Category Archives: Music

Michael Armstrong: “I’m laughing the whole time; it’s all tongue-in-cheek,”

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How we introduce our children to the culture that made us – us – is a complicated thing. It’s far harder then I thought it would be.

The Baby Boomers didn’t seem to fret that their culture, which glorified counter-culture, was the mainstream, while Gen-Xers were growing up. Reduced to a series of insidious marketing messages that taught us to spend our youthful energies consuming goods that made us look rebellious, and feel rebellious.

They hypocritically fretted over the lyrical content of Prince, W.A.S.P., and Metallica, when The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, and Led Zeppelin, laid it all down twenty years before. And it was broadcasted to Gen-X wherever we went.

It’s always do as I say, not as I do. Isn’t it?

We live in the age of niche media now. Broadcast doesn’t have that kind of access to our children it once had. Chances are my neighbors kids listen to different music then the neighbors next to them.

So we have decisions to make.

Right now it’s what is appropriate music for a baby?

Tonight I plan to learn the guitar to “This Little Light of Mine” and sing it for Emma. Inspired by last night’s re-broadcast of “When the Levees Broke”. Just an unbeliebable song on so many levels. I remember singing it in elementary school choir.

She loves The Ramones. “I Wanna Be Sedated” gets her feet moving and her face lights up as she laughs. And she likes Bon Jovi. Especially “It’s My Life”. You start singing the pre-chorus and you can see the look in her face waiting for the hook to kicks in. She loves the Annie soundtrack, especially “Dumb Dog”, and The Sound of Music soundtrack, especially “Do-Re-Mi”. The bigger the score, the louder the chorus, the better.

Who am I to argue with a smile and a laugh like hers?

🙂

Anyway, via dangerousmeta comes the following Washingtonpost.com story that kicked off this train of thought: “The Cradle Will Rock, to Metallica”:

Behold the dulcet tones of Metallica, my sweet little cherub-rockers!

Out are the roaring guitars, pummeling drums and howling lyrics such as “pounding out aggression / turns into obsession / cannot kill the battery / cannot kill the family.” In: glockenspiel, Mellotron, vibraphone and chimes.

If you listen closely enough, you might even hear the people behind the “Rockabye Baby” series laughing. They’re totally in on the joke, which they plan on repeating often: Albums of lullabyzed Radiohead and Coldplay songs are also out today — never mind that some of Coldplay’s originals are already soporific. And many more will follow — from Tool and Pink Floyd, both due next month, to Nirvana, the Pixies, Smashing Pumpkins and Queens of the Stone Age.

“I’m laughing the whole time; it’s all tongue-in-cheek,” says Michael Armstrong, who is producing and performing the albums — a process that involves extracting the lyrics and musical teeth from the songs.

It’s not a joke really. Is it? And no – I’m not buying this crap.

The music industry targets guitar tablature sites for shutdown

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NYTimes: Now the Music Industry Wants Guitarists to Stop Sharing:

The Internet put the music industry and many of its listeners at odds thanks to the popularity of services like Napster and Grokster. Now the industry is squaring off against a surprising new opponent: musicians.

In the last few months, trade groups representing music publishers have used the threat of copyright lawsuits to shut down guitar tablature sites, where users exchange tips on how to play songs like “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door,” “Highway to Hell” and thousands of others.

The battle shares many similarities with the war between Napster and the music recording industry, but this time it involves free sites like Olga.net, GuitarTabs.com and MyGuitarTabs.com and even discussion boards on the Google Groups service like alt.guitar.tab and rec.music.makers.guitar.tablature, where amateur musicians trade “tabs” — music notation especially for guitar — for songs they have figured out or have copied from music books.

On the other side are music publishers like Sony/ATV, which holds the rights to the songs of John Mayer, and EMI, which publishes Christina Aguilera’s music.

Speaking as a guitarist, Olga.net and services like it have helped inspire me to learn new songs when the urge arises and inspiration hits. Countless songs. I’ve forgotten far more then I can play (that’s not saying much with my little memory or lack of talent).

Speaking as a social media groupie, Olga.net and services like it, represent the ultimate in what online community can aspire too. Olga.net was started way back in 1992. 1992! You want to see the Long Tail of the Web at work? Well dive in you would find tabs posted on the most non-mainstream of artists you could think of. Why do folks contribute so much of their time and effort transcribing these songs so that others may learn them?

Love. The free exchange of knowledge – driven by love of subject matter and the desire to share. As purest an expression of that human need as any else online.

And the bastards are moving to take it down for a little additional profit.

Let me join with Kent Newsome (who posted a great description of what guitar tablature is) and Mathew Ingram in protesting this latest industry blunder.

My favorite MP3 player

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musikCube has become my favorite desktop mp3 player on Windows lately. It’s lightweight, and incorporates a souped up version of my favorite iTunes functionality – helping keep my library organized on my file system while simultaneously tagging. It’s free, open source, and for the developers out there, written with .NET, which means I can dive into the code if I wish.

In September 1985: Frank Zappa’s Letter to His Fan Club

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In 1985 Frank Zappa sent a letter to his fan club to warn them about the “Wives of Big Brother” – the PMRC.

There is very much I agree with Democratic party on, but whenever some of its leaders find common cause with social conservatives, most likely in pursuit of middle America, it drives me to a place where I find both parties bereft of principal and unworthy of my vote. The 90s seemed to be a time we were past such things, even if I know people who didn’t vote for Al Gore because of Tipper Gore’s involvement in the PMRC. But the echoes in Hillary Clinton’s Family Entertainment Protection Act are too strong to ignore. The legislation Senator Hillary Clinton, Senator Joe Lieberman and Senator Evan Bayh is sponsoring would fine the sale of labeled games – it does not propose labeling. No one would argue over the constitutionality of labeling these days. Our view of our constitutional rights has grown far narrower.

Following is Frank Zappa on Crossfire in 1986, debating censorship and rock music. It’s an eye opener. He called himself a conservative. Do you think he still would consider himself one since the fundamentalist wing of the Republican party holds so much sway? Since the non-invasive government, balanced budget, rule-of-law conservative is effectively extinct (they’re Democrats now)? For humor, the exchange between Washington Times columnist John Lofton and Frank Zappa over the “obscenity” of Van Halen’s “Hot for Teacher” is priceless. Or then again, you could find it depressing.

The exchange from 08:45 in the video to 11:40 is as timely today as it was in 1986. Zappa said that America was on a march toward a “fascist theocracy”. Well what do you think?


link

This exchange should speak to many locally involved folks I know:

Q: What would you tell a kid he aught to hope for now a-days Frank?

A: What I tell kids and what I’ve been telling kids for quite some time is first, register to vote, and second as soon as you’re old enough, run for something.

Damn straight. And that’s just what is taking place. Look out establishment.

More at Metafilter. Read the testimony committee testimony on record labeling from back in September 19, 1985.

Alice Cooper for Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame

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Rock n’ Roll shouldn’t have a hall of fame. It just shouldn’t. Official ‘recognition’ of Rock artists devalues and degrades the core of what Rock is all about. Now getting past that, since there is a “Rock and Roll Hall of Fame”, the fact that Alice Cooper isn’t in it, just goes to show just how broken it is.

Bob Lefsetz: This Week�s Podcast – Alice Cooper

A VC: Nuggets

Kent Newsome: Another Vote for Alice

“Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey”

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I can’t wait for Sam Dunn and Scot McFadyen’s anthropological look at Heavy Metal to be released on DVD later this month. Yahoo! had a writeup about the film earlier in the week.

Check out “Metal: A Headbanger’s Journey”‘s trailer.

From a Chicago Tribune review:

Unlike the current youth movement Emo, metal was never “a way to understand your loneliness,” says music writer and pop-culture sensei Chuck Klosterman, “but it’s a way to feel a part of something larger than yourself.” So Dunn travels to Germany’s Wacken Open Air festival to mosh with 40,000 other metalheads and experience that larger-than-life adrenaline rush that makes otherwise intelligent kids thrash their heads toward permanent brain damage.

Touching on sex, religion and violence, Dunn zooms through the history of metal (the genre is rooted in blues and, more obviously, classical), rattling off a mind-blowing list of musical subgenres, from heavy to punk to British to black to speed to death to hair –to name a few.

From Ruthless Reviews:

…this wonderfully entertaining movie doesn’t pit bands against each other, or foolishly attempt to argue in favor of Megadeth’s importance while picking on “lesser” bands like Motley Crue and Poison. From glam to progressive, black metal to thrash, it’s all the same silly, loveable music. It made us laugh, helped us accept a solitary prom night, and allowed us to feel superior to those burdened by the bad taste of associating with Duran Duran or Wham. Metal is a dying giant to be sure, and is rarely discussed without some sort of VH1 “Where are They Now?” detachment, but fans remain; scattered and low key, perhaps, but still in love with a style of music that always managed to piss somebody off. It was about rebellion, arrogance, and hate, yes, but also the true spirit of the form — being an individual. Sure, we always exaggerated the impact, and more often than not the lyrics were nothing more than the umpteenth derivation of fucking a slut in the back of the tour bus, but we could read between the lines, even then. All we knew was that our parents hated it, Congress sought to act against it, and for the time it took to finish a cassette or LP, we felt like gods. Zit-ridden, painfully shy, and inept on all fronts, but gods nonetheless.

My kinda movie.