MMM

Hey all, I'm finally making the move and upgrading to a real website:

www.mattmarksmusic.com

This is mainly for folks who are following this blog via an RSS reader - direct traffic to mattmarksmusic.blogpost.com will be automatically redirected to the new site.

Please update your RSS readers, my new feed is:

http://mattmarksmusic.com/feed

There's also a link to subscribe on the front page.

The new site is a big upgrade; it's still pretty bloggy - it's a Wordpress site - but there's some nice new stuff: a calendar of upcoming events, some cool pics, and a lot of tunes, surely some stuff you've never heard before.

So give it a look and thanks for reading!

Yo, check out this awesome story in the NJ Star-Ledger about badass composer, and friend, David T. Little:

"I grew up very much outside of the classical tradition, not really knowing that it existed, not knowing that composers existed or that people still wrote music," Little reflects.

At first, classical music, particularly Mozart, felt foreign and false. "It represented this polite, neat, well-packaged culture which I didn't really relate to. Aside from the musical theater, I was listening to death metal, which was the opposite of that. It was aggressive, messy -- brutal is a term that's used a lot in that genre. The more brutal it is, the better."

"Classical music struck me as living in denial. You have this music that is so perfect and that's just not true, that's not life."

But as Little searched websites for ways to become a film composer and feverishly tried to follow their instructions, he came across recommendations for certain classical works. He started with Stravinsky's "Rite of Spring." Nearly every day for months, he spent hours listening to the composition. He bought himself a score and flipped the pages while listening to his cassette -- until he could follow Stravinsky's challenging notation through the end.

"'The Rite of Spring' was huge," Little remembers. "It was such a visceral piece. It was brutal in the same way that this extreme metal was -- it acknowledges the sort of underbelly or the non-enlightenment period sorts of things about humanity."

Ditto, man. The Rite was a major turning point for me too. It was also the first piece that I didn't feel ashamed to play for my non-classical musician friends (which vastly out-numbered my classical musician friends). When in doubt I'd try and convince them of how "trippy" it was, especially when in the correct state of mind (ahem...).

What has lingered of my Rite-ophilia has been an appreciation for the effective marriage of raw, tribal emotion and extreme precision. For myself, this evolved into a love and appreciation for intense electronica - jungle/drum 'n' bass, hardcore, breakcore; for David it seems to have developed into a love for intricate metal - death, speed, math-metal, etc. Even attempting to integrate these styles into concert hall is a daunting task, but luckily for David, it's less an act of integration than it is a natural fusion. A great example of this is Sweet Light Crude, a piece written for his rock ensemble, Newspeak (you can hear SLC and more here on his website).

Read the whole article, it's good stuff. And make sure to come check out several of David's pieces (including excerpts from his upcoming Opera, Dog Days, a collaboration with the wonderful librettist, Royce Vavrek) this coming Friday (7/17/09) at Galapagos Art Space.

I don't know how to tell you how much I love these guys.

Hey folkies, I'll be performing a live remix of Rhapsody in Blue tomorrow (Wednesday, July 8th - 6:30) @ The Greene Space in NYC for the 85th anniversary of WNYC. If you're around please come check it out, tickets are FREE! :)

If for some reason you cannot make it - out of town, in hospital (really the only two acceptable reasons...) - you can listen to it live on wnyc.org. Broadcast begins at 7pm EST.

Now, if there's one thing I hate it's a straight-forward remix, so I'm a little notorious for making remixes that eschew the spirit and style of their source material, in favor for something completely different (quite often I'll take something simple and naive and make it dark and twisted - not too original I know, but I loves it!). With this source material, though, I completely respect and love it. In fact, performing a solo piano version of Rhapsody in Blue as a young teen in a recital was one of my first serious musical experiences. Irony seems a little out of place.

I'll give you a sample of what you can expect tomorrow. All of the sounds are from various recordings of the piece, with the exception of two: the Amen break, and a few 909 samples.

Enjoy:




It'll be a great show. Also performing will be Alicia and Jason Moran, Marta Eggerth, and Dave Burrell, performing music by Puccini, Antheill, and Jelly Roll Morton.

Check it out!

Yeah, I haven't really been blogging too much here of late. It's for a couple of reasons: 1. I haven't really been in the rantacular kinda place recently, where a morning's angst is translated into an epic blogpost either pro or con something on this Earth; and 2. I've been doing most of my micro-blogging on Facebook, thus the drastic cutback on the quick posts (YouTube videos, funny pictures, etc.).

But every once in a while, something on the internet is so glorious that I just have to post on it. Often it's the beginning of a wonderful new meme that will seem old, stupid, and crusty in about 3 weeks time. Well, it's not then yet, so enjoy!

Birds with arms photoshopped on them:







Looooove it!

-Something Awful

If you were at the awesomely wonderful New Music Bake Sale in April, you may remember a horror ballad of mine I sang with Ensemble de Sade, called The Exaltation of Grace Budd. Well, thanks to the recording expertise of Amir Khosrowpour (who was also rocking out on piano), you can hear it again (or for the first time!). Here you go:

The Exaltation of Grace Budd by Matt Marks:




The text is from a famous letter by the 1920s serial killer, Albert Fish, to the parents of one of his young victims.

Creeptastic!

Two.



Bits.

Happy Monday!



From Shock Treatment

P.S. I totally have a 70s Jessica Harper crush

I found this baby-tee in a 99-cent store. If anyone out there can make heads or tails of it I will buy you a beer.

I've often wondered if Shepard Smith's recent un-Fox News-worthy attitude was a result of his legitimate differences with the network - which seem to be growing - or simply a case of moral posturing, as I believe the case to be with Glenn Beck. It's tough to believe in its sincerity (I mean, he was the host of A Current Affair...) but this outburst seems to be free of pretense. He ends up looking a little foolish in this clip, but I sympathize with him. Torture is just fucking wrong, ok? Sometimes the debate beyond that - especially a biased one - does not really help matters. There have to be some things that are simply taboo in our society despite their inevitable gray areas.

In the torture debate, people often bring up the Alan Dershowitz argument: a bomb is set to detonate in a large city in an hour, we have the terrorist, does it make sense to torture him to find the bomb's location? Probably. Does that mean we should do it? No. This is a completely hypothetical question with no basis in history. Hypotheticals could be drawn up to question any one of our values, that doesn't mean we should base policy on fiction. Example: Is is ok to punch children in the face when they're naughty? No. But what if, this one time, this child was actually not a child and he had the Gary Coleman disease and you didn't punch him and then he stabbed you. Yeah, good point. Open season on punching kids? No. Punching kids is fucking wrong, case closed.

There are always opportunities for relaxing our moral boundaries and there are always justifications, but it really just comes down to sticking by those decisions. I never cut in line. And I actually kinda consider peoples willingness to cut in line to be demonstrative of a certain sociopathy. Does it make sense to cut in line sometimes? Of course. Would it benefit me on occasion? Yes. But I'll never do it, I simply will not allow my brain to go there. It's unfair and fucking wrong. That's all there is to it.

Somebody really needs to drop a death metal soundtrack over this.

Tilly and the Wall - Bad Education

(view original)

Here is a very cool interview for anyone who is interested in new business models for making money in music. NIN has probably the most progressive attitude for getting their music out there than any mainstream group, and they're still raking in the cash. It's fascinating to watch Trent Reznor geek the hell out about the "NIN brand" and revenue streams and all that. He's a pretty smart dude. Every musician would be smart to listen up.

Fox News thinks Mr. Rogers ruined a generation of children:



Yeah, um if there's one problem with the kids of today it's that they have too much self-esteem. Sigh... Is there really a need to argue this kind of psycho pseudo-social-darwinistic bullshit? Apparently there is, since Fox News is now instructing a generation of idiot parents to teach their kids that, what, believing in yourself is wrong?

I really hope the recent surge in crazy that's been coming from the right is just the last gasp of a dying movement.

P.S. and I love how they vaguely link it to some "study" to add legitimacy. The conclusion of the "study" showed what? The young adults of today watched Mr. Rogers as children. The researcher believes the young adults of today have a sense of entitlement? Well then, case closed!

Finally somebody eviscerates Glenn Beck, and I'm glad it was Stephen Colbert.
Get your Joe the Plumber hate on here.
Musikmesse 2009, the worlds' leading electronic music trade show, is currently blowing my freaking mind. I'll do a sum up post on my favorite new pieces of gear when it's all wrapped up.
Watchmen's Rorschach as the Randian ideal.
More Inglourious Basterds pics.
The FBI, getting its priorities straight.
peoplewhositinthedisabilityseatswhenimstandingonmycrutches.com

"The task of an American writer is not to describe the misgivings of a woman taken in adultery as she looks out of a window at the rain, but to describe four hundred people under the lights reaching for a foul ball. This is ceremony."
-John Cheever

"A RED STAMP. If lilies are lily white if they exhaust noise and distance and even dust, if they dusty will dirt a surface that has no extreme grace, if they do this and it is not necessary it is not at all necessary if they do this they need a catalogue."
-Gertrude Stein

"The death ... of a beautiful woman is unquestionably the most poetical topic in the world"
-Edgar Allan Poe

So I finally watched a David Cronenberg film that didn't blow me away. Actually, let me rephrase that. It blew my mind - like all Cronenberg movies - but I just don't think it really worked.

A little background: ever since watching Crash a few years ago I've been steadily working through his catalog. He is one of those rare directors that makes intelligent, bizarre films that seem to work on all levels: writing, dialogue, performances, cinematography, awesome Howard Shore scores (if you only know Shore from the LOTR scores, check out music from Crash and Videodrome). On my recent trip to Portland I came upon a wonderful little store called Strange Maine, where I found a bevy of cheaply-priced VHS tapes, which I ravaged, walking away with a sackful ranging from Don't Torture a Duckling to Sunday in the Park with George. I also picked up eXistenZ, which was at the top of my list. It had a killer cast, promised old-school Cronenberg mind-bendingness, how could it go wrong?

Well, here's how. From the beginning, the acting and the dialog across the board is as stunted and cartoony as anything from Scanners (which I tend to forgive because it was early in its career). The opening scene features a cheering crowd of extras that look and sound like they're from a badly dubbed anime. In fact the performances are so silly that some have questioned if it were intentional, reflecting the dubious-nature-of-reality-theme in the film, but I think that's a bit too convenient of an excuse. This weighs heavily against the typical Cronenbergian imagery in the film; the pulsing fleshy game controllers, technologically-constructed bodily orifices, and horrific mutant animals become more ridiculous than intriguing when framed and elucidated by awkwardly-delivered lines. It becomes camp and, even if it were intentional - which I doubt, it is not good camp.

Edelstein notes that eXistenz came after a series of "calamitous receptions" to such films as Naked Lunch, M. Butterfly, and Crash, which is why the film seems to be some sort of Videodrome-lite. I don't know if I'd characterize those films as "calamitous", since Naked Lunch and Crash quickly developed cult-status, but I understand his search for a reason for this film. The film is still adventurous, it is still complex and provocative, but it quite simply doesn't hold together, even with the added touch of there being fourth wall commentary on the feebleness of the plot, and its lack of cohesiveness, which acts as a lazy deus ex machina.

eXistenZ an oddity in an otherwise near-perfect oeuvre, made even the more odd by its normally-stellar cast. You just get the sense throughout the movie that they don't know what in the hell they are supposed to be acting about, and one can hardly expect the audience to be sold on it if the actors are not.

Mafoo's one-line sum-up review:

eXistenZ is a good movie to get baked, watch with a group of friends, and then compare to the Matrix afterwards.

Jim Webb is doing the Lord's work.
Torture is not torture when we are the torturers torturing. Get it?
Watch Mos Def slowly unravel with a few delicate jabs by Christopher Hitchens.
Tiny synth, MIDI controller, sequencer, sampler, onboard fx, built-in mic, motion sensor, and a freakin' FM radio? I can't wait for the price so I can cry myself to sleep...
I wanna be a baconographer.
Bushy eyebrows are back, finally...

(via RB)

For the record, I don't smoke pot, but I have - like our last three presidents - in the past. I do, though, see it squarely as a civil rights issue. Obama's glib dismissal of the will of the people really pissed me off. There is no reason for the law to be on the books, and there is a wonderful opportunity here to help ease the massive strain of the recession. Wake up man!

What's going on America??

I just returned last night from Mell and my post-Little Death vacation to Portland, Maine. I'll include some pics here from both the show and our trip, as well a link to the full album. Enjoy!

The Show:
(thanks for the action shots Marbot!!)

"Something... happened..."











"You're like... God!!!"


"to... me..."


"And you know Jesus is my best friend!"


"Pe-ne-traaaa-tion!!"


The Hang:


After-show glow










Dinner at Sammy's with the Folks:


Mystified by the seltzer


Mell in her Linda Richman shirt.


Steak it up Wil!!


We found ourselves in the midst of an impromptu bat mitzvah!


Trip to Maine:


You know you're out of NYC when the truck stops have NASCAR romance fiction...


Lobster cages in Portland


At J's, drinking an Amber


I look like I'm trapped in an ad for either beer, eyeglasses, or eyebrow tweezers...


Delicious oysters on the half-shell


More drinkin'. Yummy Bloody Marys!!





Melly, unsure of her first escargot endeavor


I'ma gonn eat you Pinchy!


This is how you pull the head off of a steamed clam.


Our adorable hotel.


Here's the link to the full album or you could just view the slideshow:

Just a reminder to come check out my opera, The Little Death Vol.1 this Friday and Saturday night, 9:30 each night.

Here's that info again:

The Little Death Vol.1
March 20th and 21st, 9:30PM
@ The *NEW* Tank - 354 West 45th Street (in between 8th and 9th Ave.)
Tix are $10

Check out songs from the show here

This is fucking messed up:



and it really, really reminds me of this:

Thank you Lord Google:

Google today finally announced its plans for GrandCentral, the telephony service it acquired in July 2007. GrandCentral will be reborn as Google Voice, a comprehensive suite of telephony services, including all of GrandCentral's features. In addition, Google Voice will also include an automated voicemail transcription service, the ability to send and receive text messages, and integration with your Gmail contacts. Users can now also call any number in the the U.S. for free.

Great news. I used to have a voice-mail transcription service, but it sucked and cost money. This one sounds much, much better:

The automated voicemail transcription feature looks like it will be one of the most useful functions of Google Voice. Transcriptions are fully automated and Google will mark passages in the text where the algorithm was not very confident about the transcription. Transcriptions will automatically appear in your inbox, but Google Voice can also email them to you, or even send you an SMS with the text.

Huge.

Let's hope that the phone companies are running scared like the swindling bastards they are. Exorbitant international calling rates? Paying for SMS and minutes? Hopefully that will all be a thing of the past.

Hey all, if you're looking for something rockin to see this weekend, go check out loadbang at The Tank on Sunday. loadbang ensemble is a great new group consisting of musicians from the Manhattan School of Music's new contemporary music program. It's a kickass program and the cats from there really seem to be filling in the new crop on the New York new music scene. We've invited loadbang to play on The 1st Annual New Music Bake Sale, a show Ensemble de Sade is putting on with Newspeak (more on that soon!), so you can trust me that these guys can rock a concert.

Instrumentally they're a rather unlikely quartet, but I think it works to their favor:

Jeffrey Gavett - Baritone Voice
Andy Kozar - Trumpet
Philip Everall - Bass Clarinet
William Lang - Trombone

How many new music ensembles have brass players in the majority? Awesome. Check them out, here's the deets:

loadbang

Sun, 03/15/2009 - 9:30pm

$10

New York based loadbang will be playing music of American experimentalist John Cage; premiering brand new arrangements of music by the Velvet Underground, written for loadbang by Pulitzer Prize winning composer David Lang; and playing new pieces by young composers Christopher Jette and Daniel Highman.

For the record, this is the same Tank that my Little Death show is at next weekend. Plug plug!

So I saw The Watchmen last night. I was a big fan of the comic, so I had been eagerly anticipating this film for a while. I haven't seen 300 or the Dawn of the Dead remake, so I didn't really know what to expect from Zack Snyder. Overall verdict: a success. Visually it totally works. The actors were for the most part pretty effective, although comic book dialog and film dialog are very different and it shows. They didn't fuck with the story too much (except the ending, WTF?) and most of the thematic material was present and clear.

Ok, so now to the achilles-fucking-heel of the movie: the soundtrack.

Holy crap.

The movie starts as the comic starts, with the dramatic murder of the character known as The Comedian (not really a spoiler, the film is based on this event). Shot very well, very stylish. Soundtrack: Unforgettable by Nat King Cole. Hmm... The ironic use of a touching old-timey ballad to contrast with the disturbing on-screen content. It worked when Terry Gilliam used What a Wonderful World at the end of Twelve Monkeys, but the dramatic effect of this technique has lessened ever since. But, fuck it, it's the beginning of the movie, I'll give it a shot, fine.

Next, opening credits. Song choice: The Times They Are A'Changing by Bob Dylan. In its entirety... Ok now. This is getting kinda Gumpy. Please tell me this isn't going to be one of those Time Life soundtracks where they use blatantly iconic songs from the 20th century in a lazy attempt to give weight to the scenes...

That's exactly what the entire movie was.

Every time I would be digging the film's many awesome qualities, they'd plug in these tired movie music clichés.

Here's a sampling:

Sound of Silence - Simon & Garfunkle: during a wistful ponderous scene

All Along the Watchtower - Jimi Hendrix: during an intense suspenseful scene

Ride of the Valkyries - Wagner: During a war scene

Mozart Requiem: After a main character dies...


Guh... and the rest. 99 Luftballoons, Me and Bobby McGee, KC and the Sunshine Band...

The absolute worst though: Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah during a graphic sex scene. No, not one of the many awesome, sexy covers of this song. The Leonard Cohen version. Now, I love this version, but it's anything but sexy. It made the entire audience view the sex scene as a joke. It was almost grotesque.

It was possibly the worst music I've ever heard for a film. It made Forrest Gump's soundtrack seem subtle and obscure. Some of the more scorey music was ok. Music from Koyaanisqatsi was used somewhat effectively, but you kinda got the idea that Zack Snyder was like, 'Who's a famous living composer? Philip Glass? Let's use something by him!'.

In all seriousness, during the moments when these songs were used (usually in their entirety!) it brought this highly polished professional film down to the level of a high school class project. They were an awkward blight that pulled a well-crafted film into the depths of banality. I found myself basking in the moments of the film that didn't have an iconic song forced over it, but I knew that the following scene would be ruined by another Time Life hits-of-the-20th century-ass tune.

Maybe it's because I'm a musician, but the selection of a song to complement a scene is part of the craft. Don't take it lightly or, as Gurf suggested, let Warner execs pick your songs for you.

Here's a few examples of the masters of song choice at work:

Jackie Brown opening credits - Music by Bobby Womack


A great example of a song choice that is lively but doesn't compete with the visuals and vice versa.

Barry Lyndon - Franz Schubert


Not only is this simply one of the most beautiful scenes in film history, it's also an example of perfect pacing between film and music. He lets the piece breathe and patiently edits the film to meet it.

Punch Drunk Love - He Needs Me from the Popeye Soundtrack


Totally unlikely but it completely works, gives the great vibe of that silly ignorant exuberance that accompanies new love.

Badlands - Blossom Fell by Nat King Cole


This is how you use Nat in a film. It's not quite ironic, not quite serious, yet emotionally totally honest. Hell yeah Terrence Malick.

I really wish I could post something from The Watchmen, but it's still too early. Go see it. It's a good movie based on a great comic. You'll absolutely see what I'm talking about though.

UPDATE:

I found the infamous (and quite NSFW) clip of the sex scene with Cohen's Hallelujah. Watch and cringe.

I am very pleased to announce that my new erotic Post-Christian pop opera, The Little Death Vol. 1, will be performed at The Tank on March 20th and 21st, each night at 9:30PM. The Little Death Vol. 1 is the largest project I've ever worked on and it has pretty much consumed my life for the last year or so. It would make me incredibly happy to see as many of you there as possible! :)

It features soprano Mellissa Hughes (of Newspeak, Signal, Ensemble de Sade) and I in the two singing roles, and one hell of a band:

Caleb Burhans - Vocals
Wil Smith - Organ, Keys
Nathan Koci - Accordion
James Moore - Guitar
Peter Wise - Drums

Here's the description as The Tank has it:

"Someone walking with someone, going somewhere, feeling something." -
We meet two characters, Boy and Girl. Boy then shoots Girl, and she sings an erotic Christian pop anthem through her pain.

Welcome to The Little Death Vol. 1, a new opera by Matt Marks that blends New Music, Christian pop, and breakbeats into a show that will leave you singing his twisted pop creations in your head for days. Using decidedly limited, hypnotic lyrics, The Little Death Vol.1 tells the story of two clichéd, yet bizarre, teenagers, their journey through the world of Fundamentalist Evangelism, and their attempts to keep their relationship pure in the eyes of the LORD. How does one repress their sexual energy in such a chaste life, and where might that energy inevitably manifest itself? In Marks' referencing of classic gospel songs (He Touched Me, When God Dips His Love in My Heart) along with original songs (God is My Hero, Come Boy) we soon find out where that repressed sexuality finds its new home. What else might this fervent repression unearth?

Please come join us for one (or both!) of the two nights we'll be rocking it. Tickets are a mere 10 dollars!

If you're still not convinced, listen to this track and tell me you wouldn't like to hear it live!



Here's that info again:

March 20th and 21st, 9:30PM
@ The *NEW* Tank - 354 West 45th Street (in between 8th and 9th Ave.)
Tix are $10

Hope to see you there!

Assuming you've been following the recent Rush Limbaugh news, here's a collection of comments on the phenomenon, and spectacle, of Rush Limbaugh taking the helm of the Republican Party. I'm mainly including responses from the right, for whom it's obviously much more of an issue. For the rest of us, it's just rather fun:

David Frum:

And for the leader of the Republicans? A man who is aggressive and bombastic, cutting and sarcastic, who dismisses the concerned citizens in network news focus groups as “losers.” With his private plane and his cigars, his history of drug dependency and his personal bulk, not to mention his tangled marital history, Rush is a walking stereotype of self-indulgence – exactly the image that Barack Obama most wants to affix to our philosophy and our party. And we’re cooperating! Those images of crowds of CPACers cheering Rush’s every rancorous word – we’ll be seeing them rebroadcast for a long time.

Rush knows what he is doing. The worse conservatives do, the more important Rush becomes as leader of the ardent remnant. The better conservatives succeed, the more we become a broad national governing coalition, the more Rush will be sidelined.

Daniel Larison on the Battlestar tip:

To use a pop culture analogy, Limbaugh and most conservatives believe he is something like the conservative movement’s Laura Roslin, but he is, in fact, their Baltar. As the plot of that story suggests, however, even if he were Roslin the destination to which he is leading conservatives may be a barren wasteland rather than the far green country they expect to find.

Andrew Sullivan:

There was a difference with Reagan and it is one, critical aspect of Reagan that is sorely missing today in the GOP: civility. The man was tough and ideological at times - though pragmatic enough to raise taxes, withdraw from Lebanon, do a deal with Communists, and invade Grenada rather than Iraq. But he was always civil. He would never have spent half his speech lambasting, ridiculing, demonizing, hating and riling half the country he knew he needed to persuade. He was interested in promoting ideas to address the problems of his time - not regularly naming and smearing anyone who disagreed with him. He had class.

Jonathan Chait:

I think it's pretty clear that the Democratic comeback since then has had next-to-nothing to with developing "new ideas" and almost everything to do with Republican failure, the state of the economy, and a really effective presidential nominee. yes, Democratic ideas proved more popular, but they really were the same basic ideas the party had advocated for years.

Limbaugh, then, is narrowly right. The GOP's fortunes are essentially an inverse function of the Obama administration's fortunes, which is turn depends almost entirely on the state of the world economy.

Where Limbaugh is wrong is that he thinks Americans inherently approve of the conservative agenda, and that Republican defeats can only be explained by deviation from the true faith.

Bobby Jindal:

I'm glad [Michael Steele] apologized. I think the chairman is a breath of fresh air for the party. As I said before, I think Rush is a leader for many conservatives and says things that people are concerned about.

(White House Press Secretary) Robert Gibbs:

I think maybe the best question, though, is for you to ask individual Republicans whether they agree with what Rush Limbaugh said this weekend. Do they want to see the President’s economic agenda fail? You know, I bet there are a number of guests on television throughout the day and maybe into tomorrow who could let America know whether they agree with what Rush Limbaugh said this weekend.

Yours Truly:

These propagandists are not going away just yet. They have yet to complete their destruction, which is why I still fear them, and why it is difficult to marginalize them. Limbaugh is still a source of horror, despite attempts over the last two decades to caricature him (including one on The Simpsons!), because he will still be doing damage in the years to come. The real acute pain and shame I felt over these last eight years was primarily watching my fellow countrymen and women, and in some cases friends and family of mine, fall prey to the propaganda of these evil people

As much as it may make me sound like a typical alarmist liberal ("I'm not a liberal!", I shout.), I do think that Limbaugh is pretty evil, if you define evil as one who chooses to further ones own interest with little or no interest in the well-being of others. I tend to agree with David Frum in this, a deep-red Republican I actually enjoy reading, it is in Rush's interest for the right to stay weak. His success lies in his ideals - if indeed they could be called ideals, and not merely theater - remaining peripheral and purely oppositional.

Andrew Sullivan posted a letter from a reader who works in in the arts, complaining that Obama's tax increase on the rich will negatively impact donations:

I work for a small, 5-year old non-profit arts organization in Illinois. A couple of our usual big donors have indicated we should be prepared for smaller donations this year, and possibly none in the next couple of years. The are mentioning Obama's tax plans and their need to save money now in anticipation of that. A lot of my colleagues in the not-for-profit world are really scared right now, and we are not happy with Obama.

Look, it is very convenient for rich donors to claim that Obama's tax increase on their income is the reason they are scaling back this year, especially in light of the economy crashing. Wouldn't you think it would have more to do with the recession/depression than Obama's modest tax increase? I'm anticipating this becoming a common excuse. If I'm correct - and I'm far from an economist - Obama is rolling back tax cuts that Bush gave the upper class. Donations weren't down before the cut, and they certainly didn't skyrocket as a result of those cuts, so it seems like a pretty invalid excuse.

One of the nice surprises I look forward to is seeing what new films have been added to Netflix's Watch Instantly list overnight. I get them as an RSS feed, so it's easy to stay updated. Every once in a while there'll be a day where there'll be a feast of new additions.

Here's a few of the fifty or so they added overnight:

Twilight Zone: The Movie

A Farewell to Arms

American Movie

Police Academy 6: City Under Siege

Anna Karenina

UHF

The Animatrix

Before Sunset

How Green Was My Valley

The Magnificent Seven


I thought about linking them all, but I'm lazy. Happy viewing!

Do you remember that odd little Katrina story Jindal told as you watched him, half-listening, wondering why he was talking to the camera as if it were a three-year-old who'd just wet their pants?



Well, keeping in the spirit of the whole thing, it was basically a fairy-tale. Or, to put it a bit more harshly, a flat-out fucking pile of horse-shit lie:

a Jindal spokeswoman has admitted to Politico that in reality, Jindal overheard Lee talking about the episode to someone else by phone "days later." The spokeswoman said she thought Lee, who died in 2007, was being interviewed about the incident at the time.

This is no minor difference. Jindal's presence in Lee's office during the crisis itself was a key element of the story's intended appeal, putting him at the center of the action during the maelstrom. Just as important, Jindal implied that his support for the sheriff helped ensure the rescue went ahead. But it turns out Jindal wasn't there at the key moment, and played no role in making the rescue happen.

I do not feel sorry for the Republicans. I feel pleasure at their continual failure. Call it sadism, schadenfreude, whatever. I'm just in it for teh lulz with these guys.

One of the more interesting cultural differences that I've noticed between New York and Los Angeles is the use of the car horn - and by extension, the middle finger. In L.A., where I grew up, traffic laws are much more strict. As opposed to New York, traffic lanes are not merely a suggestion, people are ticketed for cruising through stop signs, and jay-walking is actually punished - as is the use of the car horn. You see, the car horn is technically only supposed to be used to avoid an accident. I'm not sure if that is specifically the law here in NYC, but it is in Cali - they'll ticket your ass if they feel like it.

In L.A. use of the car horn usually means one of three things:

1. "I don't want to die."

2. "OMG I just saw my friend on the street."

3. "I'm outside your house, let's go where we need to go."

Recently, the increased use of the cell phone has drastically lessened the need for the horn in the latter two scenarios, leaving the language of the car horn a primarily alarmist one. Drivers in L.A. will, if given enough provocation, use the car horn in anger (if, for example, a car has been waiting at a green light for 30 seconds or so), but a more powerful, muted expression of anger and frustration is much more commonplace, the middle finger. I've seen every member of my family use their middle fingers while driving. I've seen sweet old ladies flaunting theirs, doe-eyed children, middle-finger bumper stickers and mudflaps; it's a powerfully silent - and legal - method of telling another driver to fuck off. I've waved my middle finger to tens of cars behind me. I've pointed it in fury at drivers who dangerously cut me off and I've used it with a smirk at people who were driving 10 miles under the speed limit. No one has ever been shocked to see it, and in fact they are usually flipping me a bird of their own. We each forget the instance within minutes, if not seconds. These are, of course, the L.A. rules.

In New York City the car horn has a much more rich vocabulary. In addition to the L.A. phrases, here the car horn can mean:

1. "Please move out of my way, I don't really feel like moving around you."

2. "The light just turned green and I'm letting you know in case you didn't see it."

3. "Hi cab driver, I'm also a cab driver."

4. "Hey pedestrians crossing the crosswalk, I just wanted to let you know that I'm here."

5. "Your ride to the airport is waiting outside."

6. "I don't like traffic."

When I first started driving in New York, I didn't understand the breadth of the language - I understood the car horn more as a means of communicating shock and anger - so I would answer these casual cries with my own means of expressing petty annoyance. As you may know if you've spent time in New York, a middle finger is anything but petty.

The language barrier was illuminated during my first couple trips in New York by instances like this:

Mafoo waits at red light in front of seven cars.

Light turns green and immediately six of those cars begin blaring their horns.

Mafoo thinks, "What is the holy hell is wrong with these people??" and gives 1/5th of a wave goodbye to the screaming chorus behind him.

Mafoo calmly drives down the street and notices a car driving alongside of him, he looks over.

Deeply offended and irate New Yorker stares at Mafoo with fire in his eyes and tells Mafoo he would like to fight him.

Mafoo has to think for a second before he realizes that this driver is angry because of one of Mafoo's fingers.

Mafoo ignores driver and drives on, quite confused.


This happened several times before I retrained my left arm from automatically shooting out the drivers-side window. I can understand the interpretation of the middle finger as primarily a symbol of offense, but I cannot understand the attempt at expressing any nuance with a car horn. The car horn really has only two settings: on and off. Perhaps New Yorkers, known for their penchant for chatter, feel the need to express themselves more often while in their cars. But the problem is this: the restriction of the syntax into essentially a binary system, and the added restriction of an extremely limited time-frame in which to arrange said system into anything meaningful (i.e. the window of time one has to communicate with another vehicle is usually a matter of seconds), makes for a fundamentally dumb language - one that consists of the choice between shrieking or not shrieking.

Just as the naked sound of a gun firing will never be adequate at expressing, say, serendipity, a blaring tone will never be adequate at communicating, "Look, I've had a rough day. My boss is on my ass about a deadline, I'm worried about making rent this month, and I'm worried about my Grandmother's health. If you could pay a little more attention, it would help me get home more quickly to deal with all of this.". The translation will be, "Fuck you!".

Being an artist, I am often confronted with the question of the utility of art, or the function of it. In my opinion, the most that art can ever do is attempt to communicate that we are all of infinite complexity and worth. Things that increase our empathy and awareness of others are good, things that decrease or limit our empathy and awareness of others are bad. When I'm high in a Manhattan building listening to the polyphony of car horns in the streets below me, I don't hear an uniquely urban harmony, I don't hear ancient mating calls. I hear a big chorus of "Fuck you!".

I'm over car horns. I'm so glad I don't drive anymore and my speech is no longer limited in such a terrible way. Now I take the subway, and I hear actual phrases such as "excuse me" and "could I just get by you?". It is really just so much nicer than a blaring "Fuck you!". Usually the closest thing to a "Fuck you!" I ever get is the usual "could you move that tuba on your back?". I don't even really feel the need to tell them it's actually a french horn, I just appreciate the fact that they used actual words.

This chart is fucking retarded:


(click link for full version)

It's bullshit and totally based on class. Notice how the music gets whiter as you move to the right? I love soca, gospel, Sufjan Stevens, and Beethoven, where does that put me? According to my SAT scores, I'm supposed to like The Shins. Fuck that.

While I'll agree that Lil Wayne is pretty much the worst music out there, I think that Counting Crows is a close competitor. Apparently I'm wrong though. Counting Crows is what teh smart people listen 2.

Get crackin' geniuses:



Guh... thank God the 90s are long gone.

She sounds like she doesn't really need it, odd that they would feel the need to use it.

Highlight: The auto-tune glitch mordent at 2:22.

Unintentional Ornamentation FAIL.


UPDATE:

The Academy has forced YouTube to remove the video of the performance (thanx for the tip Bandicoot), and are apparently pushing this studio version, which is conspicuously free of the glitchy live auto-tune.



If anyone finds the original, please send it my way!

I actually watched pretty much the entire show last night - well, Bill and I did flip back and forth a bit between a quite humorous comedy on the Spanish station where the bleeped out words were scribbled out with what appeared to be marker in the subtitles - and yeah, what was I talking about? Oh yeah, the Oscars. They were pretty neat I guess. Hugh Jackman managed to stave off annoyance for the most part; Ben Stiller delighted people for whom the Joaquin Phoenix meme is still funny (not I, said the worm); Queen Latifah had her auto-tune solo over pictures of dead people; the Man on Wire dude momentarily thawed my cynicism; Sean Penn dissed a bunch of people's grandkids while Mickey pretended to be happy for him; the Best Picture award was announced as my ass - who hadn't seen one of them - stared apathetically (with a shade more scorn for Benjamin Button, for whose screenwriter needs to be further punished for giving to world Forrest Gump oh so many years ago); and Tina and Steve made me smile (seriously dude, do a movie with Tina and Tyler Durden the part of your personality that makes you do shit like The Pink Panther and that movie where you have a bunch of kids or something!).

K, I'll attempt a little more focus (I was up late, please bless the mess that is my brain today!):

The freaking kumbaya-ass tributes to the nominated actors and actresses, WTF...
Who on earth wants to watch a bunch of rich artists get their ego's rub-and-tugged by other rich artists in some creepy prayer circle of feigned admiration? Show me a clip of them doing their job so I can see the work for which they are nominated. These awkward masturbatory gestures took 4 times as long as the normal way of doing it and have no relevance to anyone outside of the people in that hall. They are nominated for doing something artistic, show it to us!

K, I need more coffee. Tired ranty Mafoo out!

Use your new weapon wisely my children.

What in the holy hell is this all about:



Is this what the conservatives have resorted to? That somehow, with an Obama administration, we are headed a new civil war and a Mad Max-style dystopia with roving motorcycle gangs (they actually discuss this as a very possible outcome!)? I'm sorry - and I hate to use the term irresponsible when referring to the press - but this is the kind of irresponsible fear-mongering that leads to anti-government paranoia and events like Oklahoma City. It's rather entertaining on an ironic level, but I can easily imagine some radical, gun-loving nut somewhere taking this shit way too seriously. On one hand, it's nice to see conservatives literally going crazy as they rack up unprecedented amounts of FAIL, but on the other, it's kinda really creeping me the fuck out...

Hey all, my good friend James Moore is playing my piece for banjo and track - Like A Prayer REMIX - tonight at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater at St. Mark’s Church. James is a collaborator on several projects with me - including The Little Death, Ensemble de Sade, and the upcoming New Music Bake Sale (more on that soon!) - so I was stoked to write this piece for him. It's a straight-up remix, chock full of chopped gabber-style Madonna samples, amen breaks nearing 200bpm, and squelchy analog synths smacking that saccharine pop tonality straight into your earholes. Now imagine that with everyone's favorite bearded banjo player twanging his ass off over all over it. Worth checking out. He's playing several other pieces written for him as well, including works by Wil Smith, Lainie Fefferman, Paula Matthusen, and Matthew Welch, so my ass is in esteemed company.

Also on the program is California EAR Unit's Eric km Clark, a composer and violinist of some really cool and far-out ideas; one such is exploring the effects of forced limitations on performers (What the fuck does that mean? You'll just have to come see!). He'll be playing his own work, as well as pieces by Catherine Lamb, Travis Just, Tashi Wada, and Harris Wulfson.

Here's the relevant info:


Oh yeah, and free beer.

I'm gonna go ahead and say that I don't think the cartoon was deliberately racist - ie. portraying Obama as a monkey because he's black - but I do think it's kinda sick, and really dumb. I get it, the stimulus bill is stupid (just like a chimpanzee!) and there was a recent story about a chimpanzee that was killed after mauling its owner (topical!), if only we could kill the stimulus bill like they killed that chimp! Ummm... yeah. Look, Obama didn't write the stimulus bill - and I seriously doubt the cartoonist somehow thought this to be the case - so it doesn't really make any sense in a racist context. Unfortunately for the cartoonist and the Post, it barely makes sense in its intended context, so unsurprisingly people are looking for other meanings.

In these instances I'm torn between wanting to see the Post (News Corp) fucked in any way possible, and my own inner barometer of fairness. I'm also a fan of seeing pathetic attempts at humor being punished (and after wasting 2 minutes of my life watching this Half Hour News Hour comedic abortion, I'd especially like to get my News Corp-humor rage on...), but it's hard to see Spike and Al's backlash as anything but opportunistic. The Post's apology was half-hearted at best:

"It was meant to mock an ineptly written federal stimulus bill.

"Period.

"But it has been taken as something else - as a depiction of President Obama, as a thinly veiled expression of racism.

"This most certainly was not its intent; to those who were offended by the image, we apologize.

"However, there are some in the media and in public life who have had differences with The Post in the past - and they see the incident as an opportunity for payback.

"To them, no apology is due.

"Sometimes a cartoon is just a cartoon - even as the opportunists seek to make it something else."

As much as I hate to say it though, I'm gonna have to take the Post's side on this. If anything, they should have apologized for having a tacky, violent cartoon in a magazine that is readily available to children. But the enthusiasm with which many people call for censorship disturbs me more than hundreds of cartoons of this type ever could, even if it is a call for self-censorship. There are tons of reasons to boycott the Post - hell, I have an unofficial boycott on it, haven't bought one in God knows how long - but a tacky joke should not be one of them. The problem is, it's easier to get people riled up on one seemingly-racist cartoon then it is getting people riled up over continuous systematic right-wing jingoism spanning years. But just because I pray for the downfall of this paper (and News Corp itself) does that mean I should jump at the chance at kicking it while it's down? I'll admit though, it's mighty tempting.

I'm currently spending every free moment hard at work on my new album, so there's not too much bloggin' going on here for the time being, but I'll try and post some interesting videos and such as I see 'em.

Here's an amazingly simple and helpful explanation of the Credit and Housing crisis. I think I'm starting to get it...


The Crisis of Credit Visualized from Jonathan Jarvis on Vimeo.

I don't care what people say, this was an awesome performance:

While sitting in a hotel room in Durham, North Carolina, I was just devastated by this song from the 1972 soul documentary Wattstax. I keep watching it over and over because I can't believe how perfect it is.



That spoken intro is literally one of the best things I have ever heard. And the song and video is simply gorgeous. Damn... I gotta listen to more Stax albums.

This came up when I was trying to listen to someones music:

I think it's kinda funny, if inevitable, that people are rushing to Christian Bale's defense after the release of the tape of him verbally abusing another coworker (if you haven't heard it yet, get yourself an internet). They all seem to be along the lines of this: 'It was a very important scene, which requires an intense amount of concentration, and the director of photography stepped on the scene for the second time, actors need to be in a special emotional place for scenes, etc.'

Really? Look, I'm all about being accommodating to performing artists. People often do not understand the emotion and concentration it takes to do successfully pull off a performance. But you know what is just as important as emotion and concentration? The ability to pull it back together when something goes wrong. Maybe I'm a little more familiar with this since I'm a horn player, and the deftness with which we recover from unexpected shit is one of our primary skills. But still, can you imagine De Niro losing it like this? Hell no, because he's a fucking professional. The most I've seen him lose it is when he directly defies the clown-ass director in this awesome video, and it's still classy.

No matter how integral the scene, how egregious the DOP's mistake was, how bad of a week Bale was having, whatever. It was an unprofessional Kinski-esque temper tantrum, and a more mature actor and person would have let it go after maybe a sharp word or two, rather than a four-minute pity party.

Or maybe I'm just bitter because Mell has a crush on him...

UPDATE:

This is unbelievably funny (and the best thing Steve Martin's done in like a decade):

Here is my latest toy, a birthday present. The Korg nanoKontrol:



Isn't it just teh adorable??


Here's how tiny it is:



As you can see, it comes in three distinct manifestations. A wittle keybawd, a wittle set of dwum padz, and the wittle set of knobs and pots I gots.

A-goochie goochie goo! I wuv oo my cute wittle nanoKontrol! You're a naughty little MIDI controller aren't you? You're naughty!

Ahem. Thanks Melly. :)

I was wanting to post something about the Michael Phelps pot scandal, but Radley Balko articulates it better than I ever could, in his version of what Michael Phelps should have said, rather than apologizing:

Here’s a crazy thought: If I can smoke a little dope and go on to win 14 Olympic gold medals, maybe pot smokers aren’t doomed to lives of couch surfing and video games, as our moronic government would have us believe. In fact, the list of successful pot smokers includes not just world class athletes like me, Howard, Williams, and others, it includes Nobel Prize winners, Pulitzer Prize winners, the last three U.S. presidents, several Supreme Court justices, and luminaries and success stories from all sectors of business and the arts, sciences, and humanities.

So go ahead. Ban me from the next Olympics. Yank my endorsement deals. Stick your collective noses in the air and get all indignant on me. While you’re at it, keep arresting cancer and AIDS patients who dare to smoke the stuff because it deadens their pain, or enables them to eat. Keep sending in goon squads to kick down doors and shoot little old ladies, maim innocent toddlers, handcuff elderly post-polio patients to their beds at gunpoint, and slaughter the family pet.

Freakin word.

I really, really want one of these.

I'm sorry but the attempts to frame this horrific family murder/suicide as an economic issue is simply ridiculous. It takes much more than tough external forces to cause people to commit such acts of atrocity - it takes a massively twisted fucking psyche:

It was described as one of the most grisly scenes Los Angeles police had ever encountered: the bodies of five small children and their parents, all shot to death, in two upstairs rooms of the family's home.

But even more incomprehensible to some was the story that emerged after the bodies were found Tuesday: A father who, after he and his wife were fired from their jobs, killed all six family members before turning the gun on himself.

In a letter faxed to Los Angeles television station KABC before his suicide, Ervin Antonio Lupoe blamed his former employer for the deaths, detailing his grievance against Kaiser Permanente's West Los Angeles Medical Center, where he and his wife Ana had worked as technicians.

I'm sure times were tough, and his lost job was the excuse, but you don't go from loving your family to deciding they should die because you have some financial problems, I don't care how serious they are. I guarantee there are thousands, if not millions, of Americans in a tougher spot than this douchebag, suck it up.

Also annoying is the media's attempt to make this about the recession, as though mass murderers can be created in a matter of months because of hard economic conditions. These things tend to happen more in times of crises, but not because these psychotic individuals aren't out there, but because these situations unearth them, giving them excuses for their terror.

Please don't encourage the psychos CNN.

A friend showed me this kinda-funny Slate article about Billy Joel called The Worst Pop Singer Ever. It's cheeky, cute. Here's a bit:

I'm reluctant to pick on Billy Joel. He's been subject to withering contempt from hipster types for so long that it no longer seems worth the time. Still, the mystery persists: How can he be so bad and yet so popular for so long? He's still there. You can't defend yourself with anti-B.J. shields around your brain. He still takes up the space, takes up A&R advances that would otherwise support a score of unrecognized but genuinely talented artists, singers, and songwriters, with his loathsomely insipid simulacrum of rock.

Heh.

I'm no great Billy Joel-lover, though I'll admit to having a few of his songs on my iPod, but here is what bugs me about the article. It contains zero insight on the musical merit of his songs; it is solely about the lyrics in his songs. Yeah, Billy's songs are kinda douchey. Yeah, his lyrics aren't always the best. But if you are going to devote an entire article, even if it is purposefully silly, on why an artist is good or bad, you have to criticize their art. The author, Ron Rosenbaum, even qualifies the critique by describing his attempts at finding "absolute standards" of art. Well, I would assume that almost everyone would consider the craft involved in ones art to be one of those "absolute standards", but the author is obviously completely unqualified to judge Billy Joel's art in a musical context.

Billy Joel is a pretty good musician. He's definitely a good singer (or was) and wrote several well-crafted - if rather trite - songs. It's good 80s pop, not much more. His lyrics can be pretentious, in the case of And So It Goes (although I kinda love it), or dreadful, in the case of Pressure. Usually they are ok. Obviously, the author finds BJ to be annoying. Alright. I can see that. But that is not a valid criticism in and of itself. Here are a couple examples of his justifications:

First let's take "Piano Man." You can hear Joel's contempt, both for the losers at the bar he's left behind in his stellar schlock stardom and for the "entertainer-loser" (the proto-B.J.) who plays for them. Even the self-contempt he imputes to the "piano man" rings false.

"Captain Jack": Loser dresses up in poseur clothes and masturbates and shoots up heroin and is an all-around phony in the eyes of the songwriter who is so, so superior to him.

"The Entertainer": Entertainers are phonies! Except exquisitely self-aware entertainers like B.J., who let you in on this secret.

K, got it, you don't dig the lyrics. But that does not make you a music critic, anymore than it would make me an art critic be if I decided I didn't like a painting because I thought it was ugly. It may be fair for me to form that opinion, but it doesn't make me an authority. And I sure as hell would not be conceited enough to write an article for a major online publication decrying that work of art for being ugly, while being completely ignorant of the technique involved in creating it.

Seriously, they don't put up with this shit in the art world, why do musicians find it acceptable that utter laymen are the primary commentators on their work?