Revisiting: Green

OK, not so much revisiting as a recent discovery. I can't stop playing this album. Little hard to track down: email me if you want a share copy.

Revisiting: OK Computer

I'm late getting to this post, but I've been rolling it around in my head for a while. Reason: I am deeply confused by this pitchfork reader's poll, which named Radiohead's OK Computer the most significant album of the last fifteen years.

I know. Reader's polls. Pitchfork. Each one is an easy reason to dismiss the list. Combine them, and it's kind of pointless to even waste a minute worrying about it. What we have here is basically a guide to the formation of hipster taste, as imagined by hipsters.

I don't want to beat up on hipsters too badly. I'm probably one of them. But if you're canonizing OK Computer, you're ripping it out of its context. That's what canonization does; hipsters could look at their parents and learn how this works. Elvis, the Stones, the Beatles: when you pull them out of history, you lose the depth of field you need to assess what their music was doing in the culture around it, other than frothy inaccuracies like “it changed EVERYTHING” or “it just sounded like NOTHING ELSE,” etc etc.

What OK Computer did to the culture around it—and I remember it being celebrated right away as something like the future of rock music—is make electronic music safe for the mainstream again. Remember The Prodigy? They were the other big breakout band of 1997, the year of OK Computer. They did a sort of comic book version of the punk-electronica clash that bands like Refused and Atari Teenage Riot made the moment's sound of choice for some critics. (Pitchfork wasn't around yet to lobby for a certain tasteful blandness. You could still be tacky and overbearing and get listened to.)

Refused and ATR were radical leftists. The Prodigy had no politics, though you could probably argue that they embodied a warped mirror image everything social conservatives feared in 90s rave culture: they were loud, extravagantly dressed, probably fucked up on pills, threatening, multiracial. Pure difference, in a way that tries too hard.

They were also, it seemed at the time, the future of rock and electronic music. "Breathe" was on modern rock radio. The future was in the air: Refused called their album The Shape of Punk to Come, ATR was releasing The Future of War, politics claimed to have found a Third Way that cured capitalism's excesses, and so radical politics resorted to a dour millenarianism. The Prodigy also wanted to embody that future. This was not a reassuring idea. Their imaginary world was half Billy Idol and half nightmare frat party. “Smack my bitch up?” Shut the fuck up. These guys were like the Gilbert Gottfried of pop music: calculatedly annoying, and pushing taste into a place where they were easy to dismiss.

So Radiohead basically saved rock from this bullshit. It's not necessarily a bad thing. But to call OK Computer the most significant album of the last twenty years is to basically say that we'd rather have music that doesn't want to challenge middle class taste. The Prodigy were terrible, but the bands whose shoulders they stood on weren't. Radiohead pushed them all off the critics' desks, and made it so that criticism doesn't have to talk about art and politics in the same sentence, ever. Say what you want about Thom Yorke's politics, which I'm fine with, but the music isn't trying that hard to upset anyone. And neither is Pitchfork, and neither, it seems, are their readers--just look at how introspective and tortured the rest of that top ten is on their list.

Revisiting - Pennywise

It's kind of funny the shit you get up to on a long airplane ride.

Generally, I'm an album listener.  I like albums.  But when you're in that slumbery never-neverland 8 hours into a flight, it's tough to commit.  So I started exploring a bit.  And I stumbled upon Pennywise.  I was going to specify Pennywise, but look at any of the first three (Pennywise, Unknown Road, About Time) and you really can't go wrong.  But check out Wikipedia.  Can you believe this fuckers are still making music?  Okay, Full Circle was a decent album.  But that's a "classic" now?  Jesus Christ.

Incidentally.  I work with a religious dude.  He says "fuck".  He says "shit".  But he's visibly distressed when I say "hell" or "jesus christ".  I'm struggling to adapt.

So.  Back to Pennywise.  So many good songs.  And, it's not embarrassing to listen to this music, what...20 years later.  They were just so fast.  Some of the solos are a bit embarrassing, but nobody can touch this right now.

Okay.  The whole of Pennywise is just fucking awesome.  I guess I should have specified that one.  Wouldn't It Be Nice.  Rules.  The Secret.  Living for Today.  Come Out Fighting.  Ending of with Bro Hymn.  Come on.  It's a classic.

Then you have...Man.  Just go listen to that album.

Revisiting - Gob

I have a new challenge for you guys to not do every month - come up with an old album that needs revisiting.

I'm going to start us off with the Gob EP from 1994 (Holy shit I can't believe there is a Wikipedia entry for this).  Honestly, I think that this album is about as important as any to me as far as learning to love music.  I didn't really have much experience with music released on anything other than a major label before this.

Gob rolled through Kamloops around this time.  I think my friends band was talking to them about opening, but they never did.  But I remember the show and they seemed so...just beyond all of the other things I was listening to.

I bought this little EP and it stayed in my CD player for weeks.  I'd listen to it 3-4 times in a row, no problem.  These were the days of lots of Pixies and Jane's Addiction and whatnot for me.  I'd consciously avoided the whole Offspring/Bad Religion thing that was going on.  It scratched an itch.

And listening to it now, man, it's actually really stood the test of time.  It didn't fall victim to the horrible staccato drumming of pop punk that would come in the next few years.  There seems to be a reason that I really liked it.  Too bad all the shit they made after this EP kind of sucked.

Oh wait.  Bad drums show up on the last song.  I forgot about that.

Huffington Post - A pillar of investigative journalism

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything.  But.  The Huffington Post has a story, with video, about anal tattoos up.

"Thanks, King."

In the spirit of the Olympics. I just got on the internet and found out a little more about Jim Thorpe.

Why? Here's why: won both the decathlon and the pentathlon in the 1912 Olympics, after which King Gustav of Sweden (the Olympics were in Stockholm that year) reportedly said, "You, sir, are the greatest athlete in the world." Thorpe replied, "Thanks, King." Played three professional sports: baseball, football, and basketball. He was good at all of them, but best as a football fullback, where most agreed he was a pain in the ass to tackle. There are awards, days, and a town in Pennsylvania named after him. Half Native American (Potawotomi). Had his medals stripped, then reinstated, because of racists and apologists.

Why, though? Check the picture. It's from Stockholm in 1912, when he won those two events, pentathlon and decathlon, which is really like winning every event. He's wearing two different shoes. His own shoes got ripped off and he wore two mismatched ones that he found in a trash bin, with an extra sock on one foot.

(thanks to Wikipedia and, yes, My Daguerreotype Boyfriend.)

Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey

I'll firmly admit that I'm only listening to this due to the recent Pitchfork reissue review.  But I just put on Paul McCartney's Ram (perhaps this is a subconscious result of the Olympics?  Have you noticed that everybody that is not an official Olympic broadcaster is digging up all sort of British movies to show all of a sudden?).  Anyhow, I just realized that Uncle Albert/Admiral Halsey is one of my favourite songs ever.  It's immediately recognizable, but I always assumed it was a Beatles song.  It has a magical, irreverent Sgt. Pepper's feel to it.