunately Rock on commercial radio is a manufactured product with stock features – innovation is frowned upon. Do you think something that really is interesting is going to make it onto the radio? Hell no! The reason is that the radio stations are banking on lazy listeners who will stop if something sounds familiar. That’s why all these bands sound alike. The fit in the peg – play ‘em.
And the market for the Buzz is pretty clear. This is music made for white male teens in suburbs. Here is Rock that’s safe for consumption with a prepackaged rebellion that ends at “buy our product”. You want rebellion? Here is a guy with a loud guitar and tattoos. Woo! I can feel “The Man” shaking in his boots. It’s the same packaged rebellion that the Minutemen mocked when they first heard Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55”. What’s sad is that I play my 3 year old son a Pete Seeger children’s record and, in all honesty, it is much more rebellious, subversive and challenging than anything put out by these boy bands masquerading as rebellious rockers. Consider John Lennon’s “Imagine” or Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”. Those albums still hold up because their rebellion is based on ideas. On the Buzz, volume and attitude are confused for rebellion. Why? The music simply doesn’t have anything to say.
The problem for these bands is that Rock, like any art form, is something that is communicative. It must communicate not only with it’s own time but with the past and future. It must communicate not only with it’s own musical genre but with other musical genres. It must communicate not only with its place in the realm of art but in the realm of day-to-day life and the history that surrounds it. By pigeonholing Rock as this very particular thing to be consumed by a particular audience it becomes no longer art but simply a commodity - a commodity to be consumed, enjoyed, and then shit down the toilet and forgotten.
Me, I’m keeping it left of the dial where they still play music.
To begin Rock radio is so racially segregated that it doesn’t even know it’s own history. This is music made by people for people who think that the prime mover, the big bang of all music, was Kurt Cobain. Nothing happened before and certainly nothing Black ever occurred in rock music.
When I learned guitar, I worshipped Willie Dixon and Chuck Berry. Chicago Blues, for example, rolled out some of the greatest riffs ever and I sure as hell couldn’t ignore it even decades removed from the original recordings. Sure Led Zeppelin was stealing riffs from Dixon. Sure ZZ Top throws a knowing wink to John Lee Hooker. 70s Rockers may have had a lot of sins but at least they knew their history and openly acknowledged it enough to inspire their listeners to seek out the originals. Yet on The Buzz you have bands all seem to want to ignore anything Black. Listening to this station you’d think that Jimi Hendrix, Eddie Hazel and Sonny Sharrock never existed. How Rock became so white that James Hatfield was once quoted in Rolling Stone as saying something like “Black people can’t play metal” and nobody called him on it, I don’t know. The result is a music so disconnected from its history and so segregated that it has become the equivalent of a 10th generation copy made from a copy of a copy of a copy that was...well you get the idea.
But take away the history and there could at least be some innovation if only by dumb luck. Unfortunately Rock on commercial radio is a manufactured product with stock features – innovation is frowned upon. Do you think something that really is interesting is going to make it onto the radio? Hell no! The reason is that the radio stations are banking on lazy listeners who will stop if something sounds familiar. That’s why all these bands sound alike. The fit in the peg – play ‘em.
And the market for the Buzz is pretty clear. This is music made for white male teens in suburbs. Here is Rock that’s safe for consumption with a prepackaged rebellion that ends at “buy our product”. You want rebellion? Here is a guy with a loud guitar and tattoos. Woo! I can feel “The Man” shaking in his boots. It’s the same packaged rebellion that the Minutemen mocked when they first heard Sammy Hagar’s “I Can’t Drive 55”. What’s sad is that I play my 3 year old son a Pete Seeger children’s record and, in all honesty, it is much more rebellious, subversive and challenging than anything put out by these boy bands masquerading as rebellious rockers. Consider John Lennon’s “Imagine” or Marvin Gaye’s “What’s Going On”. Those albums still hold up because their rebellion is based on ideas. On the Buzz, volume and attitude are confused for rebellion. Why? The music simply doesn’t have anything to say.
The problem for these bands is that Rock, like any art form, is something that is communicative. It must communicate not only with it’s own time but with the past and future. It must communicate not only with it’s own musical genre but with other musical genres. It must communicate not only with its place in the realm of art but in the realm of day-to-day life and the history that surrounds it. By pigeonholing Rock as this very particular thing to be consumed by a particular audience it becomes no longer art but simply a commodity - a commodity to be consumed, enjoyed, and then shit down the toilet and forgotten.
Me, I’m keeping it left of the dial where they still play music.
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