MMM

Moving to New Site, New RSS Feed

2009-07-14T04:16:00.002-04:00

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!

"The more brutal it is, the better"

2009-07-12T11:40:00.008-04:00

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.

Auto-tune the News 6

2009-07-12T09:12:00.000-04:00

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

Rhapsody in Blue Remix

2009-07-07T12:41:00.011-04:00

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!

Birds With Arms

2009-06-09T13:50:00.005-04:00

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

The Exaltation of Grace Budd

2009-06-04T16:07:00.003-04:00

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!

Shave and a Haircut

2009-05-18T14:44:00.003-04:00

Two.

Bits.

Bitchin' in the Kitchen

2009-05-11T13:07:00.002-04:00

Happy Monday!

From Shock Treatment

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

Just for me

2009-05-05T12:01:00.002-04:00

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.

Moral Absolutism on Fox News

2009-04-23T08:50:00.006-04:00

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.

Friday Night Gorefest!

2009-04-10T18:36:00.001-04:00

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

What I've Been Listening To

2009-04-08T13:35:00.000-04:00

Tilly and the Wall - Bad Education

Trent Reznor Drops the Knowledge

2009-04-08T10:19:00.005-04:00

(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.

Your Monday Morning WTF

2009-04-06T10:21:00.005-04:00

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!

Morning Links

2009-04-02T08:09:00.005-04:00

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

Inspirational Messages

2009-04-01T00:23:00.003-04:00

"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

Give Him Hell Press Corps!

2009-03-31T22:40:00.002-04:00

eXistenZ

2009-03-31T13:18:00.028-04:00

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.

Noon Links

2009-03-31T12:18:00.006-04:00

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...

Sensible Marijuana Legalization Debate on CNBC

2009-03-30T14:27:00.004-04:00

(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!

Weekend Carnage

2009-03-30T10:18:00.002-04:00

What's going on America??

Little Death Show and Subsequent Mini-Vacation

2009-03-27T11:30:00.021-04:00

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:

The Little Death Vol.1 Reminder!!

2009-03-19T23:09:00.003-04:00

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

What.

2009-03-17T01:23:00.003-04:00

This is fucking messed up:

and it really, really reminds me of this:

Google Kills the Phone Companies

2009-03-12T12:05:00.004-04:00

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.

loadbang @ The Tank this Sunday

2009-03-10T12:36:00.014-04:00

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!

The Watchmen - How a Great Soundtrack Can Ruin a Good Movie

2009-03-10T11:12:00.038-04:00

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.

The Little Death Vol. 1 @ The Tank - 3/20-21 9:30

2009-03-09T15:02:00.015-04:00

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!

He Touched Me by Matt Marks

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!

On Limbaugh

2009-03-03T12:04:00.018-05:00

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.

Obama Murders the Arts?

2009-03-01T11:06:00.005-05:00

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.

Netflix - Watch Instantly

2009-03-01T10:59:00.006-05:00

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!

Jindal the Page, You Got Some 'Splaining to Do!

2009-02-27T16:55:00.004-05:00

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.

NYC and the Use of Analog Binary Communication (i.e. Car Horns)

2009-02-25T11:06:00.064-05:00

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.

Music That Makes You Dumb?

2009-02-24T14:52:00.007-05:00

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.

Seth Godin on Social Networking

2009-02-23T16:31:00.001-05:00

Great Moments in Auto-Tune Oscar-Edition

2009-02-23T15:19:00.003-05:00

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!

Da Oscars

2009-02-23T13:26:00.007-05:00

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!

Rickrolling is so 2007...

2009-02-23T13:20:00.002-05:00

Use your new weapon wisely my children.

From the Files of WTF?

2009-02-22T16:11:00.006-05:00

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...

Like A Prayer REMIX at the Ontological-Hysteric Theater

2009-02-21T11:47:00.015-05:00

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:

JAMES MOORE and ERIC KM CLARK
Saturday Feb 21st, 10:00 pm
Ontological Theater at St. Mark's Church (Parish Hall)
131 east 10th street at 2nd ave
$6 cash only at the door
www.ontological.com

Oh yeah, and free beer.

Korpiklaani - Wooden Pints

2009-02-21T00:59:00.001-05:00

The Post Cartoon

2009-02-20T20:53:00.018-05:00

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.

The Credit Crisis Explained

2009-02-20T14:46:00.002-05:00

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.

Yo-Yo Shreds

2009-02-16T10:40:00.002-05:00

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

The Emotions - Peace Be Still

2009-02-13T01:18:00.007-05:00

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.

Oh HELL Yeah.

2009-02-11T20:47:00.000-05:00

One More Reason Myspace is Starting to Blow

2009-02-05T13:29:00.004-05:00

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

In Defense of Childish Tantrums...

2009-02-05T09:58:00.015-05:00

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):

The Colbert ReportMon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c

Steve Martin

Colbert Report Full Episodes
Paul McCartney Appearance

Funny Political Videos
More Funny Videos

My New Toy

2009-02-03T08:52:00.003-05:00

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. :)

Michael Phelps on Pot

2009-02-02T00:03:00.002-05:00

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.

Burger Bed

2009-01-30T17:27:00.001-05:00

I really, really want one of these.

Any Other Psychos Out There Looking for an Excuse to Go Crazy?

2009-01-28T15:45:00.008-05:00

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.

More Bad Music Criticism

2009-01-27T20:18:00.031-05:00

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?

No Coffee!!

2009-01-23T12:22:00.001-05:00

This is how I felt this morning when I woke up to find my apartment void of my favorite caffeine-laden hot liquid.

The Pledge

2009-01-23T11:26:00.002-05:00

Can they pledge to not make any more of these sappy freaking videos?

I Ain't Lyin!

2009-01-21T17:41:00.003-05:00

Yo, catch my sis Suzanne tonight at 9pm on the premiere episode of Fox's new drama, Lie To Me, starring the legendary Tim Roth. She plays a newcaster. Awesome.

Mafoo's Mid-Morning Creep-Out

2009-01-16T11:37:00.011-05:00

Make sure you watch it through to the end to catch the über-creepy picture. This is straight-up cult-speak. It still disgusts me that Obama picked this dude, partly because it is a giant "fuck you" to gays after Prop 8, but mainly because I think that most mega-churchs are cults. Warren sums up my fear of mega-churches in this speech explicitly. Every time I see a mega-pastor speaking to the thousands of people at a mega-church, I think of Hitler in Munich. Here, Rick Warren not only makes that comparison, he seems to make it favorably. WTF.

And did anyone think that Warren's dismissal of "moderation" was a little ironic, considering who just hired him to speak at his inauguration?

Badlands

2009-01-16T10:47:00.007-05:00

I finally got around to watching my first Terrence Malick film last night, Badlands. Considering that I had read much about the film, and its director, I can't say that I was really shocked by the film, but it kept me up all night thinking about it.

Here's a relatively spoiler-free clip:

I thought it was a little funny that the two DVDs I have from Netflix currently are Badlands and Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer. Well, I did until I was reading commentary on IMDB last night and found several posts explicitly comparing the two. Weird.

Next up is Malick's follow-up to Badlands, Days of Heaven. I'm a methodical sumbitch.

The Weak or the Strong, Who's Got it Goin' On?

2009-01-15T15:13:00.029-05:00

In honor of the new Biggie movie coming out tomorrow - and presented in stark contrast to what looks to be a heart-warmingly revisionist biopic of one of my favorite rappers - I thought it would be nice post one of my favorite Biggie flows of all time.

Dead Wrong. This tune was Biggie's foray into the extreme rap subgenre of horrorcore (although it was released posthumously). It's one not liable to come up on the soundtrack for the movie, mainly because it's one of the most violent and explicit lyrics ever recorded by a mainstream artist. I dig it for several reasons: 1. It is a great example of his expert rhyming skills - something you don't really get on, say, Going Back to Cali as much; and 2. It highlights gangsta rap's fantastical nature, to an extreme degree.

See, contrary to popular belief, gansta rappers don't necessarily believe what they are writing/saying, they are in character. Christopher Wallace was the man and Notorious B.I.G was the fictional persona he created for himself. To many it may appear as if they must always wholeheartedly agree with said character for the mere fact that they are speaking it, but that is an incredibly simplistic way of viewing it. It would be similar to the absurdity of expecting every actor in a horror film to defend every one of their lines as if they themselves meant it.

When Ice-T wrote the controversial single Cop Killer and all of the politicians were up in arms, they simply could not fathom that Ice-T wasn't advocating killing policeman, he was writing fiction. Yes, it was based on his frustration with the police, but that is how art works (unsurprisingly, Tipper Gore didn't quite get this) - it is a personal expression, and sometimes a fantasy based on the root of that expression.

Biggie was a businessman, and in many ways cleaned up his act at times to achieve starhood, but he was also a raw talent, his heart was in the skill and craft of rhyming. Movies like Notorious will attempt to transform him into something 'more' - a symbol - but they neglect that, for the most part, art is not about the narrative, it is about the craft. I don't care if Biggie slang crack or loved his Momma, that don't mean shit to me. The tragedy of his death to me is that there will never be any new Biggie rhymes. That sucks. Luckily, his rhymes are rich enough that we can constantly find new appreciation in them, new ways of recontextualizing them. I've already done one Biggie remix, I'm sure I'll produce more.

Only Hope (Biggie Horrorcore Remix) by Matt Marks

Obama Favored Gay Marriage in 1996

2009-01-14T15:18:00.003-05:00

"I favor legalizing same-sex marriages, and would fight efforts to prohibit such marriages.”
- Barack Obama in 1996

He needs to be confronted on this at his next press conference, straight up. I've always suspected that his civil-unions stance was purely political and this seems to prove it. What up Barry?

The End of an Era?

2009-01-13T10:32:00.180-05:00

If you're like me, and the last eight years have been essentially one giant cringe, you may be getting these momentary rushes of euphoria - almost like little squirts of dopamine in the brain - with the knowledge that it's almost over. Last night, while watching the newest torture-happy episode of 24, I thought to myself, "Now that Bush is leaving office, can 24 stop feeling the need to come up with increasingly contrived reasons to torture someone in every episode?" (seriously - and I say this as the standard fictional-torture-loving red-blooded American male - get over it 24).

But, as with the end of any era, there is the nostalgia aspect. By most accounts, the 60s sucked big-time. Dudes were getting drafted, icons were getting assassinated, people were getting hosed in the streets, there were riots, there was rising crime, there was rising drug use, women were still subjugated, poverty and illiteracy was rampant in rural areas, etc. But what do people remember? The Forrest Gump shit. Hippies, LSD, the sexual revolution, civil rights gains, bell-bottoms. All of it, good and bad, gets filtered through that soft-focus lens of history. A "gumpification", if you'll allow me the coining of a term, occurs, smoothing the rough edges of the gritty, uncomfortable reality of the situation into a smoothed narrative, one that is acceptable in hindsight.

While this gumpification may annoy some as a gross distortion of past reality, it is also part of the process of dealing with the past. We all do this in our lives, often looking back on horrifying experiences with nostalgia, or even pleasure, basking in the distance between the uncomfortable reality of a past experience and our fictionalized memory of that experience. A clear example of this in political history is Richard Nixon. Once the great shame of a nation - the highest example of wickedness and weakness in our politic - he is now known more to young people as a cartoonish bad guy, something like a mix of a pirate and Count Dracula, his personal catch-phrase a blubbered out "I am not a crook!" between slack rabbit cheeks as his arms hover inhumanely above his head piercing the skies with matching Vs. We gumpified him into a lovable disgrace. He can't hurt us anymore.

While it may seem as if this piece is going to be about Bush, it is not. His gumpification has already occurred in large part. I don't really feel any specific animosity toward the man. It helps that he was a complete and utter tool. History will prove him to be merely a place-sitter, a child in daddy's chair. He was a nothing-president, and no one really fears him anymore.

Bush is now a national joke; Cheney as well is somewhat of a caricature, though more of a growling-wolf-with-bared-teeth kind of character, not as humorous just yet; Rumsfeld has been iconicized - by collections of his unintentional poetry - into a sort of bumbling senile Sgt. Carter; Wolfowitz is the guy who sucks on his comb before he combs his hair; Karl Rove is in reality just a charismatic huckster, the type who would rip us off at a yard sale and upon us realizing our mistake wag his finger knowingly at us with a sly smile. These chief architects, of the wars, the failed economic policies, the unbelievably poor distaster responses, the shredding of our constitution, and on and on and on, are essentially finished doing their damage, and we're about to shoo them out of the kitchen like the little rascals they are. Hell, we've already forgiven Powell for lying to the U.N.

The real demons though, are the ones that aren't going away. Equally essential to the national tragedy that was the last eight years was the enthusiastic encouragement of a few conservative pundits who were somehow able to frame the debate on their terms. I'm having a tough time gumpifying them, mainly because they are still doing their dirty work (although you can see my effort in labeling them "demons"). I make a distinction, which I feel is very important, between those pundits who lean to the right and have opinions that are in general accordance with the Republicans and the Bush administration and those on the right that formed their opinions and arguments based on what the administration decided. You can generally tell who is in which camp by who still supports the president unequivocally to this day.

In the former:

Bill O'Reilly
David Frum
Jonah Goldberg
Chris Wallace
Charles Krauthammer

In the latter:

Rush Limbaugh
Sean Hannity
Ann Coulter
Bill Kristol
Fred Barnes
Kathryn Lopez

The distinction is that those in the former camp believe what they believe, and are, for the most part, wrong. The latter group holds no real beliefs for themselves; they form their opinions and recommendations based on what the administration wants. The administration wants X and they figure out ways to make it happen. The former group is still tremendously unqualified to give their paltry opinions, that usually coincide with the administrations - and in all likelihood many of those opinions would not exist were it not for the administration - but I don't believe they are consciously delivering the propaganda; they are not literal campaigners, as are the ones in the second group.

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 (I have always been one to consider amorality worse than immorality; harm done out of duty more dangerous than harm done out of sadism). In a way, the shock of these last eight years was not that these terrible things happened, it is that they could happen, with the blessing of the American people.

I am a horror film nut, my favored sub-genre being horror-of-personality, rather than supernatural horror. What frightens me is not the literal monster in the shadows, its the monster that hides in the shadows of our own minds; it is the knowledge that you share a kinship with the worst that humankind can surface. I am not the type to believe that the masses of any public are simply herds of sheep to be led. What causes people to adopt horrifying positions and to approve of horrifying policy is that there is a part of all of us that can be cruel and evil; there is a facet of our personalities that can excuse anything. The millions who were able to excuse blatant torture and murder at Abu Ghraib (even with photographs!), with a little help from Rush and Co., did so knowing full well what was happening, but were able to adopt it into their morality. Those millions of people are not different than I; they are not necessarily more stupid or less informed than I. The question arises: what would make me excuse these types of actions?

The last eight years were, in a word, sobering. They were a slap in the face to all peace-loving, warm-hearted liberals, telling them to come down from their Tower of Babel. The people of Earth, especially The U.S., are not ready to create a heaven here. The fact that support for the Iraq War was 76% in 2003, at the time of invasion, means that pretty much every anti-war person, such as myself, had people that they love and care for deeply who were enthusiastically in favor of invading another country under scant evidence, knowing full well that hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children would be killed as a result. These pundits, along with a weak-kneed mainstream media, were the ones that brought out this evil in us. To me it was, and is, tremendously hurtful and is still quite fresh in my mind. When Bush and his team goes back their respective ranches in a few days, leaving their mythic afterimages on the public consciousness, these muses of horror will remain.

But this brings me to my original inspiration for this piece, an oddly uplifting sensation I felt upon reading an article by one of these muses, called "Bush's Achievements", subtitled Ten things the president got right, by Fred Barnes. The column left me with a certain nostalgia. I imagined Barnes' rather cartoonish appearance as I remembered seeing him on Fox News: his chubby, bespectacled face flanked by his seemingly frame-painted rigid hair, his dopey smile delivering his audacious words with a glint in his eye that told you he knew what he was saying was bullshit, but ya can't blame him for trying! I'm sure if I sought out a video on YouTube of Fred Barnes speaking this would all come crashing down, and my disdain and revulsion for the man would resurface, but why would I want to do that? Certainly these assholes will never wield the power they once held, why shouldn't I let them float gracefully into the gumpification of my memory and history.

The damage that these pundits caused is irreversible, and they are not going away anytime in the very-near future, but their power has lessened dramatically. Some of them even seem to be capitalizing on their becoming parodies of themselves, as is the case with Ann Coulter in recent days. Let us hope that they embrace these new roles as clowns for, unlike Nixon, they have no dignity to lose. I long for the day when these people can no longer cause dread, and we can look back on them with condescending smirks of levity, perhaps eventually we can even laugh in turn at the horror in ourselves they once unearthed.

Mafoo's Congressional Douche of the Day

2009-01-12T16:48:00.002-05:00

This guy:

[U.S. Rep. Eric] Massa (D) had to be in the nation’s capital Tuesday for his swearing in as the 29th Congressional District’s new representative. He drove the General Motors Equinox prototype car to draw attention to the technology, some of which is being developed in the district.

The problem is the car can go about 150 to 200 miles without a refill, and the trip from Corning to Washington, D.C. is 282 miles. And there are no hydrogen refilling stations along the way.

As a result, Massa had to switch to another GM hydrogen fuel cell vehicle that was standing by in Harrisburg.

After the trip, both cars were towed back to their original locations by two Chevrolet Tahoe hybrid SUVs.

And yes of course, if you're once to keep track of carbon emissions, the amount released to power the Tahoes was retartedly more than it would have been had he driven a normal car, or in fact a Chevy Tahoe, or likely a freakin' dump truck. Whoo! Good start dude!

AWS in MUSO

2009-01-12T11:32:00.005-05:00

There is an Alarm Will Sound feature in the newest issue of MUSO Magazine. I was interviewed, along with Gavin Chuck and John Richards. Given the sassy nature of the magazine, I gave a lot of sassy responses to their questions, and was surprised that they printed most of it. Cool.

Here are a couple pages from our feature, click each image to view fullsize:

Btw, if I look a little, as Melly would say, "gaunt", it's because I was about two days out of the hospital and had dropped 30-40 lbs. :) This was over a year ago, I'm all better (and fatter) now!

For more info on MUSO or to order a copy check out their website MUSOLIFE.COM

Free Sampled Piano from Yamaha

2009-01-12T11:03:00.003-05:00

If you are at all interested in having a good-sounding sampled piano for your studio, whether you'd just like a good sound for Sibelius playback or you'd like a decent sound for recording and/or performance you should definitely hop on over to the SONART website.

They are currently offering a free download of their Yamaha C7 sampled piano, which normally retails for $89. It's by no means a top-of-the-line piano, but if you are sick of the shockingly bad-sounding piano in Sibelius and you have the Kontakt player installed, there is no reason for you not to grab this download.

For my tunes I've been using a pretty decent sampled Bösendorfer, so I don't know if I'd prefer the Yamaha yet, but it can't hurt to have another piano. Once it's downloaded and you've gotten rid of all of the extemporaneous files it'll set you back about 800 megs or so, not bad. I recently cleaned house to make way for Pro Tools, so I've got about 20 gigs free where I once had, I don't know, one?

Here's a sample of it in action: Puccini.mp3

Yes, there's something funny about the attack - a bit too hard for my taste - though I don't think it'd be too much trouble to temper it in a sampler editor.

Mafoo's Bizarre Metaphor of the Day

2009-01-11T22:53:00.002-05:00

It should have been the perfect wedding ... but Sydney couple Steve and Leigh Buttel claim unwanted guests — including maggots in their wedding bed and bedroom invasions by bats — turned their wedding into a bride's worst nightmare ... the newlyweds had allegedly found maggots described by the groom as "the size of chocolate bullets" in their wedding bed and a dead bat, covered in maggots, above their bedhead.

Um.

A. Would bullet-sized maggots be larger than normal maggots?

B. Are chocolate bullets larger than normal bullets?

C. Did the maggots at all resemble the form of a bullet, or the color of chocolate? I have yet to come across maggots of this nature.

D. What the fuck is a chocolate bullet?

What The Hell Is This Crap?

2009-01-09T15:11:00.003-05:00

Ok, I heard about Microsoft Songsmith - thought it sounded like an absolute abortion of an idea. This video not only proves that the program is worse than I could have imagined, the video itself makes me want to... it makes me want to eat glass. It makes me want to chew and swallow shards of glass, if only to somehow be able to fathom another sensation overshadowing the sacharrine, failed-tongue-in-cheek, naive freaking holocaust of an ad campaign I just viewed.

Enjoy!

Electro-Harmonix Voice Box

2009-01-09T14:43:00.002-05:00

This looks like a fun little piece of hardware. Only 200 bucks. More info at CDM.

Hey CNN?

2009-01-08T03:07:00.002-05:00

This is why people don't take you seriously anymore.

Steven King on Horror

2009-01-03T12:33:00.007-05:00

"Terror - what Hunter Thompson calls 'fear and loathing' - often arises from a pervasive sense of disestablishment; that things are in the unmaking. If that sense of unmaking is sudden and seems personal - if it hits you around the heart - then it lodges in the memory as a complete set. Just the fact that almost everyone remembers where he/she was at the instant he/she heard the news of the Kennedy assassination is something I find almost as interesting as the fact that one nurd with a mail-order gun was able to change the entire course of world history in just fourteen seconds or so. That moment of knowledge and the three-day spasm of stunned grief which followed it is perhaps the closest any people in history has ever come to a total period of mass consciousness and mass empathy and - in retrospect - mass memory: two hundred million people in a living frieze. Love cannot achieve that sort of across-the-board hammerstrike of emotion, apparently. More's the pity."

- Steven King, Danse Macabre

Hmmm

2008-12-30T14:24:00.002-05:00

"Nostalgia is a powerful feeling; it can drown out anything."

-Terrence Malick on filming Badlands, which is set in the oft over-romanticized 1950s.

Virginity pledges don't decrease teenage sex, just condom/contraceptive use

2008-12-29T19:55:00.001-05:00

K, sorry to gloat when I'm right, but GUH-DUUUUUUUHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!

Your Daily Dose of Soul-Crushing Banality - Christmas Edition!

2008-12-24T15:28:00.001-05:00

This is hypnotic...

Christmas in Long Beach

2008-12-23T19:11:00.005-05:00

Are you're a unabashed fan of Christmas/Holiday music, but you are sick and tired of hearing the same versions of the same songs over and over and over - especially when they're suddenly interrupted 2 bars before the end with one of those annoying "K-Earth 101!! Holiday Favorites on the Radio!!!!!" shockers?

Yeah. Me too.

Well, that's all over.

Tune into my favorite internet radio station, The 1920s Radio Network.

Every holiday season they play the best in little-known Christmas gems and obscure versions of holiday classics from the early part of the 20th century. You are always sure to hear stuff you've never heard before, and it's all wonderful.

Create a nice holiday environment in your place without having to hear that damn Wham song 19 times.

I'm in Cali now visiting my family for the first time in a year (!). It's beautiful outside, but Long Beach isn't exactly a Winter Wonderland, so I need all the old-timey Christmasin' I can get!

I knew the JACK Quartet before they were famous

2008-12-21T14:55:00.006-05:00

Anthony Tommasini of The New York Times has listed the JACK Quartet's Xenakis show at Le Poisson Rouge as one of "the most memorable classical music presentations of 2008":

The Jack Quartet, an ensemble of young string players devoted to contemporary music, played the club in October. I would never have expected to see a young crowd at a downtown nightclub erupting with whoops after performances of the four hypercomplex, cutting-edge string quartets by Iannis Xenakis. But in this setting these dense and kinetic works came across to this open-minded audience as just more hip, wild, out-there contemporary music.

Awesome, boys! Unfortunately, I missed this particular show. But I, and you, can catch them at their next NYC concert on March 1st at Tenri.

Click here to hear JACK killin' some Xenakis.

HHT vs Mt. Kilimanjaro

2008-12-20T12:43:00.004-05:00

Here's a nice story (with video) about a doctor who is climbing Mt. Kilimanjaro to increase awareness and funding for my medical condition, HHT.

There's more on HHT.org:

Scott is a part of a family of five generations of HHT patients, including his three children. Scott’s hope is that his climb up Mt. Kilimanjaro will help to increase the awareness of HHT. Currently, 9 out of 10 of the HHT population (68,000 US citizens) are not yet diagnosed due to widespread lack of knowledge by medical professionals and, therefore, are at risk of stroke, hemorrhage, and death.

Given Scott’s history of anemia and the presence of a pulmonary AVM, he debated whether or not to attempt this climb. “It seemed worth a try” states Scott. “The HHT Foundation and the doctors interested in this disease have done great things for people with HHT, including most of the people in my immediate family. Studies that have been performed have taught us a great deal about the natural course of the disease as well as treatment options for it.” Scott further commented.

Cool story. I definitely would not have the balls to rock Kilimanjaro, probably even if I didn't have da HHTizzle. Special Osler-Weber-Rendu props the the good doctor!

Trailerific

2008-12-19T14:36:00.002-05:00

It's a snowy day in New York City, so I'm staying in for most of today. In honor of my voluntary convalescence, here's the original trailer for one of my new favorite films of all time. The Sergio Leone masterpiece Once Upon a Time in the West:

I cannot recommend this film highly enough, especially for those skeptical of the "western" genre. Leone infuses the tradition with a heavy dose of classic Italian neorealism and good old late-60s grit and grime. I love it. It is the perfect example of an anti-western, so perfect in fact that it redefined the genre (in a way voiding the "anti" aspect!).

Netflix Watch Instantly Update

2008-12-19T10:50:00.004-05:00

Finally. I have an RSS feed of their latest additions and having to watch films that literally noone knows (seriously, not even the directors) be added daily to the list was starting to, ya know, grind my gears or something.

But this snowy morning's list made me smile a bit. All the Back to the Futures plus Swingers. Nice.

Oh yeah, and Encino Man. Any, uh, Pauly Shore fans left out there? Brendan Fraser? Encino Man is available. Just putting that out there in case anyone wants to watch Encino Man. It's online. Netflix. Encino man is. Check it.

Rick Warren

2008-12-18T18:55:00.011-05:00

Now, y'all may know that I'm pretty deep in the Obama camp. I voted for him, I've written a lot about him, and I think he'll generally be a great president. But one of the major differences I have with him is the issue of gay marriage. He's against it. Let's not do the whole he's for civil unions bullshit, he's against gay marriage and that's all that matters. Well, in one of his recent hands-across-the-aisle gestures, he's invited Orange Country megachurch Pastor Rick Warren to deliver the invocation at his inauguration. Aside from being a pastor at a megachurch - which I think is evil enough - Rick Warren is of course super anti-gay and rallied hard against Prop 8, comparing being gay to incest, polygamy, and pedophilia:

Look, I get that he's reaching out, that he's not only going to be the president of the blue half of America. I get that, I encourage it. But this is frankly a slap in the face to gay people, straight up. Picking this douche at a time during which gays are feeling increasingly persecuted across the country should be pretty insulting. One thing I'm getting the sense of with Obama: he is not afraid to take advantage of those with whom he is in good favor. Gay people by and large love Obama. He can afford to smack them around a bit to woo the fundamentalists. When it all comes down to it, he's a politician.

MTA Could Drastically Raise Fees

2008-12-17T20:33:00.004-05:00

Ouch. This is gonna hurt:

If the authority does not receive new sources of revenue, it seems likely that the base subway fare could rise to at least $2.50, from $2, starting in June. A monthly unlimited-ride MetroCard could rise to more than $100, from $81.

There is also talk of reducing service, making express trains local, and increase tolls over the bridges. Personally, I think that drivers should bear the brunt of the costs. There are way too many cars in the city as it is, if they have to discourage a group of commuters, discourage the group that we need less of, not the group we need more of. Tolls baby. (Sorry driving friends!)

Ol' Fatso

2008-12-15T18:28:00.005-05:00

In my endless research (read: internet dickaround time) I've come across another, albeit significantly darker, Augie Rios Christmas song called Ol' Fatso.

Yeah... here's the song:

Augie Rios - Ol' Fatso.mp3

Check the lyrics, yo:

CHORUS:
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
Don’t care who you are Ol’ Fatso
Get those reindeer off the roof
No you can’t fool me because
There ain’t no Santa Claus
There ain’t no Santa Claus And I got proof.

There was a little fellow
Who just wouldn’t believe
There really was a Santa Claus
Even on Christmas Eve
And when one Christmas Eve he heard
A clatter overhead
He opened up his window wide
And this what he said:

[CHORUS]

Though Santa Claus had brought him
A big bag full of toys
Enough of Christmas presents
For a dozen little boys
Some choo choo trains and cowboys
And a whole Apache tribe
The boy looked up and said,
Oh no! I ain’t taking no bribes

[CHORUS]

Well next year Santa came around
And brought a favourite toy
To everybody but a certain
Unbelieving boy
The moral of this story
Is very sad but true
If you don’t believe in Santa Claus
He won’t believe in you

Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Don’t care who you are young fellow
Keep those reindeer on the roof
Oh you fool no-one because
There is a Santa Claus
There is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Yes, there is a Santa Claus
And I got proof.

Surprised this wasn't quite the hit that Donde Esta Santa Claus was?

(Found via PopArchives)

Donde Esta Santa Claus?

2008-12-14T12:11:00.002-05:00

Dear friends, two years ago I lost the fight against Christmas music. I realized that resistance is futile and began collecting weird and unique versions of classic Christmas songs. Well, now I've created my own.

I just completed a cover of the classic mexploitation hit Donde Esta Santa Claus?, made famous by Augie Rios. Not to be a genre whore or anything, but the cover has elements of Yé-yé, lounge, dancehall reggae, punk, hip hop, and death metal. But yet, I try and stay true to Augie's vision.

It's a free download, so click this link to listen or right/ctrl-click to save:

Donde Esta Santa Claus?

Here's the original if you are unfortunate enough not to know this classic:

Hope you enjoy it and Snappy Holidays!

P.S. extra points to anyone who spots the Herbie Goes Bananas reference!

Wall-E Wins Major Ward

2008-12-12T12:04:00.023-05:00

As long as I'm in rant-mode, I might as well rant about a pro-environmental subject, just to, ya know, be fair and balanced and everything.

The Los Angeles Film Critics Assn. named " Wall-E," Disney/Pixar's animated film about a little robot who falls in love, the best film of 2008 on Tuesday afternoon.

Yay.

You notice I didn't say "Yay!". I'm not exactly gunning for Wall-E for the Best Picture Oscar or anything, but it's just so nice to see it win a major award, and I do hope it gets nominated in the Best Picture category in the Oscars. I know it probably won't win the top award, but here are my thoughts on why it should be considered:

Ok, so it's probably going to go to Milk, for a couple reasons. One, the Academy loves Sean Penn. Two, the Academy loves biopics. Three, the Academy wants to make up for its egregious snub of Brokeback Mountain in 2006, which was obviously politically motivated and, frankly, homophobic. (Btw, Crash? Really??) I haven't seen Milk (The Times of Harvey Milk was good though), but word around the campfire is that it is very well-made, and very Oscary. Milk FTW.

But Wall-E deserves to be in the running. The other likely Best Pic nods - Milk, Frost/Nixon, possibly The Dark Knight - are all based on nonfiction or preexisting stories. Wall-E is a genuinely original story - despite the fact that he really looks like Johnny 5 - which is something sorely lacking in film today (see my recent post on film remakes). Pixar - who I'm not usually a fan of, for the record - came up with a completely original story, not based on tired Hollywood stereotypical plot-lines (see Finding Nemo and Cars), and set it against a sharply socially-critical background. Wall-E wasn't afraid to piss some people off, and it wasn't afraid to be overtly sentimental. To me, that is the essence of courage in art. The story was built around environmental themes, they weren't added into the mix during production, and these themes were unspoken but apparent. The humans in the story were both hero and villain and - much like Hayao Miyazaki's anti-villains - they contained the capacity for good and evil inside them, Wall-E was just the unwitting catalyst of this internal struggle.

Above all, the film lacked a sense of regret. There was never a sense that the humans in the story deserved punishment for their past digressions. They came to the realization that they had fucked themselves over, and they began to build their world anew, with the added knowledge of what the consequences of said digressions are. I think it is one of the best environmental films of all time, and a great example of social activism and art in a successful fusion.

The 90s Are Back

2008-12-12T11:38:00.008-05:00

Don't you miss that golden age of film when all movies had a heaping helping of thinly-veiled upper-middle class guilt? Of course you do. Well, it looks like those days are back:

When the alien Klaatu stepped off his spaceship the first time, in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still, he had come to warn us that man's constant warring against itself had become a threat to other civilizations and we had better stop it -- or else.

In director Scott Derrickson's respectful, perfunctory remake, Klaatu once again comes to visit us with a warning, although he's apparently been hanging out with Al Gore, since it's what we're doing to the environment that now has the extra-terrestrials wringing their hands (tentacles? pods? suction cups?)

Guh... Do we really want the days of this to come back?

(Btw, am I the only one who had a thing for Linka?)

This kinda shit ruined the ending of The Abyss, it probably ruined this (although probably already dead in the water) remake, and it will ruin countless more works of art by promoting the mandatory fusion of social responsibility and art. Fuck that. Social activism and art can coexist, but forcing your art to be activist or forcing your activism to be artsy usually creates sucky art and ineffective activism.

And PS, has anyone else noticed that this guilt-in-art trend always tends to coincide with economic recession? Interesting.

Travis Barker We Hardly Knew Ye

2008-12-12T11:00:00.004-05:00

From Imeem.com:

Travis Barker's "Jockin' Jay-Z" remix is rumored to be the last project he worked on before surviving a tragic plane crash back in September. The end result is a monster remix with huge drums and grungy electric guitars. Put this on your playlist today.

Wait, what? "The last project he worked on before surviving a tragic plane crash"?? Who in the world gives a fuck about that? I mean, I get that they are milking his near-death experience, but is this gonna be a thing now? Shia Lebouf acted out this scene from his latest John Grisham adaption just before he almost drank a glassful of spoiled milk? Tina Yuthers did this infomercial just before almost opening the driver door of her Geo Prism to oncoming traffic?

Auto Bailout Rejected

2008-12-12T02:12:00.004-05:00

Senate Abandons Auto Bailout. Sigh. Ok, I get why we wouldn't want to bail them out. They absolutely do not deserve it. But, where in the holy Jesus was this level of scrutiny when we were deciding to bail out the financial industry, for nearly a trillion dollars?? They denied the auto industry 14 billion! What in the holy hell is going on here? I will never really understand it, I guess, it's all so complicated, but does this make any sense to anyone? It doesn't even really seem like the "experts" in charge understand what in the world is going on? Guh. Fuck it. This scene is dead anyway.

I like being right.

2008-12-12T01:44:00.008-05:00

Newsflash! Mafoo's blog official Stupidest Website of 2007, Blackle, is in fact full of shit:

LCD screens ... are lit via fluorescent tube lights located above or behind the LCD screen. The screen scatters the light, creating the picture. When an LCD screen is on, the lights are also on. "Black is not created by the absence of electricity or by turning off the light," explains Gray. "In a lot of cases, a black screen looks purple because the colors are created by mixing the right pixel elements in the LCD together at the same time

Look, I may be somewhat of a nihilist, but I don't really wish the planet any ill. I think protecting the environment is a wonderful thing. But the recent "green" trend nauseates me, to be honest. It is just such a fad. People get caught up in the vanity of making themselves appear as "green" as possible by using Blackle and talking about their "carbon footprint" and shit. Fuck that. You know how I save the earth? I turn off my lights when I'm not using them, because I'm poor as shit and I don't want a large electric bill. There is simply no way Americans are going to willingly inconvenience themselves on a mass scale to save anything. There will have to be some profit in it. Let's hope Obama's plan to invest in environmental jobs does something for the environment and the economy. Who knows though, because there seems to be a very large appetite for bullshit environmental solutions - maybe he'll just give the public what it wants and appoint Ty Pennington the head of the National Greenwash Department.

Meow.

How Would You Like Your Favorite Films Violated, Sir?

2008-12-11T12:42:00.022-05:00

Why excessively, of course.

Den of Geeks lists the 55 movie remakes currently in the works, including:

The Karate Kid

They Live

The Incredible Shrinking Man (with Eddie Murphy attached, shudder...)

Meatballs

Metropolis

The Dirty Dozen

Conan

Clash of the Titans

Akira

Death Wish

Footloose

The Taking of Pelham 123 (which recently filmed in my neighborhood!)

The Last House on the Left

Oldboy

Poltergeist

The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Short Circuit (!)

The Birds

Logan's Run

The Thing

Westworld

Barbarella

My Fair Lady

and a whole bunch more...

I used to think that film remakes were a relatively recent thing - a facet of Hollywood's depleted imagination, but apparently they've been around since pretty much the dawn of film. Still, it seems it used to be done much more tastefully. For example, Howard Hawks' classic His Girl Friday is a remake of The Front Page from '31, but it is done so originally and tastefully. It's hard to think of recent remakes that actually do something new and unique.

Here are a few successful remakes IMO:

Rintaro's anime version of Metropolis (2001): a beautifully unique departure from Fritz Lang's original masterpiece. It creates a wonderful new world that's based more on the shadow of the original than the actual story. Contains the best apocalyptic scene in film, set to the music of Ray Charles.

The Fly (1986): I mean, I'm of the opinion that Cronenberg can really do no wrong. He embeds this mediocre classic with his own themes of transmogrification, bodily intrusion, moral decay and somehow makes it very entertaining to watch. All hail DC!

Scarface (1983): DePalma imbibes the early Hawks classic with the rampant greed of the 80s, while retaining the grittiness of the 70s contemporary gangster classics. I've always thought this was more of an homage to Scorsese than Hawks, just as The Untouchables was his homage to Coppola. He severed any connection to the original's Al Capone references, as well as its grace, favoring a lowbrow Cuban immigrant as its antihero over the legendary gangster.
(Not the trailer, but just as good)

Ocean's Eleven (2001): I don't want to like this one, if only to discourage Soderbergh from doing anymore remakes (Solaris? Really??), but it's very entertaining. He placed himself comfortably within the mainstream by making a tight, clean, beautiful big-budget Hollywood film. And it works. The scene at the end with the fountains and Clair de Lune is legendary, providing a nice antithesis to the Hollywood trend of the thin fleeting gratification of a crime well done. It's one of the best heist films period.

So, what do y'all think? Any additions to my very small list of successful remakes? I can probably think of a few more, once I've had a few more cups of coffee...

Rainy Day YouTubin

2008-12-11T10:36:00.001-05:00

Josh Martinez - Rainy Day

It's a fan-made video, but actually not bad, just a bunch of stock-footage of rain.

Lazy Video Embed of the Week

2008-12-10T12:42:00.002-05:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Mike Huckabee Pt. 2

Barack Obama Interview
John McCain Interview

Sarah Palin Video
Funny Election Video

Jon Stewart is smokin' in this interview. I must say though, despite the wrong-headedness and subtle facism of his viewpoint, I still have to give it up to Huckabee for being one of the few calm, reasonable socially-conservative voices out there. The man knows how to have a respectful debate. Watching these two men talk makes me wish all left/right debates had this much class.

AWS in NY Mag's Top Ten Classical Events of '08

2008-12-09T14:03:00.002-05:00

Some more love from NY Magazine:

8. Alarm Will Sound
The energetic ensemble Alarm Will Sound, conducted by Alan Pierson, doesn’t hop from program to program but develops its shows over months. Its last undertaking culminated in an evening called “a/rhythmia,” where they played an orchestration of a player-piano piece by Conlon Nancarrow— one that couldn’t be performed by human hands.

Word up NY Mag, we love you too!

Out of Darkness Comes Light

2008-12-08T12:36:00.004-05:00

Finally, 7 years after the fact, we hear of some good that came out of the tragedy of 9/11:

[Eric Roth] whipped up a [Forrest Gump] sequel back in 2001, one that would continue with the story just two minutes after the original ended, and handed it in on September 10, 2001. Then came 9/11, and it was decided that the sequel was no longer relevant. "The world had changed. Now time has obviously passed, but maybe some things should just be one thing and left as they are."

God bless the cigar-chomping executive who made that fear-based, but exalted, decision.

Yay no more bad John Lennon overdubbing!

(disgusted shiver...)

Myspace Death Toll

2008-12-08T11:08:00.005-05:00

I think this pop-up banner, over the music player, of classmates.com (what is this, 2001??), really highlights what Myspace is secretly trying to say to people: "We're the new Friendster. We're at the point where we've begun losing money and we will make your experience progressively more sucky until we consist only of teens from Indonesia. Thanks for playing. Enjoy Facebook for the year or so until it too joins the social networking purgatory.

All Hail the L33T5!

2008-12-07T13:39:00.013-05:00

Gurf points to conservative criticism of Obama's cabinet appointments as being 'too elitist':

The Ivy-laced network taking hold in Washington is drawing scorn from many conservatives, who have in recent decades decried the leftward drift of academia and cast themselves as defenders of regular Americans against highbrow snobbery. Joseph Epstein wrote in the latest Weekly Standard -- before noting that former president Ronald Reagan went to Eureka College -- that "some of the worst people in the United States have gone to the Harvard or Yale Law Schools . . . since these institutions serve as the grandest receptacles in the land for our good students: those clever, sometimes brilliant, but rarely deep young men and women who, joining furious drive to burning if ultimately empty ambition, will do anything to get ahead."

The libertarian University of Chicago law professor Richard Epstein, who is not related to Joseph Epstein, worries that the team's exceptionalism could lead to overly complex policies. "They are really smart people, but they will never take an obvious solution if they can think of an ingenious one. They're all too clever by half," he said. "These degrees confer knowledge but not judgment. Their heads are on grander themes . . . and they'll trip on obstacles on the ground."

If you'll excuse my zeal:

Fuck. Off.

If there is one dumbass notion in America that needs to die a painful fucking death it's that the people in charge of our country should be expected to have a healthy amount of 'street smarts' or 'small town cred'.

No.

No, they don't.

They could have handlebar moustaches, monocles, and a glass of cognac worth more than your family surgically grafted onto their fucking jewel-encrusted hands for all I care. If they are the most qualified to lead the country then they should lead. I don't want a White House Chief of Staff I could have a beer with. I want a White House Chief of Staff that will pour a fucking beer on my head, tell me I'm an insignificant nobody, and then go help fix our messed-up-ass country, get it?

Maybe I've been listening to too much Webern recently but look, populism has its place. Sometimes I want a greasy meal at the Waffle House, sometimes I want to listen to bad radio pop, but down-to-earth populism has little relevance past communication for matters involving the governing of our massive country. I want geniuses running this country, straight up.

We tried the average Joes.

Didn't work out so well, did it?

Screw it, one more.

2008-12-06T19:18:00.001-05:00

Priorities

2008-12-06T19:12:00.001-05:00

Keeping the same theme as my last post. Hey, it's Saturday. You don't want anything serious, do you?

Saturday YouTubin'

2008-12-06T11:54:00.001-05:00

-via TheBrownDump

Thoughts on the YouTube Symphony Orchestra

2008-12-02T23:30:00.048-05:00

I suppose I should feel excited about the YouTube Symphony Orchestra, and perhaps it is just my overbearing cynicism that overshadows any true optimism about this, but there's just something vaguely unsettling about it. It's hard to place a finger on, but I'll give it a shot.

It's kinda like Grandma making a YouTube video. It's cute, you appreciate she figured out how to work the thing, but there's something faintly depressing about it. Yes, it's nice to see Grandma up on the internets, but does she belong there? Wouldn't you rather see her just making cookies or something? Ya know, something Grandma-ey?

Ok, my analogy is stretching a bit, but here's the deal. I'm often wary of sensationalist actions and events that seek to thrust classical music into the mainstream, even though many of them are made with the sincerest best of intentions. Similar attempts were made with The Disney Orchestra (which many of my friends were in) and Mr. Holland's Opus. What did they do? They made a bunch of people feel warm and fuzzy, but their actual effect is questionable. These projects seem aimed more at stirring the guilt of the public for its glaring lack of support than they do at attempting to produce great art or creating a lasting effect on the consciousness of our society, a consciousness that - perhaps unconsciously - views classical music as something arcane and elitist.

Still, I felt kinda warm and fuzzy reading about Tan Dun's and MTT's efforts, two genuine forces for good in the classical music world. But you know what else made me feel warm and fuzzy? Charlie Bit My Finger.

My optimistic side tells me that the culture of YouTube is the perfect thing to encourage art and music in young people. As kids, my generation (and all before mine) grew up relatively isolated with our artistic endeavors. Young people now have endless avenues to explore, share, and learn about theirs; it's the kind of encouragement we could only have dreamt of. Whereas I grew up hiding my classical music side from my friends, young musicians can now seek friends and support in their musical lives with YouTube as their primary tool.

So is it a movement or a Google P.R. move? Or both? Can the classical world be saved by a serious of stunts? I mean, we can pretty much rule out any great art coming from this project, yes? Something tells me Tan Dun's "Internet Symphony No. 1 — Eroica" (yes, that's the real title) ain't exactly gonna be something for the music history books.

What I'd rather see is a long-term investment. A site connecting students and teachers via video, or live-streaming. The creation of an online infrastructure connecting young musicians who could support and collaborate with each other. Something that would benefit many as opposed to the few.

My worry: thousands of young musicians are going to make videos of themselves for this project. 99% of them are going to be assed-out. About a hundred people are going to have a badass time playing a big show at Stern. How does this help the classical world as a whole, aside from publicity? Wouldn't a better project be something that would help the culture - the musicians, not just the winners of an audition?

Maybe it's just the classical music world's first shot at finally doing something with this crazy internet thing. Yes, at its core the whole idea is very old-fashioned. But maybe it'll be good for Grandma. Maybe just what Grandma needs is to get herself up on her feet to dance around for a bunch of people. Maybe that will get her confidence up so she can actually do something worthwhile. :)

Shop 'till Ya Drop!

2008-11-30T10:57:00.007-05:00

Attention shopping assholes:

Try Amazon. There's less death involved.

I suppose I could go on a long rant about how consumerism in this country is tearing us apart and turning us against each other. But I don't really believe that. At the risk of sounding simplistic, some people are just dicks. There is simply no reason too sleep overnight at a Wal-Mart and then swarm the store at 5am risking other people's lives. I don't care how poor you are, there are better ways to save. Do your shopping from from home, it'll take less time, take less lives, and leave you with plenty of energy left over to, um, leave glittery embedded comments on your friends' Myspace pages or something.

Oh yeah, and purely from a desire for revenge, I really hope they find and prosecute as many of those Wal-Mart tramplers as they can.

Liberal or Conservative?

2008-11-30T09:22:00.005-05:00

Ok, normally I don't like just reposting silly stuff I've found from Reddit, but there is just so much to love in this. The inanity of the responses, the hats, the symmetry, their faces! Pure Reddit gold:

(click image for larger version)

The Fog of Music Criticism

2008-11-29T11:27:00.109-05:00

Rob Horning of PopMatters posted a really thoughtful response to a Peter Suderman post on the inherent positivity of music criticism (in response to a Joe Queenan article, aaaaa! blogosphere!). First, Suderman's claims:

Scan the sidebar of Metacritic’s music page. Nearly all of the review averages are positive or very positive, and almost none of them are straightforward pans. In fact, right now I don’t see a single album with a review average that gets a score categorized "generally negative reviews." Contrast this with the movies page, which contains more than a dozen films with low averages. Even the limited release indies — the "artsy" films — are often given low marks.

Is contemporary pop music really that much better than contemporary mainstream filmmaking? I think not. Instead, it’s just that the music reviewing culture has developed in such a way that most everything scores a "pretty good" or a "not bad."

Horning responds:

Unlike films, many many records get released, and just noticing one and running a review of it already marks it as significant. The substance of the review itself is almost beside the point. Acknowledging its existence is already an admission that it’s “pretty good,” so it would be strange for the review to suggest otherwise.
...
It might amuse some readers to see well-established artists attacked, but who wants to read negative reviews of stuff they haven’t heard of? There’s no point, and the reviewer just comes across as mean. I certainly felt this way about myself when I was writing the negative reviews. It seemed dumb for me to be discouraging these performers, who had no chance of making it, really, no matter what I wrote about them. It’s no fun pissing on people’s dreams. In fact, it made more sense to try to champion all bands, so I could potentially claim some of the glory for helping one of them make it.

Exactly. In general, films are massive undertakings with insane budgets and scads of people involved to make it happen. For example, I recently watched 2004's Primer, an amazing lo-budge sci-fi film that was made for an insanely low amount, around $7,000. But it still required a set of actors, a crew, tons of gear, etc. I am currently producing an album using solely the computer with which I am writing this blog. For, um, $0. For every indie film produced there are hundreds of indie albums. Why review one just to crush it? It would be rather sadistic (although most reviewers do display a hint of sadism, IMO).

I have a point of contention with this though:

Readers often want hype, not evaluation, because it gives pop culture a sure-fire context, whereas a review that traces musical influences and parses lyrics only helps a select few readers. Besides, there are no established criteria for what’s good beyond popularity or fidelity to genre expectations. Maybe Suderman thinks it’s possible that music reviews could be objective evaluations of quality, as defined by some unimpeachable universal standards, but I don’t believe these exist for pop music (or for much of anything in culture—aesthetic criteria are political creations). The pop music people consume is typically a tribal thing or a means to participate in the zeitgeist, and it’s hard as a reviewer to shape the zeitgeist from the margins.

I think what plagues much music criticism, both from professional reviewers and in the minds of listeners, is the lack of objective criteria from which to judge a work of music. The apparent criteria has become almost purely social: work is judged by its supposed "honesty", self-consciousness, unpretentiousness, and authenticity rather than by traditional musical merits. The question becomes: is this rapper/singer actually from Brooklyn/Manchester or does he just say he is; it's not about the musical product, it's about the narrative. The highest rated albums are often the albums that are the most fun to write about. Yeah, you might feel like a douche praising a young white-boy rapper from Hempstead whose daddy bought him a record contract, but if the product is good, suck it up.

The most obvious example of this need to sustain narrative is J Dilla's album Donuts. The story goes, he wrote the album on his laptop in the hospital whilst dying of cancer. Now, who wants to write a narrative about his sad, valiant efforts culminating in an album that's, well, a piece of shit? More importantly, who wants to read that?

Now, not to get all conservatory-trained-musician on y'all, but why not focus on the product? Yes, a good back story can enhance the appreciation of music - Beethoven's deafness for example, or Brian Wilson's mental illness - but to ignore technical criteria in music, even pop music, is asking to be lead around in a fog of subjectivity and ambiguity.

Here's a few objective things pop reviewers should listen for:

1. Originality: Not for its own sake, of course, but the band/artist should sound like itself. If the R&B singer sounds like Stevie with a hip hop beat, or the garage band sounds like The Velvet Underground with auto-tune, it is not original. Of course, originality for its own sake can be just as tedious, so keep an eye out for extra-musical distractions: costumes, romantic back-stories, different colored eyes...

2. The Singer: Can the singer get the same effect live as on the album without the album's effects and auto-tune. This doesn't mean the singer has to be classically trained, or even good. It just means he/she has to be a real performer. Also, as stated earlier, the voice should be original, if I hear one more Blink 182-influenced pop-punk singer I think I'll open my veins.

3. Production: I dig gritty production, but there's a big difference between lo-fi and bad. I can also appreciate intensive production, but not when it becomes glossy. Also, knowing some basics about electronic music can easily help you sift through the hordes of house and trance tracks built around presets and simple filter tweaks. Learn your gear, it is far more important to know the basic varieties of effects, synths, and editing techniques than it is to have heard of every last indie band to come out of Ann Arbor in the late-90s.

4. Musicianship: I can appreciate Teenage Jesus and the Jerks for what they are, but that doesn't mean that the bar should be set at their level of technical proficiency on their instruments. If an artist or band is lacking in technical skill, they had damn well better make up for it tenfold with originality, creativity, and their lyrics. Yes, Meg White is kind of a sucky drummer, but she also amazes me at the same time (how can she drag the and-of-3 the exact same way every bar??)

5. Lyrics: The rhyming of the words "fly", "high", and "sky" in a sequence should be a federal crime. I don't care if you're being ironic. Lyrics that sound as if they were written on a pad of paper and then forced into some chord changes are nicht güt.

6. Composition: It doesn't have to be symphonic - in fact pop albums can easily sound overwrought when inundated with orchestral instruments and weighted with complex 8-minute tunes - but there should be commentary on the craftsmanship of the songs by the reviewer. Structure, pacing, arrangement, and the overall vibe should be taken into account, much more than the off-microphone lives of the musician(s).

7. Authorship: Did the band/artist write their own tunes, or were they written by a professional song-writer? I think it is utterly hypocritical for many reviewers to lavish importance on the extra-musical elements of an artist's life and how they supposedly enhance the musical experience for the listener, while the songs themselves were written by some old white dude living in Brentwood.

PopMatters is actually one of the music review sites I respect (and not just because they gave AWS a great review...). They do their research and for the most part their reviews are pretty down-to-earth. Contrast them with Pitchfork, the leading bullshit-driven review site. Pitchfork has a cadre of fantastic writers. Really, I'm in awe of their skills. But a review should not be a place to display your skill of writing, a music review should be an arena to display your musical knowledge and your talent at objective critique. If a reviewer's 'musical knowledge' consists of the names of thousands of bands and the names of the thousands of members of those bands and their respective histories, then their knowledge is - to borrow a word from Horning - political. It is not musical. The increased prevalence of non-musical experts in music critic positions has turned the role of the music reviewer into a analyzer of the sociology of music rather than the art of music.