Cognomen

Retribution Gospel Choir - S/T - Lyrics

2008-03-21T16:47:00.003-04:00

It didn't come with a booklet. Alan Sparhawk isn't Thom Yorke or suchlike, so you have some chance of figuring out the lyrics on your own. But I feel like transcribing them. So here they are.

THEY KNEW YOU WELL
They cut a path through the forest
Right to the heart of the fever
And when they got to the ocean
They knew that nothing could keep her
They knew you well

So let the water surround us
And let the forest hide evil
She tried to speak like a stranger
We tried so hard to believe her
They knew you well

TAKE YOUR TIME
So she waits at the edges of the mattress
What it takes to get a bad mess out of a bad dress
When she sings, it's like a bluebird on a whipping post
When she speaks, she thanks the good Lord for the Holy Ghost
Take your time, sweet thing

BREAKER
Our bodies break
And the blood just spills and spills
Yet here we sit discussing math

It's just a shame
My hand just kills and kills
There's got to be an end to that

SOMEBODY'S SOMEONE
She's always on with the burnout
She's always talking like Jesus
See her walk to the west side
Make a line 'cause you have to
She's somebody's someone

Put your hand on the birdhouse
Keep on talking like Jesus
And take out all of the good lines
Leave the people with nothing
Somebody's someone

DESTROYER
I am the destroyer
I am the angel of death
My head is filled with fire
I hear the voices of the dead

Well I watched my angry father
Turning circles in the ground
And I saw the great devourer
Yeah he cut my father down

Well I could have been a sailor
Lay my life down for the queen
But when the ocean took my brother
That put a curse on everything

So I ran to the feet of Jesus
He said "Where the hell you been, boy?"
I've been to the top of the highest mountain
I've been to the bottom of the sea

HOLES IN OUR HEADS
They put holes in our heads
And out of them climbed
First just a dread
Then to the river we ride
With our holes in our heads

It was just like she said
A word to the wise
You run yourself sick
But we just blow by
With our holes in our heads

WHAT SHE TURNED INTO
A face like that
She could have escaped
She cut off her hair
And burned at the stake
And then she turned into the rain

Soap in your eyes
Looks like you're weak
Runs down your face
It's cold on your feet
But then she turned into the rain
Then she turned into
The rain

Pardon my heel
Pardon my speech
Down to the bridge
Down to the beach
But then she turned into the rain
Then she turned into

FOR HER BLOOD
They all say
"That girl is strange"
Now everybody's at her (for her)
Everybody's at her (for her)
Everybody's at her for her blood

So afraid
People like to hear their name
What they really want from her

Just a little change
But people don't like to wait
So everybody's at her (for her)
Everybody's at her (for her)
Everybody's at her for her blood
For her blood

They took the bait
But then she took the stage
Now everybody's at her (for her)
Everybody's at her (for her)
Everybody's at her for her blood

KIDS
The Salvation Army
Was all out of ammo
They threw down their weapons
But kept up the battle
It's so hard to handle
We laughed and we made up
Deflecting the arrows
But cutting your face up

Those damn kids
Don't they understand
That you can't do shit like that
Someday soon they'll be just like us
And they'll stare down at their feet

The kids that we hated
Did better than we did
The girl with the habit
I wish you could see her
'Cause all of the dreamers
Have come to disaster
The panel is waiting
"Just give us your answer"

Those damn kids
Don't they understand
That you can't do shit like that
Someday soon they'll be just like us
And they'll stare down at their feet

Some men bring you flowers
Some men pay the bills
God rest you sons of morning
Amen

EASY PREY
Oh could joy be nothing
And every strain a waste
Even if they are, we're in trouble
Even if we are what they say
Even if we are easy prey

'Cause everyone on fire
And through the eyes of birds
Well even if they are, we're in trouble
Even if we are what they say
Even if we are easy prey

Everyone loves power
And everyone loves cake
And every time those words fall out
You laugh like they're too late
Well even if they are, we're in trouble
Even if we are what they say
Even if we are easy prey

Bonus track:
POOR MAN'S DAUGHTER [From EP#2]
We sing of salvation
We sing what me must
'Cause one man's treasure
Is another man's lost

But down in the valley
The shadow of death
The poor man's daughter takes her very first breath

Forty wild horses
Float in the dust
I'm a wanton repeater
And a breaker of trust

But down in the valley
The shadow of death
The poor man's daughter takes her very first breath

They crumble before us
In ribbons of string
But the poor man's daughter
Is the ghost inside me

And she says:
La la
La la

Suggested tracklist:

They Knew You Well

Breaker

Somebody's Someone

Poor Man's Daughter

Destroyer

Holes in Our Heads

What She Turned Into (EP2 version)

For Her Blood

Kids

Easy Prey

Neil Young: Decade 4

2006-04-21T12:38:00.000-04:00

So from 1995-2005 Neil Young released quite a few albums. I was very ambivalent about them, as, well, it's Neil Young. I'm pretty much caught up, now, though, so here are capsule reviews.

1995 Mirror Ball (with Pearl Jam)
Probably good for his heart, but Pearl Jam just aren't the best backup for him. There are two great songs here, but other than solo-Young organ excusions, everything else drags on too long. Crazy Horse can drag a song out for 6 minutes by serving as rolling thunder for Neil's guitar to flash across. Pearl Jam just keep thumping, and it becomes a chore to listen to.

Essentials: "Song X", "I'm the Ocean"

1996 Broken Arrow (with Crazy Horse)
This is one of the more underrated records in his catalog (but then I listen to Arc and Metal Machine Music without any sort of chemical inducement, so, yeah). The sheets of noise, the diverse and enjoyable lyrics, and the feeling of rightness all combine to make this a great sunday-afternoon listen. I really need to hear "Interstate"...

Essentials: "Slip Away", "Music Arcade" -- but this one should be listened to as a whole.

Year of the Horse (live album with Crazy Horse)
"It all sounds the same!" "It's all one song!"
It's sloppy and doesn't really bear terribly close listening, but it's very comfortable, and some of the rarities ("Dangerbird", "When Your Lonely Heart Breaks") are worth the very low asking price.

Essentials: You know what? Not really. Some of the Broken Arrow songs are better here, but they're very similar.

2000 Silver & Gold
God, what a snoozer. Having quite liked Prairie Wind, I was hopeful for this one and picked it up. It's mostly dire. "Buffalo Springfield Again", a song I was looking forward to hearing, is an embarrassment almost on the order of "Let's Roll", without even the good-natured wryness of "He Was the King." The second "side" of the album is a bit better, but cliche is the reigning lyrical technique. All the songs are on the same topics: love, comfortability, family, days that used to be. All the songs sound the same. "Razor Love", a song written around the Times Square period, is almost ruined by sounding exactly the same as everything else, but it eventually pulls out and becomes quite a good song.

Essentials: The real gem of this album is the closer, "Without Rings," a sorta sequel to "Transformer Man". It's much more intimate and soulful than the rest of the album.

2002 Are You Passionate? (with members of Booker T. & the M.G.'s and, on one track, Crazy Horse)
I have a full review up somewhere... This album sounds good, but the lyrics, man... ugh. Cut out "Let's Roll", "When I Hold You In My Arms", "Be With You", and "Two Old Friends", reshuffle what's left, and the album improves immensely. "You're My Girl" is touching. The title cut comes close to being essential, but horrible lyrics ruin it; "She's a Healer" is fun and cornball. Everything else is fun to listen to, but you kinda have to ignore the lyrics. What can I say, at least it's better than the last one.

Essentials: "Goin' Home" is Crazy Horse at its droniest, if not its best. I hear it as a violent sequel to "Slip Away."

2003 Greendale (with Crazy Horse)
Sounds like: Zuma
Overall effect: It sounds like Zuma, it's worth hearing. It's actually pretty damned good until the plot actually starts moving. The political commentary is unenlightening, and the final song is too catchy to have such goddamn stupid lyrics. Possibly the most effective use of a megaphone in rock.

Essentials: "Falling from Above", "Devil's Sidewalk", "Leave the Driving", "Carmichael", "Bandit"

2005 Prairie Wind
OK, OK, the lyrics aren't great (Chris Rock? WTF?) and the faux-populist politics are tiresome. The self-plagiarism isn't so uplifting either (No Wonder shamelessly cribs from Captain Kennedy, etc.). But the songs sound different, there are some really touching moments, and despite the length of the songs I find them pretty listenable. "Here For You", "This Old Guitar", and "He was the King" form the weak sequence on the album, but they're not as appallingly dull as most of Silver and Gold. He closes with an affecting original hymn that, while theologically naive, is heartfelt and, well, essential. I'd like to see it performed in churches.

Essentials: "Falling Off the Face of the Earth", "Prairie Wind" (well, if it weren't so awfully long), "When God Made Me"

P.S. Neil Young told Jimmy McDonough that he still believed in burning out. Paraphrase: "When I go out, you'll know it. I'll be like a fuckin' meteorite." Living With War sounds like a fucking meteorite. I expect it to be, well, appalling, but it sure will sound different!

Half-thoughts and their dangers

2005-09-13T01:48:00.000-04:00

I suffer from more than a fair degree of intellectual dilettantism, swinging from "brilliant idea!" to "brilliant idea!" without ever actually finishing the development of any given one. Heck, look at these blogs.

But at least I don't write a newspaper column.

John Harris at the Guardian wrote a rather appalling column about lyrics in popular music back in June. He complains that they are not meaningful enough. Pop music lyrics, not deeply meaningful? Imagine that!

Judging by the narrative development of said column, he seems to have started with an unimpeachably great idea: Coldplay fucking sucks. Chris Martin fucking sucks. Their music is not half bad, other than the orchestra. Most of all, though, Chris Martin's lyrics are bathetically bad, the sort of scribblings you might expect from an earnest ninth-grader or a precocious and sensitive twelve-year-old -- but not from a grown man! I mean, Christ:

Ideas that you’ll never find
All the inventors could never design
The buildings that you put up
All Japan and China, all lit up
A sign that I couldn’t read
Or a light that I couldn’t see
Some things you have to believe
But others are puzzles, puzzling me

Great galloping bollocks! are these bad lyrics, still more from the "world's most important band" of the moment. Not that Chris Martin means ill, it's just hard to write anything meaningful when you don't know anything meaningful.

Anyway, let us, for the time being, take Coldplay's immense badness as a given. Mr. Harris could have produced a wonderful piece by tripping back through the history of "important" bands with dogshite lyrics. (A certain popular group from Dublin must stand and represent here for the atrocities of their latter career, all apologies to a Mr. Cooke.) Oh, how David Crosby might have trembled! (or not.)

But instead, Harris begins to veer off on a weird tangent about modern lyrics not being meaningful enough. I quote:

One need only listen to the songs written by such equally confused groups as Keane, Snow Patrol, Embrace and Athlete to understand that, just as rock musicians once opportunistically sang about peace and love, punk-rock anarchy and the 1980s imperative to "go for it", so the latest generation often seems to be united by a fondness for inconclusive songs that try to capture life's most elemental aspects, but end up evoking nothing much at all.

Far be it from me to defend these bands. I haven't the faintest idea who the last two even are, and have only the faintest (and not too positive) impressions of the first two. He says they're "lushly produced self-helpery," and, sure, I'm willing to believe it. Not really news that a band like Coldplay would spawn imitators, but, OK. And then he goes off the cliff.

And what of the wider socio-economic picture? The ideological age of culture wars, in which sparky musicians felt compelled to adopt the mantle of social critics, is long gone. ... It would be nice to welcome some 21st century equivalents of John Lennon, John Lydon, Morrissey and Jarvis Cocker, but the chances look pretty slim.

Guh? John Lydon I'll grant you, regardless of his motives. But to elevate John "Freda People" Lennon and Mr. "Meat Is Murder" Morrissey as socially conscious artists all young bands should imitate? We're treading on dangerous ground here. (I am a great devotee of Lennon's music, and much less a devotee of the dangerously broken man, but has this man ever heard "Sometime in New York City"?) Much as I like a few Morrissey/Smiths songs, the man's so full of shit that, well, complete that as you will.

And then further he falls:

There's an easy retort to all this, of course. Coldplay, Keane and Snow Patrol are not the only successful groups; should anyone tire of all their lushly produced self-helpery, they need only turn to the more prickly music being peddled by the likes of Franz Ferdinand, the Futureheads, the Kaiser Chiefs and Bloc Party. Their stuff comes with satisfyingly jagged edges; the words seem a little more worked-out than the rest of the stuff you hear on the radio. ... But what's still missing is any real sense of rock consistently engaging in the art of social comment. Worse still, even the most promising minds among modern musicians don't seem to have much of a facility with words.

Thence follows mockery of the lyrics to Kaiser Chief's "Oh My God", not a terribly intelligent lyric but a very brilliant song. Besides, "Drifting apart like a plate tectonic" is a great lyric. And there are some real gems elsewhere as well:
"Cu- cu- cu- creosote is pouring out of my brain
I swear I heard the floorboards; they were creaking your name."
etc.

I would submit those lyrics to a poetry contest sooner than I would "Mind Games", that's for certain.

Thence follows a very good mini interview with Andy Partridge of XTC, who seems to have thought about the theory of good pop lyrics more than even I have. Then again, I don't like XTC much, but who's counting. Then it's onto a professor of Modern English Literature at University College London, John Sutherland.

With whom he assaults "Morning Bell" by Radiohead. Alright, so I'm predictable. Anyhow:

We spend an hour or so picking through a selection of lyrics: the entirety of X&Y, gleaming examples of rock's past glories by the likes of Morrissey and Paul Weller, and Radiohead's sense-defying Morning Bell, an embodiment of the idea that if narrative coherence is among the duties that modern musicians have abandoned, Thom Yorke may have quite a lot to answer for.

Sutherland scrolls through the lyric to Morning Bell on his computer screen. After a couple of lines, his face has screwed into a mixture of bafflement and distaste. "What are they doing? There's no grammar in there; no syntax at all. Even Coldplay have a bit of that: subject, object, verb. There's none here, is there? It's just bits of language, floating loose. There's poetry like that - Ezra Pound, for example. But a lyric like this tells us nothing at all. 'Release me/ release me/ Where d'you park the car/ Where d'you park the car/ Clothes are on the lawn with the furniture.' What is this? Eviction? Prison? TS Eliot said, 'Real poetry communicates before it's understood.' But with this, I'm not sure it does either."

I may be biased, but there is more sense in Morning Bell than in half of the Pound oeuvre combined. And I like Pound! But just look:

The morning bell, the morning bell.
Light another candle.  Release me, release me.

You can keep the furniture.  A bump on the head.
Howling down the chimney, release me, release me.

Where'd you park the car?  Where'd you park the car?
The clothes are on the lawn with the furniture.  Release me.  Release me.

And I might as well, I might as well
sleepy jack the fire drill
Round and round and round and round and round
Release me.  Release me.

Cut the kids in half.
Cut the kids in half.
Cut the kids in half.

Lights are on but nobody's home
Talking about but noone's listening
And I'm walking, walking, walking, walking

Lights are on but nobody's home
Everybody wants to be a villain
Everybody wants to be a villain
Nobody wants to be a slave
and I'm walking walking walking walking...

The obvious "social context" of the song is a divorce. I mean, "cut the kids in half." Sheesh. The clothes on the lawn with the furniture. There is a subtext of amnesia and ghostliness: howling down the chimney, a bump on the head, lights on but nobody home. (Also, and this suggestion comes from SongMeanings so take it with a box of Morton's, "The Morning Bell" happens to be the name of a rather good and very evocative painting by Winslow Homer.) There are very needlessly obscure Radiohead songs; this is not one of them. Both official versions, furthermore, are some of the ghostliest things I've ever heard.

And that takes us back to why we sing: some of us sing in the dark to ward away the ghosts, some of us sing to remember our ghosts, some of us sing because we have no ghosts to trouble us. Lyrics matter insofar as they reinforce these higher reasons. I can't enjoy Coldplay or "Walk On" because the lyrics feel banal, empty, trite and disappoint the music. I can enjoy the songs of Neil Young, whose lyrics tend to lie dead on the page but come to life when sung. But while I'm all for the importance of lyrics, it seems sheer folly to try to look at them as poems. They're no more meant to be poems than a Pound Canto is meant to be sung.

I could continue my response to the essay -- there's not much to go -- but I've made my point. I'll just close out with a little quotation from an artist we both admire, from a fantastic song that delights in not making "coherent sense" and in not being rooted in any particular time, though its place is unmistakably British:

Expert texpert choking smokers Don't you think the joker laughs at you?

Get Behind Me Satan

2005-06-11T04:31:00.000-04:00

... pre-quoted from an Amazon review ...

The White Stripes are one of the most promising acts in recent history. I got into them shortly after their debut, which still ranks high among my favorite debut albums. De Stijl, for its many charms, seemed disjointed and uneven by comparison. White Blood Cells did everything right and remains my favorite by them by a hair. Elephant was a step in the wrong direction, a contrived and awkward album cursed by novelty tunes (good novelty tunes though they may be).

So it was with trepidation that I awaited the release of Get Behind Me Satan. Sure, "Blue Orchid" was a great refreshing song and great to hear the radio, but "Seven Nation Army" was and remains one of their best songs. There was nothing in "Blue Orchid" to suggest that the sound of the new album would diverge too much from Elephant. Good or bad, though, I figured I'd give it a try...

Thankfully, everything on Get Behind Me Satan works -- it's the most effective tracklist besides White Blood Cells, feels all of a piece, and is blessedly free of the novelties that made Elephant a bit of a freak show. Sure, the instruments being used are slightly, uh, different: piano, marimbas, bass. The songcraft of Mr. Gillis is as strong as ever, though, and the band manages to create some really dynamic sound structures.

"Blue Orchid" kicks things off with a bang, combining garage-rock vigor with Talking Heads-ish tension. Notably more produced than most Elephant tracks. The song suddenly stops and marimbas take over -- truly a bizarre shift, but an effective one, as a tale of trust and betrayal unfolds in "The Nurse." The emergence of the chorus's backing guitar and drums over the course of the song seems odd at first, but after two listens sounds natural. Down tempo gives way to up tempo with "My Doorbell," an incredibly catchy (and funky!) song reminiscent in concept of Neil Young's "Walk On." A very strong candidate for single release.

The second part of the album is equally strong. "Forever For Her (Is Over For Me)" is a simple but lyrically deft breakup/new love ballad equal to or better than Elephant's excellent "You've Got Her In Your Pocket." It gives way to the bluegrass dustup "Little Ghost," possibly a tribute to Rita Hayworth or the new Mrs. White -- a cute, fun ditty most reminiscent of WBC's "Hotel Yorba." Lyrics are pleasingly clever: "The first time that I met her, I did not expect a specter" really rolls off the tongue. Back to rocking for "The Denial Twist," a driven ode to jealousy and suspicion. "White Moon" is a rather surrealistic piano meditation on death, abandonment, and lovely Rita -- certainly the oddest track on here.

"Instinct Blues" is somewhat long and somewhat repetitive but introduces frustration, tension, and unhappiness in place of "Ball and Biscuit's" braggadocio and is much the better for it. It's a great song to crank up on the highway with the windows down. "Passive Manipulation" is the closest thing to a novelty, a thirty-second meditation by Meg on obedience to significant others and female independence. Maybe, uh, some other issues as well, but I'm not speculating there. Another highlight follows in the form of "Take Take Take," yet another Rita song. It describes interactions between the actress and the equivalent of a groupie, with the tense and heavily tracked vocals on the chorus simply repeating the title.

"As Ugly As I Seem" is one of the more surprising tracks on here; it sounds like an acoustic Smashing Pumpkins outtake more than anything else. I haven't fully gotten my head around "Red Rain" yet, but it's catchy and surprising. "I'm Lonely" ends the album on a wry but laid-back and familiar note, as the narrator contemplates family, romance, and suicide.

While the album may seem a "mishmash," as Amazon's review called it, it's in practice a very coherent and unified album. The Whites are in fine form and Jack's voice in particular is great. If you've liked their work in their past, particularly their first album, you owe it to yourself to give this one a try. The best album of the year to date.

Highlights: Blue Orchid, The Nurse, My Doorbell, Take Take Take (and many of the rest :)

A Happy Death

2005-02-28T00:00:00.000-05:00

Once a Hollywood wild man of legendary reputation, Zevon had been sober for nearly 18 years and quit smoking almost five years ago. When he was asked last year what he does while staring death in the eye, Zevon replied by saying, "Work."

"Harder, hopefully with some focus," Zevon said. "I'm working a lot every day. I already have great relationships with my children ... I've already led two lives. I got to be a wild, crazy, Jim Morrison quasi-rock star, anyway, and I got to be a sober dad for 18 years. I can't possibly complain."

I'm tired of the warped view that our society takes of death. Sure, it's a bad thing, and a sad thing. Still, it's worse to lose someone, I think, than to die yourself. There are lots of things worse than death that people can experience directly.

I'd like to do miniature case studies on the lives and deaths of two friends, Warren Zevon and Hunter S. Thompson. Not right now, exactly, but watch this space.

Pixies In Glory: Pixies in Detroit 20041118

2004-11-19T01:05:00.000-05:00

With all questions of import to the world now safely out of my hands, we can return to utter frivolity like good patriotic Americans. Cheers!

OK, OK, it wasn't the best live show I've ever seen, but damn good. Maybe I'll talk about it later. (Don't bet on it.) I bought the show on disc afterwards (modern technology occasionally makes my heart glow). Oddly enough, I think I like the performance better on disc than I liked it live. Maybe the sound was worse than it seemed. For now, here's the setlist, and a good one it is:

I Bleed (Doolittle)
Head On (Trompe Le Monden - Jesus and Mary Chain cover)
U-Mass (Trompe Le Monde)
Monkey Gone to Heaven (Doolittle)
Caribou (Come on Pilgrim)
No. 13 Baby (Doolittle)
Broken Face (Surfer Rosa)
Crackity Jones (Doolittle)
Isla de Encanta (Come on Pilgrim)
Something Against You (Surfer Rosa)
Hey (Doolittle)
Mr. Grieves (Doolittle)
Velouria (Bossanova)
Dead (Doolittle)
Gouge Away (Doolittle)
Tame (Doolittle)
Debaser (Doolittle)
Wave of Mutilation (Doolittle)
In Heaven [The Lady In the Radiator Song] (cover of "theme" from David Lynch's Eraserhead)
Here Comes Your Man (Doolittle)
Where Is My Mind? (Surfer Rosa)
Holiday Song (Come On Pilgrim)
Nimrod's Son (Come On Pilgrim)
Vamos (Surfer Rosa/COP)
Gigantic (Surfer Rosa)

Looks like I'm not the only one who thinks Doolittle is their best... I wish they'd covered Winterlong as they had earlier on the tour. I wish, I wish, I wish they'd played Silver. All in all, though, a great night out.

Dull roots, spring rain

2004-09-08T23:02:00.000-04:00

You know, Desire is a damn weird mess. If I had to somehow compare it to the work of another writer, I would have to go with Neil Young's Hawks and Doves. Both albums seem to have themes (The former, innocence/guilt; the latter, doves/hawks), but both keep throwing up objections whenever it seems they're sticking to the theme. Alright, starting an album review by referencing a more obscure album is probably a bad idea. Let's do it again...

Allen Ginsburg's ridiculous liner notes for Bob Dylan's Desire, worthless as they are, do fit the album in a strange way. Coherent-if-pretentious liner notes, like Blood on the Tracks got, would be way out of place for an album like this. It's not every album, or even every Dylan album, that leads with an unabashed protest song (Hurricane, which is about the framed (?) boxer Ruben Carter), then follows up with an unabashed protest song, Joey, protesting in favor of an actual mob murderer and wannabe boss. It's really not a coherent album... unless it is.

One thing Desire unquestionably is is Bob Dylan's Great Adventure Album. Oh, sure, Dylan had written plenty of songs with either lovers or him sailing overseas, getting sent to jail, even getting killed here and there, but these are Great Adventures out of Jack London, or Ernest Hemingway, or Daniel Defoe, or H. Rider Haggard. There's Hurricane Ruben Carter, potential middleweight champeeen of the woooorld, instead of poor Hattie Carroll, maid of the kitchen. There's Klondike Bob, riding across the icy fields to get a gift for his past and future wife Isis. There's Tropical Bob, inviting a wife or a lover to Mozambique to see all the gorgeous people.

We get Bwana Bob, of unspecified relation to a smooth-backed meadowlark seer, in One More Cup of Coffee (one of his most sinister love songs, reduced to solo organ to wonderful effect on the eponymous debut of The White Stripes). We get Christian? Egyptian? Incestuous? Literalistic? Bob of Oh Sister, another candidate for "most sinister." We get the sad tale of a bloodthirsty gangster with a heart of silver, or maybe tellurium, in Joey, which may well be the most disturbing protest song ever written. We get a Romance in Durango, with the bloody faces, whispering ghosts, and ambushes common to any smart, ambiguous 60s western (do you know of any?). Finally, we get the apocalyptic shiver of Black Diamond Bay, which Brahma/Vishnu/Shiva Bob conjures, personalizes, and then destroys -- "there's not much happening there".

And floating on all the cooling lava, there's the most straightforward song Bob ever wrote. It's just Bob, it's just Sara, and he misses her so. He knows all the answers to his questions, he knows why she left, but he keeps asking them three years later. It's a pointless song and can't bring her back, but that can't stop him from singing it, later. He finally finds, in other words, that diamond he was searching for, back in Isis.

It's a weird slate of songs, as prickly and inaccessible and contradictory as the songs of "Blood on the Tracks" were inviting and mesmerising and coherent. Somehow, with the exception of Joey (BLECH), it works.

Wait-- this is an album, not a collection of poems. Well, musically, the collaboration of Jacques Levy takes Dylan in a new direction. As the outtakes that have been released since testify, it was a thoroughly rewarding direction, with interesting melodies and unexpected choruses everywhere. The backing... no, that's unfair, co-lead vocals of Emmylou Harris dull the sharp edges of Dylan's voice the same way that his old friend Joan Baez's used to, but the effect is much more suited to this album than to those old acoustic songs. His voice alone would be lost in the sprawling jungles of instrumentation created by his six-man band of... creative instruments (fiddle, Bellzouki, accordion, in addition to piano, guitar, drums, bass, and harmonica).

One final word, about Scarlet Rivera. Far from being, as has been suggested, one of Dylan's worse ideas, she practically deserves a co-artist credit, as her violin playing is the lead on nearly every track. Her work on Hurricane particularly sizzles, but she's great on everything. Not nearly as great, though, as she was live on the Rolling Thunder tour. The versions of Isis and Romance In Durango here, nice as they are, just can't hold a candle to the forest fires sparked by her bow live.

BTW, sorry for the delay. I was busy getting married, as was my most faithful reader. We shall strive to do our respective duties more often, now that we have returned.

Hey Mr. Clean, you're dirty now too

2004-08-09T10:30:00.000-04:00

So I uh saw uh Greendale used, cheap at Harmony House and I uh bought it. I figured, "It's a CD with a bonus live DVD. That's practically half-price right there." Those who know my comments on it know that I was very wary indeed of it; Neil has obviously recovered from Kurt Cobain's and David Briggs's deaths and has, as is his wont, returned to comfortable hippy territory regarding the power of love. Ah well. Besides the sappy environmental/love/family themes, though, the names he's chosen for the characters -- did I mention it's a rock opera? -- are bizarrely allegorical (Sun Green and Earth Brown are the really egregious two).

Now that I've listened to it several times, I can say that a lot of my fears were justified. Most of it's very soft-headed; the paranoia isn't always convincing; and the lyrics get overheated reeeeeal easy. But I've also been impressed by the album, too: the moral universe Young has created really is deep and nuanced; when once in a while he actually manages to hit his target of scorn, it's powerful; and, finally, there is a novelistic attention to detail that's missing from the rest of the Young catalog. Also, the majority of the performances are musically very strong, even if most of the music is pretty simplistic. The defects will be glaringly apparent if you listen to the album, so I'll just stick to pointing out its strengths (I realize it's less fun that way).

The first strength is the lack of pretension. Neil is mostly into his little universe for its capacity to surprise him; he hasn't thought everything out, and so his emotional investment is in the characters rather than the moral of the whole rotten thing. This is a really good thing -- if it had to stand on plot alone, it would be dire (cf. Psychoderelict). Instead, Young created an imaginary place and let it grow in his mind, and pulled the threads of the story out of the milieu he envisioned. It has the capacity to be tiresome, certainly, but it's not so vauntingly insulting as the top-down concepts of the worst practitioners of the genre.

The second strength is how interesting most of the characters are. The major characters Young creates -- Jed, the militiaman; Grampa, Grandma, Earl, Sun (the daughter), Officer Carmichael and his wife -- all have severe deficiencies (well, except Sun) and virtues, and, other than Sun, they're not too stereotypical. The character of the Devil, who's only mentioned indirectly by the characters but who is fully fleshed out between the liners and the live acoustic performance, is one of the best: funny, clever, and inescapably creepy. And is it me, or is the friendly art gallery owner Lenore in league with him?!

The third major strength is that, even in the overlong or softheaded songs, Neil is in good (if not top) form as a songwriter and recording artist. "Sun Green", whose reduction to straightforward plot makes it seem incredibly banal (girl protests, is aired by media, FBI shoot her cat(!!!), runs away with sweet environmentalist type), in execution is rather masterful. Young has a special "megaphone" amplifier that he uses for Sun's protest vocals, and his delivery of the song's chorus through it (see title) is unforgettable. Even "Be the Rain" has enough songwriting chops to make one who rejects the hippie underpinnings of the song appreciate it as an ode to youthful passion -- the song construction is damn good.

So, yes, Greendale is a good album. It's not nearly as good as its proponents say, but it's an improvement from 2001's Are You Passionate?. (That isn't an insult coming from me; AYP is a damn decent little 6-track EP disguised as a crappy album). For the sheer proficiency of "recording design" (production, instrumentation, arrangement, song construction), it's worth at least a listen or two.

Other People's Problems: A Review of Something Else By the Kinks

2004-07-30T16:07:00.000-04:00

So, I hear that some Kinks fans think that Something Else is the pinnacle of the Brothers Davies' accomplishments. Me, I think it's good, but it's not very good. It's no Village Green Preservation Society, and I hear from George Starostin that it's not even Face to Face. Though I agree with him on many points, I can't help but feel that he's missing the point of the album (and VGPS, too, but that's another post another day.

Something Else is a good album; I wouldn't call it a boring album, exactly, though it is a music-hall album through and through. As Ray and Dave Davies are pessimistic men, in general, their take on the music hall experience is far more successful and enjoyable than that other great songwriter, Sir Paul of the Cloying. All in all, though, the music and lyrics combine to form an extended, consistent, and very depressing mess.

See, I'm of the opinion that just because a song looks and sounds like it's supposed to be happy doesn't mean it actually is. The aforementioned Paul's Your Mother Should Know was the first I remember to get this treatment. There's something in the song's dynamic, you see, that makes it unbelievable as a happy dancing tune. The way the swooning, cloudy harmony vocals at the beginning modulate is more disturbing than joyful, the organ solos are poignant, and the chord changes say more of the tragic than the comic. Incorporating biography as I always do, I'll just note that Paul's mother died when he was young and he allegedly never quite came to terms about it. If you just look at the lyrics, it seems as if it should be a bit of bright nonsense, but in fact, it's certainly not.

Similarly "bright" on paper are Ray's songs on Something Else. (Dave's songs are nothing of the sort, but more on that later.) The majority of Ray's songs, from David Watts to Two Sisters to Waterloo Sunset, seem to have a general theme of "wanting to be what you can't", but several of them end more or less happily. Priscilla of Two Sisters ends up "deciding that she was better off / than the wayward lass that her sister had been"; the tin soldier man is a "very happy little tin soldier man". The rest don't seem all that poignant on paper, really.

["Spoilers" ahead] But Ray, after all, is the master of the roundabout kick in the teeth, and the subtlety of the dread here makes it all the more powerful. Nothing actually happens in David Watts; if you grew up with Richard Cory as I did you're waiting for the guy to off himself all through the first listen. The happiness Priscilla achieves at the end of Two Sisters is tainted by Davies's attention to detail: her willingness to sacrifice her Women's Weekly for freedom and her contented "running around the house with her curlers on" both make her a pathetic, dislikable figure (it's an ironic response to "She's Leaving Home" or something). The characters in Afternoon Tea are more artificial than usual for Davies. The whole idea of the Tin Soldier Man isn't a positive one, durnit. Finally, beautiful as Waterloo Sunset is, it's ultimately a song about loneliness and isolation (and the way the narrator names and proudly observes the Friday-evening couple isn't the least bit reminiscent of One Hour Photo, noooooo...)

Then there are the Dave songs, three of them. I disagree with George: they're all great, and better than Ray's less distinguished tracks. I mean, there's only one thing wrong with them: they're all disturbing as hell! Death of a Clown isn't all that bad, though there's a distinct chance that the titular clown is Ray, who cowrote it. It's deeply seedy, though, and the angelic backing vocals (!!!) are some of the eeriest in their catalog. Love Me Till the Sun Shines seems to be an invitation to a prostitute to take over Dave's life, house, etc. -- a classic (?) psychosexual compulsion song. The middle-eight, with more faux-angelic cooing over the lyrics "Baby baby, I dunno what I'm doing, everything I do just tends to ruin," really makes it for me. Finally, the cute-sounding Funny Face is everything but. Dave's little neuroses really take charge here, as he sings about his love for an imprisoned mental patient. The sweetness of the vocal enhances the squick factor even more: "I see you peering through frosted windows / Eyes don't smile, all they do is cry." The guitar riff itself is sleazy and foreboding, but subtle enough that its power is mostly subconscience. It's really a revolting song. Lou Reed might have been proud to write it, I think.

The unexpected bright spot of this album actually points to the direction VGPS would take: Lazy Old Sun (no relation to David Gilmour's Fat Old Sun, really) is actually a touching, heartfelt ode to the sun. This is not California sun-worship here; the line that sums up the point best is this: "When I was young, my world was 3' 7" tall; when you were young, there was no world at all...". The sort of chronological sublimation here would, I think, transform into VGPS's extended meditations on history, personality, and loss.

All in all, this album reminds me of a family holiday party: stuffed to the gills with resentments, anger, disillusion, and maybe a bit of perversion, none of which anybody will talk about. (For an amusing confirmation of this feeling, check out the real story behind "David Watts" sometime.) It's a profoundly discomforting, uncomfortable album. Because of this, it's much more interesting than Starostin gives it credit for. It's not an essential Kinks album, but it is an interesting and disturbing one.

Addendum

2004-07-26T11:52:00.000-04:00

I forgot one thing. Life sucks; if your childhood wasn't traumatic, I guarantee you your adult life will be. To be human is to undergo trauma. At least you're not here.

And no more turn aside and brood upon love's bitter mystery

2004-07-26T08:53:00.000-04:00

It occurred to me this morning in the shower that The Who's Tommy is not a concept album about a deaf, dumb, and blind boy; about pinball (duh); or about "spiritual transcendence" (though that was an undeniably important idea to Pete Townshend). I'm not entirely sure that Townshend knew it at the time, in fact, but given recent interviews and that unfortunate (and, to be perfectly clear, unwarranted!) kiddie porn arrest I'm sure he realizes it now: Tommy is first and foremost about abusive families, the effects they have on children, and the way abuse is institutionalized and passed on.

It's obvious from interviews and many of the songs themselves that Townshend identified with the main character. This is understandable; after all it's very difficult to write a song cycle the length of Tommy without having a character to anchor yourself to. Many of the themes in Tommy are common throughout his career: from the first album his songs revolve around insecurity and false pretenses. Really, "The Punk and the Godfather" from Quadrophenia is just an extension of Tommy's obsession with the unreliability of that man at the stage y'all are getting so excited about (to say nothing of his incredibly creepy 90s fictionalized autobiography, Psychoderelict -- funny that he attached Ray Davies's name to his own character, but that's another post). The powerlessness of the main character and his surrender to the sublime is also something that pops up in both the Lifehouse plot and in Quadrophenia. Anyway, I'm not going to psychoanalyze him, I just wanted to demonstrate that a lot of Tommy's themes are Pete's first and foremost.

The problem with Tommy as a "positive story of spiritual transcendence" is this: Tommy Walker isn't a messiah! He's not an avatar or guru, either. He's revealed gradually in the last three songs as a charlatan. His enlightenment, his "ability to experience Reality and Infinity" (Townshend '69) does him no (expressed, anyway) good, for at the end he's back to sublime surrender.

Let me summarize the life of Tommy Walker to spin it the way I want to:

Tommy is born. Daddy's not there.
Some major traumatic event happens. It doesn't much matter what it was; what matters is the way the parents react to Tommy seeing it: "You didn't see it, you didn't hear it, you won't say nothing to no one ever in your life, ... never tell a soul what you know is the truth." As most people who've been in a truly dysfunctional family can attest, secrecy and isolation is one of the first priorities.
The loss of Tommy's senses due to this is illustrated memorably as a sort of cage on the album's cover. Whatever Pete said at the time, I find this cage a useful metaphor for the emotional withdrawal and isolation that children from such families experience. The focus of the emotionally abused swings inward, and forcing it outward and becoming a useful member of society is a much harder task.
The parents, now experiencing their own deep guilt, worry about the state of Tommy's soul -- then abandon him to sadistic cousins and molesting uncles.
The parents begin to search for remedies: the father hires him a prostitute.
Pinball. Whatever.
They finally get around to taking him to a doctor. Likely in Pete's conception this is the last of many doctors they tried.
The mother becomes furious that after all she's done to try to help him, he's still blind, deaf, and dumb. Then there's more of that weird Townshendian mirror stuff.
Tommy, opened to the world, decides that he's a miracle worker and that he should change the world.
Sally Simpson -- well, whatever. The beginning of the dark side. "The theme of the sermon was, 'Come unto me and love will find a way'", which it doesn't, apparently.
"I'm Free", in which Tommy gets a little too cocky.
Finally Tommy's religion gets going -- a religion of comfortable people. He's obviously not sure what exactly to tell people, but he's special, so he's sure whatever he's doing must be alright. He starts this religious colony at his family's house, though, and begins to involve them. OK, only Uncle Ernie is mentioned by name, but the implication is that most of his family is involved.
And the family buys a holiday camp as Tommyism's sanctuary. In order to help the people free themselves, apparently, Tommy decides that they must first be enslaved as he was: he tells them to make themselves deaf, blind, and dumb, and sends "Uncle Ernie to guide [them] to [their] very own machines" -- the very creepy implication is that Ernie's hands will be roaming. The important thing is that Tommy's echoing his parents' earlier lines: "You didn't hear it, you didn't see it..."
Tommy's followers rebel. After all, it's easier to truly escape something created by an outside party that you first encountered as an adult (as former cultists can attest) than it is to escape the situation in which your psyche was forged.

Important points I didn't make in this synopsis:

Tommy's parents, traumatic event aside, aren't bad people. They're caring, but clueless to their own defects and to those of their families -- or perhaps just unwilling to address them.
The way Kevin and Ernie act is predicated not just on Tommy's powerlessness, but also on Tommy's inability to communicate.
The Simpson family is an interesting constrast: her mother is supportive (I think) and her father is caring in a traditional, gruff way. Sally is the insensitive and heedless person in the story. I think the Simpsons may have been intended as a "normal" family.
The most powerful parts of the cycle to me are the confusion of the parents who are unable to communicate with their child ("Tommy can you hear me?") and the insistence of the parents on secrecy and terror in the beginning.

Anyway, as a commentary on child abuse and abusive family dynamics, Tommy really is effective and coherent. You just have to neglect the absurdity of parts of it. You know what? With Tommy, an inside-out boy with his physical senses turned off instead of his emotional senses, Pete Townshend was working symbolically, and largely succeeded. It's much easier to succeed at producing something good or even tolerable using symbols than using plain talk. In the final analysis, what better illustrates to someone from a normal household the difference between a normal household and a really dysfunctional one: Tommy or Plastic Ono Band?

Alright, that said, I should make one thing clear: I do think there's too much hand-wringing by people who really should grow up about the wrongs they've been done by their parents, in general. Examine the biographies of the people who've changed the world, of the people who've made the greatest art, of the people who have contributed most to our knowledge of ourselves and our universe. With a few exceptions such as J.S. Bach, Albert Einstein, and, uh, well, I can't think of a great statesman who didn't have a bad-to-horrible childhood, actually. Maybe Disraeli? Anyway. Many of these great people might have been horribly unhappy, or at best depressive, but they accomplished things while many happier people ran around, were happy, perhaps contributed nothing of value to the world, died, and are entirely forgotten. The only worthwhile thing in a universe that appears destined to one day vanish, in a solar system whose sun will burn out not too many billion years hence, on a planet whose climate and history and biology and geology we are woefully ignorant of, which ignorance will one day allow us to go over a precipice, possibly to extinction, without noticing it; the only worthwhile thing is defiance of all that. At least it's the only worthwhile thing to me.

And that was just my bonus rant!

Art and the Perverse

2004-07-19T15:21:00.000-04:00

There's something engaging about willful perversity in art; I think this is the major gem at the center of dada's lump of unloved coal. It's willful perversity that makes the careers of Neil Young, Bob Dylan, Thomas Pynchon worth reading about; not only that, though, but w.p. is the really invigorating force behind the works of these men (and others).

First I suppose I should define willful perversity. We'll turn to the American Heritage Dictionary for a useful tetrapartite definition of the word "perverse":

per-verse

1) Directed away from what is right or good; perverted. 

2) Obstinately persisting in an error or fault; wrongly 

    self-willed or stubborn. 

3)

    a) Marked by a disposition to oppose and contradict. 

    b) Arising from such a disposition. 

4) Cranky; peevish.

Obviously, 1 is useless to us. I'm not using perverse in a moral sense, but in the context of an artist's career. However, 2-4 all are of use; synthesizing them, we arrive at a definition of perversity somewhat like this:

Per-ver-si-ty, n. A state of obstinacy and unreason, provoked by the resentment of past artistic successes and characterized by the rejection and undermining of those successes. See re-ac-tor.

Famously perverse career decisions:

Neil Young.
Dylan goes electric.
Dylan goes folk-bard.
Dylan goes Christian (this one didn't quite work).
Pynchon publishes Mason & Dixon, a huge fictional work about the surveyors, using contemporary (1780s) capitalization and spelling.
Finnegan's Wake (rather than a volte-face, this was the stupifyingly logical conclusion to James Joyce's oeuvre -- though the symposium of critical writing published ten years before the novel, the bulk of it possibly ghostwritten by Joyce, can only be called perverse).

We'll examine this subject in greater detail in the future. I just hope I'm not alone in loving, conceptually, that, after the critical and popular acclaim that Rust Never Sleeps achieved, NY could release a nine-minute long song whose lyrics consisted of, "Got mashed potatoes, ain't got no T-bone" and then print all six verses in the liner notes. Diane suspects I am.

Michael Moore: hopefully useful idiot

2004-07-08T23:15:00.000-04:00

Re 'I think he's a big jerk': I agree with Hurwitz, the Republican Washington D.C. lawyer, regarding Fahrenheit 911:

... He does fear that Moore has unleashed ungovernable passions. 

"It is problematic. There are too many people who may take what he 

says as gospel and at face value, and that is dangerous," he says. 

"Let us put our mind in neutral, and let our imaginations run riot."

Michael Moore is a deceptive man, with no interest in revealing any truth that doesn't confirm what he already believes about any given situation. Fer cryin out loud, take a look at that public letter he released following Sept. 11; it's a sickening amalgam of sinister conspiracies (nearly as bad as "the Jews stayed away") and "we had it comin'." I'm willing to take the latter from Noam Chomsky, as I know he really believes it; I don't believe it coming from Mikey -- it's just a momentary spear to hurl at Bush, forgotten the next moment.

Do I believe Michael Moore should be mocked, despised, ostracised? Certainly. However, there is a certain element of the voting populace that can't be rallied by rational argument, reasoned discussion, measured criticism. The extreme right wing's use of Rush Limbaugh, the American Spectator, et al. -- not to mention the more moderate right wing's refusal to disavow them -- should be considered a tacit endorsement of cheap shot, unsubstantiated innuendo, and exaggeration to rally and energize the electorate. If Moore should be cast into the darkness, so should Bill O'Reilly.

I believe that George W. Bush and his associates are a real danger to the good portions of the American establishment (the EPA, caution regarding infringement of individual liberties, etc.), and are favorable towards many of the problematic portions (government subsidies for big businesses, big deficits, etc.). I do not agree with Kerry on everything (and disagree with Edwards on more points than I agree with him), but they're neither of them revolutionaries. THIS IS A GOOD THING.

BTW, the Declaration of Independence's list of grievances against King George III is full of exaggerations, half-truths, and a few full-on lies. Admittedly, its list of goals and principles far outclasses any and all thoughts that have ever rattled through Rush's or Mikey's heads, but it's still a rather dishonest document. And Jefferson disavowed more than a few of those ideas when he was president. For all his revolutionary talk (Time, listen up) he was a fairly level-headed and hardly revolutionary leader.

The Animalistic Orff

2004-07-02T11:42:00.000-04:00

From Was Carl Orff a Nazi? Orff's Musical and Moral Failings by Richard Taruskin:

"In 1937, the year in which 'Carmina Burana' 

enjoyed its smashing success, the National Socialists were engaged

in a furious propaganda battle with the churches of Germany, 

countering the Christian message of compassion with neo-pagan

worship of holy hatred. And what could better support the Nazi

claim that the Germans, precisely in their Aryan neo-paganism, 

were the true heirs of Greco-Roman ('Western') culture than Orff's

animalistic settings of Greek and Latin poets?

"Did Orff intend precisely this? Was he a Nazi? These questions

are ultimately immaterial. They allow the deflection of any

criticism of his work into irrelevant questions of rights: Orff's

right to compose his music, our right to perform and listen to it.

Without questioning either, one may still regard his music as

toxic, whether it does its animalizing work at Nazi rallies, in

school auditoriums, at rock concerts, in films, in the soundtracks

that accompany commercials or in Avery Fisher Hall."

This is the finale of an insulting, poorly written piece by a NYT writer, a finale seemingly based on the assumption that nothing complex can get stuck in one's head: "'an instant tape loop for the mind,' something that, grasped fully and immediately, reverberates in the head the way propaganda is supposed to do." Various parts of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony have been reverberating in my mind for the last month. Does that make it "animalistic" and "propagandistic"? Somehow I think the author's response might be "yes."

I'm not saying that the Carmina Burana is complex, mind you; I just take offense at the equation of propaganda with anything that effectively reverberates in the mind. It's extremely hard to connect the material in the Carmina Burana with the sinister, animalistic mind-control referenced in this article.

In fact, the (rhetorical or not?) question asked earlier in the piece, "Or is it merely because the Nazis offer an "objective" pretext for dismissal to those who subjectively disapprove of Orff's music for other reasons: reasons having to do, could it be, with prudery?", can be answered with a resounding yes.

Perhaps if I knew the preceding or following (1951! Nazi my foot!) part of the trilogy, the claims made would be more sensible, but as it is the article is loaded with innuendo-through-non-sequitur, insubstantiated claims, and appalling elitism.

Finite = alright

2004-06-29T10:48:00.000-04:00

I promise, my own thoughts will someday populate this item.

But for now, here's some lyrics from David Byrne to tide you over.

Finite = alright

-------------------

Three-hundred-fifty cities in the world

Just thirty teeth inside of our heads

These are the limits to our experience

It's scary but it's alright

And everything is finite



Only one record, in this whole wide world

Where Jimi Hendrix sings House Burning Down

Another Elvis will not come along

He got wasted but it's alright

And everything is finite

Yeah, wasted - it's alright

Everything is finite



I'm just a baby in my daddy's arms

Who will protect me from these women's charms

I'm six foot tall but I barely speak

My - mind goes crazy when the taste is sweet

Well we've known each other, eight years and twenty days

It's - terrifying, it's beautiful too

Things have an end

But feeling is infinite

We're changing but it's alright

And everything is finite

Yeah, changing's alright

Things finite

A Dangerous Innovation

2004-06-28T09:39:00.000-04:00

I believe in the Electoral College. The arguments we continually hear against it (it makes individual voters unimportant; it magnifies the powers of the swing states; it destabilizes the country; it hurts moderates?!) sway increasing numbers of people, and may lead in the next few years to a constitutional amendment instating a simple "one person, one vote" system. This would be a catastrophic betrayal of the principles the United States was founded upon, and would foment more dissension than anybody seems to imagine. The ultimate result of the destruction of the Electoral College seems inevitable: civil war.

First, the issue of individual voters: "Every person's vote should count," howl the critics. A California in which every citizen votes is a California that overrules huge chunks of the country: eleven of the eighteen swing states COMBINED. Judging by these Census population projections, in fact, four (of 50, or eight percent) states (Texas, California, Florida, and New York) would utterly dominate a popular election vote with 30% of the overall population; the top eight states (16%) constitute a full 48% of citizens. These "potential voters" should give some idea of the percentage distribution of registered voters per state.

The United States is a federal republic: for political purposes, each citizen is a citizen of his or her state first and of the country second. Elimination of the electoral college would greatly undermine one of the most well-considered parts of the Constitution, one that was most strongly endorsed by both the Federalists and the Republicans (as Hamilton notes in the Federalist No 68). It is true that the Federalists supported the Electoral College to prevent "mobocracy" and that the Republicans supported it (and the odious "3/5 clause") to give their slave states a means of protecting themselves from northern abolitionists.

In suspicion of direct popular votes, Hamilton and I are in agreement. Back when he was sane, he wrote in the first Federalist:

... A dangerous ambition more often lurks behind the specious 

mask of zeal for the rights of the people than under the forbidden 

appearance of zeal for the firmness and efficiency of government. 

History will teach us that the former has been found a much more 

certain road to the introduction of despotism than the latter, and 

that of those men who have overturned the liberties of republics, 

the greatest number have begun their career by paying an obsequious 

court to the people; commencing demagogues, and ending tyrants.

The Electoral College provides a buffer of protection against would-be American Caesars. Thankfully, it has never had to serve as such a buffer, but think on this: do pilots quit bringing parachutes onto planes because they've never had to use them? Since no American president has ever been impeached and convicted, is that part of the Constitution anachronistic and ineffective? No Constitutional impediment to tyranny should be removed because it has not been used.

As important as this block is, however, I am more concerned with preserving the federalist republican organization of our government. Let's look at the Legislative for a clue as to why our government has worked up to now. There are two branches: the lower, the House of Representatives, elected popularly with 435 seats awarded to states according to their populations; the upper, the Senate, elected popularly (but formerly appointed) with 100 seats awarded equally to each state. Thus, the small states get a greater veto power in the upper chamber ("completely out of proportion to their population," please note); the larger states get much more control over the bills generated and passed by the house.

In electing a presidential candidate, then, the Founders had to be extremely clever: it was unfair to the smaller New England states to allow outright majority rule, but it was unfair to New York and Virginia to allow Rhode Island an equal power to select the president. The solution was simple and elegant: they combined the two methods and awarded a number of electors equal to the combined total of representatives and senators from each state. Small states had their voices preserved and large states were given fair representation, and everyone was happy (a rare feat in the fractious early days of our republic!).

The growth of the nation's landmass has combined with the explosion of population in two states (California and Texas) to confirm the wisdom of this scheme. Puny little Rhode Island has 5% of California's president-choosing power, despite having a measly little 3% of California's population. This 2% advantage is not, to my mind, detrimental to popular rule, but helps preserve the differences in culture between regions of the country. By comparison, if the electors were awarded based exclusively on the number of representatives per state (as at least one ridiculous site suggests), Rhode Island would have less than 1.8% of California's electors -- an actual penalty for being small!

I need to write more on this subject. In closing for now, though, I'd like to point out a few more reasonable solutions to the problems that do exist: proportional awarding of electors based on the percentage of votes cast for each candidate; appointed, non-partisan bodies to draw up congressional districts, killing the invasive menace of gerrymandering that has spread like kudzu through the count is necessary (on this point, the BusinessWeek editorial cited above is dead on); and, finally, chopping California and Texas into smaller, more manageable, and more culturally homogenous states. Yes, I'm dead serious about that last one. California residents except the Los Angelans, who would probably end up with a severely dysfunctional state of their own, would almost certainly agree, if they gave it some thought.

Other useful references:

An Electoral College webzine article on the sometimes critical power of small states.
A very useful list of population/elector/representation statistics.

Examinations of Conscience

2004-06-25T15:10:00.000-04:00

If there's one great idea that European Catholicism ever devised, it was the programmatic examination of conscience. If you've experienced pre-Vatican II Catholicism, you've seen what I mean. I'm not sure it was eliminated entirely in Vatican II "reforms", but I wouldn't be surprised.

Alright, I'm being mean. It clearly has not: this is a more traditional form, and this is a modernised version. Note that I don't necessarily agree with all the sins listed there ("using your vote wrongly" is an odious perversions of religion -- traditional 1850s American Catholicism is very clear on this).

It's the procedure, not the specific offenses listed there. In fact, it might be a good idea for anyone concerned with the consequences of his own actions to make out his own list of offenses, centered around his individual desires to avoid causing certain harms and to achieve certain goals, and do a real examination of his conscience every night before falling asleep.

I am not a moral absolutist, but I do believe in the conscience and the importance of developing and exercising it. Indulge a crap metaphor, please: if the will is the team of horses pulling the cart of the conscience towards one's personal goals, the conscience is the harness that keeps the horses under control. Neither will nor conscience is good for anything without the other.

And, while I'm at it, I'll attack rationalization. Rationalization is the instinct of the consciencious person who does not want to admit they've done something wrong. Everyone does it, and that is exactly the reason we should examine our consciences. Failure to admit that one's will has been exercised towards the wrong goals, or that pursuit of the right goals has had forseeable but unintended negative consequences, is insidious and blinds people to the power of their own beings.

Dammit. I am not a self-help guru! These things just interest and bother me.

Plagiarism: Neil Young's signal vice

2004-06-24T16:03:00.000-04:00

Neil Young plagiarizes his song constructions and those of others in ways that would have sent poor George Harrison or Richard Ashcroft to the poorhouse. A sample:

Song: Differently (Are you passionate?)
Plagiarised from: Love and Only Love (Ragged Glory)

Song: Days that Used to Be (Ragged Glory)
Plagiarised from: My Back Pages (Bob Dylan)

Song: Borrowed Tune (Tonight's The Night)
Plagiarised from: Lady Jane (The Rolling Stones)
[He even admits this one in the lyrics and title!]

Song: Like a Hurricane (American Stars and Bars)
Plagiarised from: Runaway (Del Shannon)

Song: Get Gone (Lucky 13)
Plagiarised from: Chuck Berry... well, that's kind of like public domain, if you think about it.

There's more, loads more. I'll post more I think of them.

Plagiarism, of course, is too harsh. Really, this is the sort of cultural interchange that SHOULD happen in popular music; courts that have allowed the sorts of lawsuit I cite above are idiotic. F'rinstance, Like a Hurricane builds on the theme of Runaway in an revealing, interesting way -- T.S. Eliot would approve, at least in theory.

Reformist Sikhism

2004-06-24T16:00:00.000-04:00

OK, Sikhism is one of the least reformable religions in the world today. This is because it's one of the more great-hearted, peaceful, and attractive religions in human history. (Yes, there are (or were?) militant Sikhs, but the Hindu nationalist Indian government had bloody hands too.) Consider this really touching anecdote about its founder, Guru Nanak, as a thirteen-year-old:

At the [Hindu religious investment] ceremony which was attended 

by family and friends and to the disappointment of his family Guru 

Nanak refused to accept the sacred cotton thread from the Hindu priest. 

He sang the following poem:



"Let mercy be the cotton, contentment the thread, continence the knot, 

and truth the twist. O priest! If you have such a thread, do give it 

to me. It'll not wear out, nor get soiled, nor burnt, nor lost. Says 

Nanak, blessed are those who go about wearing such a thread."

(from sikhs.org)

Nanak was very intelligent -- he knew Hindi, Persian, and Arabic and had studied Muslim literature as well as Hindu. He also had a great, wry sense of humor (read his bio, it's really refreshing). My favorite example of this:

On his fourth great journey in life Guru Nanak dressed in the blue 

garb of a Muslim pilgrim traveled to the west and visited Mecca, Medina 

and Baghdad. Arriving at Mecca, Guru Nanak fell asleep with his feet 

pointing towards the holy Kabba. When the watchman on his night rounds 

noticed this he kicked the Guru, saying, "How dare you turn your feet 

towards the house of God". At this Guru Nanak woke up and said, "Good 

man, I am  weary after a long journey. Kindly turn my feet in the 

direction where God is not."

The religion itself is strongly monotheistic (like Islam or Judaeism), but it is closer to Tolstoist ecumenism than any of the other major monotheistic religions. It's also an actively anti-superstition religion, which appeals to me strongly. You can read more about it yourself, anyway.

Why am I interested in a religion, especially a Guru-based one? Well, I'm not exactly atheistic; agnostic and universalist, maybe. I have religious feelings, though, and since there's no way I'll ever know the objective truth of the universe anyway, why shouldn't I indulge them so long as they're not contrary to common sense?

The problem, though, is that Sikhs are required not to cut their hair (hence the turbans)or shave their beards. This is rather problematic for hygeine, and I don't think I would look so good with a long beard.

So! Reform Sikhism reduces the beard-and-hair requirement to a symbolic thing, much the way Catholic practice replaced hairshirts with scapulars. I'm not sure how to implement it yet, though. Thoughts can be sent to the usual email address. Maybe I'll set up a Gmail account for this blog, though, when I get invited.

Dave Marsh: Neil Hata

2004-06-21T09:20:00.000-04:00

It's a waste of time to critique an article that's 25 years old. The author has had time to reevaluate his views, and it's ultimately meaningless. Nevertheless, Dave Marsh's putdown of Neil Young for a 1979 Rolling Stone book ticked me off so much that I wrote a pedantic letter to Diane about it, which I reproduce here for no particular reason.

The chapter's here:
http://www.thrasherswheat.org/tfa/marshbookchapter.htm

Points to make:
"Bob Dylan changed rock fundamentally. He gave it a sense of tradition, rooted in white folk music and high culture. He showed a distrust for the very technology it exploited, a disdain for conventional celebrity, a brooding lyrical seriousness and a yearning for high art credibility. "

Having learned more about Dylan, do you agree with this? I certainly don't: when Dylan went electric, there was as much black as white in the music; mentioning Beethoven does not "high culture" make; I don't get what that "technology" crap is about; I don't buy the celebrity thing -- an icon disappears if it doesn't stay mysterious, no? It still doesn't stop it from being famous and worshipped; and "brooding lyrical seriousness" is about the antithesis of 'Blonde on Blonde'. I don't contest the last one. What it comes down to for both Dylan and Young is that they're ruthless, talented assholes who insist on controlling how they're perceived -- and succeed. Dylan at his best beats Young's best lyrics, but Young's most wrenching guitar tone eats Dylan's alive and makes damn good coffee afterwards, IYKWIM.

"by emphasizing certain highlights and disregarding the rest, Young has managed to avoid close analysis, leaving most critics gaping in awe of an image greater than the work that supports it--the ultimate Dylanesque trick."

Do Dylan's musical abilities or lyric-writing skills stand up to "close analysis"? I don't think so. I don't think the great majority of pop music does. (The Beatles and Radiohead stand up to close musical analysis. Lyrical -- well, I don't feel most great opera does, so my standards are probably too high.)

"Young's role was to play lead guitar, write a few songs (most notably "Mr.Soul") and conduct a few experiments in recording montage ("Expecting to Fly" and "Broken Arrow")."

Wow, that's condescending. I'm no big fan of Springfield, I admit, but Young's work with them smashes what I've heard from the rest of them (grudgingly excepting FWIW). Who denies that Broken Arrow is a great song? I think "Expecting to Fly" is a great song, too, and easily Young's most successful experiment with orchestral backing.

"But Harvest was pure formula product, the kind of commercially conservative record that came to characterize too much of California pop rock in the Seventies. "

My good lord. Harvest may be terminally overrated, but I'm betting Marsh has only heard the tracks from Decade. Why? Well, you've heard the album: "Words" and "There's a World" are not commercially conservative. Shit they may be, but they're not "typical of James Taylor and Joni Mitchell" or any other singer-songwriters of the period.

His perception of Journey Thru the Past is pretty accurate. He gets Time Fades Away wrong (calling it a "live album" is deceptive, and misses the real problem with the album -- the lack of interaction between the band), and then really plunges into crap with his treatment of the rest of the Doom Trilogy.

To neglect TtT, are "recycled riffs ... from Buffalo Springfield and ['Everybody knows this is nowhere']" really the substance of On the Beach? Does Young mention Indians? Most irritating is the sentence "But [the net effect of the music] can also be simply silly, especially in the quasi-apocalyptic "Revolution Blues" from OTB, where Armageddon arrives by dune buggy." Marsh somehow manages to miss the whole Manson thing entirely and grossly exaggerates the "armageddon" part. I don't think that's a good-faith mistake -- it seems intentional.

Next is 'American Stars and Bars' -- is "Like a Hurricane" bathetic country pop, or "stunted"? He then confuses "Homegrown" (an admittedly idiotic pot ditty; I blame CSN) with "Roll Another Number" (a blackhearted tune from 'Tonight's the Night') -- another indication that he probably DIDN'T ACTUALLY LISTEN TO THE ALBUMS.

Marsh then tries to tie it together with a sad psychological analysis: "Rather it is symptomatic of that refusal to commit himself fully, which is the bane of everything he's ever created. Instead of a unified body of work, Neil Young has forged only a series of fragments, some relatively inspired, some absolutely awful. "

*cough* 'Nashville Skyline'? Dylan's *entire 80s work*? 'Self fucking Portrait'?

"Yet if there is a major difference between Bob Dylan and Neil Young, it is that Dylan has always managed to make each of his shifting perspectives seem final and irrevocable, while Young makes each seem tentative and equivocal."

Perhaps this seems more ridiculous with hindsight; it was written in '79, after all. But the real tempest -- Young's 80s work -- was still to come -- as were both Young's and Dylan's renaissances in the 90s. For my money, Neil Young's career seems more coherent, more internally consistent, and more meaningful than Dylan's periodic bops between styles. IMO, even if Marsh's comment ever was true, they've traded places now.

In closing, and this may be a low blow, I'll take Sun Green over Jakob Dylan anyday.

Neil Young's Invisible Histories

2004-06-20T01:06:00.000-04:00

Neil Young has a habit of writing songs -- very good songs -- that seem historical and are taken as such by incredibly credulous fans, but in reality have nothing whatsoever to do with the historical figures/events being invoked.

The list of songs I've identified:

Southern Man -- This one is treated as protest, but it's not. Cf. the Decade liner notes.

Cortez the Killer -- This isn't about Cortez or Montezuma, it's about the idiot paradise of the hippie dream.

Pocahontas -- Some take the indian-related stuff seriously, losing the all-important context of the final verse.

Goin' Home -- Custer's Last Stand becomes Sept. 11th -- and the song doesn't such, marvelously.

There's more, I'm just forgetting them.

You can hear them blow if you lean your head out far enough.

2004-06-20T00:57:00.000-04:00

Politics and rock'n'roll.

Neil Young - non-political, for the most part.
Bob Dylan - non-political, for the most part. His protest songs suck, by and large.
Roger Waters - highly political; decently successful.
Ray Davies - non-political, really.
Rage Against the Machine - easy targets. Highly political; highly crap.
Radiohead - non-political, for the most part.

Good political songs:
"Southampton Dock", Roger Waters
"Rockin' in the Free World", Neil Young
"Fortunate Son", Creedence Clearwater Revival

To relate

2004-06-12T01:40:00.000-04:00

Human communication sucks. We all know it. Some of us write books about it, some of us write songs about it, some nutters even make movies about it. We all think about it, though, and we all suffer from it.

Communication has a simple denotative meaning: transmission of information. I cough on you, I communicate the flu (which is constituted by DNA, I guess, and is thus abstractly information). I send you a brief memo, I communicate the ideas scratched thereupon. It's just in the connotative aspects of the word that things really get tricky. This is going to become a rant about information theory, though, and none of us really wants that.

Weather zones reported on by the British shipping service: Viking, North Utsire, South Utsire, Forties, Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger, Fisher, Heligoland, Humber, Thames, Dover, Wight, Portland, Plymouth, Biscay, Finisterre, Sole, Lundy, Fastnet, Irish Sea, Shannon, Rockall, Malin, Hebrides, Bailey, Fair Isle, Faeroes, Southeast Iceland. I've got another message I can't read.

[This post transplanted from the cognate blog when I split them.]

Richard M. Nixon: or, An Existentialist Manifesto

2004-06-11T20:55:00.000-04:00

Richard M. Nixon is the most significant public figure in recent history. As a politician, his relentlessly finessed and often contradictory initiatives were so difficult for the public to understand that most don't remember that the man founded the EPA -- or, for that matter, suspended the capitalist economy. Indeed, most people think of Vietnam as Nixon's war, even though Lyndon Johnson deserves ownership -- partly because everybody was and is so disgusted by that nasty little Cambodia bit.

As a person, he is perhaps the most documented moral creature in history. For all his unprincipled and questionable actions, he seems to have cared deeply about his country and believed most strongly that his actions were for its good. It is silly to talk about whether this belief absolves him; that's relevant only to his own private conscience. It illustrates, though, the difficulty the human consciousness encounters when trying to police itself. To give Nixon the benefit of the doubt -- the "crook" speech alone makes me doubt that he was a sociopath, so needy of the public's love it was -- he doesn't seem to have realized he was crossing lines of proper behavior.

The human consciousness is a drama. (Okay, maybe a Joycean drama.) All the characters, our friends, enemies, and acquaintances, are assigned roles and given moral ratings (good, evil, neutral). I don't notice this in my thought, so much, but I have noticed it in others, and I find it probable that I do the same sort of organization. The mind exists to classify data into sets and to make connections between those data sets -- it's how we survived in the wild. The content of those sets varies wildly, from emotions to formulae to geographies, but the task of the low-level brain, the subconscious, is the processing and interconnection of these sets. We ourselves are characters, too, though more elusive and less easily classifiable than others.

Alright, this isn't really going anywhere. Nixon represents the breakdown of self-analysis; Carter its crippling preeminence; and Reagan and W. its lack.