Nervous Acid

"It’s funny, the Toto IV [cassette] — the one with ‘Rosanna’ and..."

Fri, 11 May 2012 11:51:00 -0400

“It’s funny, the Toto IV [cassette] — the one with ‘Rosanna’ and ‘Africa’ on it — they made the mistake of putting ‘Rosanna’ on the first side of the record and the last song on the second side was ‘Africa.’ So you’d play ‘Rosanna,’ flip it and play ‘Africa.’ I bet you no one has heard the rest of the record, to this day. Maybe until it came out on CD.”

- Dashboard Confessional’s John Lefler talks tapes. I’m pretty obsessed with figuring out how the ways in which we listen to music changes along with the mediums we use to listen, but this super true observation of cassette-listening quirks escaped me until now. There’s a reason the two songs I remember most from The Cure’s Disintegration are “Plainsong” and “Untitled.”

Everyone seems to be gearing up for the 2012 Music Diary...

Mon, 07 May 2012 12:52:00 -0400

Everyone seems to be gearing up for the 2012 Music Diary Project, but I’m bowing out this year. For one, I did it last year and it’s a known fact that I hate being forced to write. But more sadly, I’m being forced to write something else right now. I’m always being forced to write, it seems.

As long as I’m freestyling about music though, here’s something: I subscribed to Rdio yesterday, after some unintentional evangelizing by my friend Matt Rubin. This marks the first time I’ve ever paid for a subscription music service — unless you count the Columbia House Record & Tape Club in 1987.

Honestly, I was never even marginally compelled to subscribe to Spotify, and there were many reasons for that: the desktop application is a memory-chomping maniac, the response time is lacking, the interface is annoying (and ugly), and most frustratingly, I’m not sure I listen to music the way Spotify wants me to listen to music. So I was kind of amazed to discover that everything I disliked about Spotify, Rdio just seemed to get right and more intuitively — especially in terms of user experience. Seriously, though? I hate Spotify.

That said, I’m listening to the Rdio Top Songs Chart as I write this, meaning that if you were to be reading a Music Diary Project entry from me right now, it would certainly make note of these three totally important opinions:

I feel bad for the drummer of Maroon 5. Ever since they went super-pop, the drum machine’s been getting way more liner notes than that dude.
I just realized that Justin Bieber’s incorrect use of the subjunctive is going to make me hate this song even if I wanted to like it. It’s supposed to be “If I were your boyfriend,” goddamn it, and that will never not drive me crazy.
I still can’t believe my friend Tucker plays drums for The Wanted. But it’s awesome that he gets more shine than the drum machine from Maroon 5.

Basically, you guys are so lucky I’m not doing it this year. You’re more than welcome to follow me on Rdio, though, where we can not-so-secretly listen to One Direction together and not be forced to write about it on Tumblr.

One night, about fourteen years ago, I watched a movie at Adam...

Fri, 04 May 2012 17:17:07 -0400

One night, about fourteen years ago, I watched a movie at Adam Yauch’s apartment.

It was a movie about the Tibetan struggle for liberation, a cause he deeply cared about, and I was invited — I think — because he knew about my background with the Hare Krishna movement and the time I spent in India. From what I can recall, he had something to do with the production of the film, and the version we watched was a rough edit. He was looking for criticism, suggestions, feedback. I have no idea if it ever got made.

Yauch lived in Soho back then, in a humble, but elegant apartment with high ceilings and museum-white walls; his living room tastefully furnished in a warm, but minimal style. If anything, I remember walking inside and being somewhat underwhelmed. It was nice and all, but I had assumptions about millionaires, goddammit, and Yauch resisted every last one of them. He didn’t even shake my hand when we met. He hugged me.

There were only five or six of us there, and Yauch made sure to circulate the conversation around the room — as if to ensure the night wasn’t all about him. I remember thinking that his humility in real life was so palpable that it might be impossible to listen to an old Beastie Boys record ever again with credulity. When you’ve been in the same band for thirty years, that time you bragged about sipping “def ale with all the fly women” loses its ring with maturity. But for Yauch, the transformation from malt-liquor-loving rap star to contemplative-unpretentious-Buddhist was so seamless, it defied explanation. Unlike Madonna, who announced her conversion to Jewish mysticism with a red string bracelet and very little else, we accepted Yauch’s change because we perceived his change.

It would be disingenuous to say I’m not upset by the news of his passing, but I am also comforted by the fact that I’ve met lifelong Hindu monks who seemed less at peace with themselves than Adam Yauch. You can only imagine the type of person you need to be to leave such an impression on someone — especially after only one night, fourteen years ago.

On the 22nd Anniversary of My Best Friend's Death

Tue, 01 May 2012 12:19:00 -0400

I spent the first fourteen years of my life without ever really knowing how it felt to be loved unconditionally, without ever feeling like I was a part of something bigger, without any indication that the rest of my life would be any less lonely than those first fourteen years. I didn’t know there was any other way: For as long as I could remember, my mother essentially called me a biological gamble — in which she put everything on GIRL and lost the pot — and I was reminded of her loss, daily, every time she whipped me with a leather belt or pummeled my body with a wooden clog. When I asked my father for help, he said I should shut the fuck up and leave him alone. Years later, when I tried to make sense of this with my brother, he suggested I was exaggerating.

“We were never abused,” he said, stressing the first-person plural pronoun, and that’s probably half-right: He was my family’s jackpot. I was snake-eyes.

Galen, the second-century Roman physician and philosopher, talked about pain as a “sixth” sense that marked damage or dysfunction, but in some cases, he explained, it was possible for physical and emotional pain to subside from our consciousness without ever actually being healed. The absence of pain in the presence of suffering, he says, is due to a new normal: Our bodies and minds simply adjust to the damage. It was because of this, perhaps, that in school or at church or on the street, no one ever registered a problem with me. I was a generally affable young kid and an obsessive overachiever, and — in spite of these things being the most obvious telltale signs of despair — this worked as a dependable cover for fourteen years. So I was surprised when, sometime in 1988, a kid I’d only known for ten minutes pulled me aside and asked, “What’s wrong?”

I told him everything was fine, but he didn’t believe me.

“You look sad,” he said, and he gave me his phone number.

II.

I don’t remember the period between meeting Chris and realizing that he had become the most important and influential figure in my life. It’s a window of time too short to quantify. Our friendship was instant and intense and seemingly aware of the reality that we didn’t have much time. So we developed a routine: Chris’s girlfriend had a 10 p.m. curfew on weeknights, which meant that he’d come over to my house at ten-after. Every night, without fail, I’d see him pull up in front of the curb, and all of the sudden, everything was OK. His headlights made me happy.

In my room, we talked for hours. Everything I had only been able to say to the stack of notebooks inside of my desk was finally being heard by another person, who responded with empathy and kindness and reassurance that the worst was over now. It turned out that Chris, too, had his own problems — speaking about the day we met, he laughed, “It takes one to know one” — and I tried to be that consoling person for him. Chris and I told each other everything without fear of rejection. We were both fiercely protective and fiercely protected.

I remember Thanksgiving, in 1989, the best. My family never celebrated holidays, so I always felt left out of the greater cultural conversation. Chris wanted to include me, but his card was already full: He and his girlfriend were doing two Thanksgiving dinners that night, one with each of their families, and there just wasn’t any time. I didn’t begrudge him for it, and when I told him to have fun, I meant it. We’d get to hang out on the weekend.

But sometime after midnight, I heard a knock at the door. Through the screen I saw Chris standing in front of the house, the falling snow already frozen in his hair.

“Let’s go,” he said.

I asked him where, and his eyes darted to the side as if he hadn’t considered that yet.

“Who cares?”

I put on a coat and hopped in, but the rest is a blur. We drove across Long Island all night, slowly and aimlessly through the snow, until the sun came up and it was time for breakfast. Over the next six hours, there were stretches of conversation, intervals of music, and periods of total silence except for the windshield wipers pulsing back and forth.

As night gave way to morning, Chris tried to be clear about it.

“I hope you didn’t think I’d just leave you,” he said.

III.

I understand now that the entire course of my life was changed by one person’s life and by that person’s death.

When I found out that Chris had been killed in a car accident on the morning of May 1, 1990, it was clear that I couldn’t go back to being the person I’d been before. Chris demonstrated a sense of acceptance and encouragement that I never thought possible. He proved that there were other people in the world who were willing to share the weight and ease the burden. He showed me that a friend could be family, and effortlessly changed how I think about human connection in a way that persists to this day. He willed every good thing you know about me into existence.

People always ask if I’ve ever considered the counterfactual — that is, if Chris were alive today, would we still be friends? — but, to me, that’s a pointless question. If Chris were alive today, I would love him no matter what. That was the promise we made to each other, the promise that may have very well kept me alive.

The hardest thing about getting older sometimes is realizing...

Sun, 29 Apr 2012 09:11:00 -0400

The hardest thing about getting older sometimes is realizing that your most formative experiences — moments so vivid and tangible in your memory that you still remember the date — will continue to fade so far into the past that entire human beings will have emerged into adulthood in the interim.

Case in point: Seventeen years ago today, a few blocks from a hospital in Boston, my friends and I recorded three songs that somehow changed our lives. Somewhere, at least one of the babies born in that hospital on April 29, 1995, is totally about to finish high school. That’s fucked up.

Now that I’m forced to consider Levon Helm’s life...

Wed, 18 Apr 2012 14:01:00 -0400

Now that I’m forced to consider Levon Helm’s life and legacy — in the wake of the tragic news that he is currently in the final stages of cancer — it feels important to assert the fact that we really don’t need to go as far back as Music From Big Pink or The Last Waltz to be inspired by the man. In my mind, 1968 and 1976 may have been creative highs for Helm, but they weren’t exactly peaks. To use that word is to say that, since then, there has been a dip in either the quantitative activity or qualitative value of Helm’s work, and that simply isn’t the case. Artists who peaked in the 1970s don’t generally win Grammy awards in 2008 and 2010 and then again this year; artists without creative fires don’t transform their homes into public venues every week for an opportunity to collaborate with peers and descendants alike. Levon Helm is nothing if not contemporary, and the only thing that might hurt my feelings more than his eventual departure is the idea that many of his eulogists will have already buried him with The Band.

I quit playing music for a living several years ago, but it was never my intention to quit playing music. To see Helm still playing the way he does at 71 years old is to see that it can be done. To see Helm building new musical communities in 2012 is to see a commitment to the kind of transformative social network that will never be realized by Facebook or Twitter. To see Helm collaborating with younger generations — as he does on this 2008 track by my favorite band Ida — is to see a man who recognizes the kinetic nature of music, and shuns the static bliss of nostalgia. He’s a flashlight-wielding shepherd in that regard, and I’d be blessed to follow him.

I’m not home yet, but for the last week I’ve been...

Sun, 15 Apr 2012 23:41:00 -0400

I’m not home yet, but for the last week I’ve been here in California, driving up the coast with my boyfriend. Anyone who’s known me for any substantial amount of time will tell you that I can be extremely cynical about what we call “nature” — the trees! the skies! the sand! the water! — and that I regularly marvel over concrete and wires and art and music in its stead. (I mean, OK. The sight of a waterfall is fantastic, but music just comes out of thin air and changes people’s lives!) But the things we did and saw this week — basically living on the Pacific coast, feeding ostriches, hiking in Big Sur, riding bikes through wine country — hushed the urban critic for a second and allowed me to indulge in a new appreciation for these things. All that wine had nothing to do with it, either.

That said, I’m in an airport lounge right now waiting for my flight back to New York, and — I’m not gonna lie — I’m looking forward to the severity of its artificial landscape and harsh familiarity of its thoroughly unfiltered residents. It isn’t a slight to the majesty of a Redwood to concede that, even after a brilliant week away, I’m still one of them. We can both own our own niche in the ecosystem.

Hi Tumblr. It’s been a long time! I’ve been insanely...

Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:33:00 -0400

Hi Tumblr. It’s been a long time! I’ve been insanely preoccupied this month — apparently, teaching college is harder than going to college — and I plan to get better caught up here soon, but right now, I’m kind of roused. Which basically means that someone on the Internet has so sufficiently annoyed me in one sentence that I have not been able to let go of it, even after a 24-hour timeout.

First of all: One Week One Band! It’s one of the best ideas on the Internet, and it’s generally something I look forward to reading — somewhere an invested writer or critic can really take some time to develop thoughtful narratives about a particular artist beyond the scope of one or two 300-word blog posts. So when it was announced that this week would be dedicated to Deftones, I was intrigued — not only because I think Deftones are an incredible band, but because they’re still not the kind of incredible band that “serious” people take seriously. They just don’t get the same kind of gentle critical massage that bands like Tool or The Mars Volta get despite the fact that they’re actually, like, a million times better than those two bands.

They’re also friends and acquaintances. A conversation I had with Chino Moreno at a Deftones show in 1999 was essentially the catalyst that had me move to San Francisco within months to start New End Original with Jonah Matranga; while at some point a few years ago, my friend Sergio Vega joined the band after their original bassist suffered a horrible car accident that still has him in a partially conscious state. (Love you, Chi.)

But having said all that, this isn’t about Deftones! This is about a Deftones-related post by One Week One Band author Maxwell Cavaseno that minimizes my friend Ian Love into the role of “guitarist for Walter Schriefels’ post-Quicksand project Rival Schools (and about the second or third greatest Tom Capone clone).” It’s a side note at best, I understand, but it’s also one of the most ill-informed lines of music writing that I have ever read — the symptomatic perception of a Quicksand fanboy gone horribly, horribly wrong.

Of course, I don’t know Cavaseno. But I do know that the only way someone could make that estimation of Ian Love in comparison to Tom Capone is if their estimation of Tom Capone were over-bloated to the point of human impossibility. Here’s the thing: Tom is my friend, too. I love Tom. Tom is one of the guitar players that inspired me to get creative on guitar, and make no mistake, his role in Quicksand was super crucial. But to call Ian Love a “Tom Capone clone” is to basically admit that you have no understanding of guitar whatsoever. It would be hard for me to come up with two more disparate styles of playing.

So who is Ian Love? Ian Love is a kid who came up in the late ’80s and early ’90s hardcore scene, a staple at the Anthrax club whose guitar playing even back then earned him a nickname — “The Prod,” short for “prodigy” — that no one ever disputed. As soon as he got a little older, Burn quickly snatched him up to play for guitar for them, and not too long after that, Ian surprised everyone when he started a band called Loaded which proved he could not only play guitar flawlessly, but that, oh yeah, he also had an insane five-octave vocal range. A few years later he’d resurface with a band called Cardia (whose self-titled debut is one of the best albums you’ve never heard) and a sublime acoustic solo album that laid rest to any doubts about his ability to write and execute a traditionally-structured pop song. There was also Rival Schools, sure. But I’d be willing to wager that’s the only way Cavaseno has ever heard Love, which makes his comparison uneducated at best.

Most of you might be scratching your heads and wondering why any of this matters, and to that I can only say it just does. Ian is one of the most talented people I’ve ever met, a true original, and a person worth defending. When Texas is the Reason reunited for two nights in 2006, we could have asked anyone to open the shows, but we asked Ian Love. That’s how high of an esteem I have for this person and his art. And that’s why I do things like blog — because I’d always rather see that someone who deserves praise over criticism gets just that. If four true paragraphs can undo one false sentence, I will be the first person to write them.

The other night I tweeted something about Clams Casino being a...

Fri, 09 Mar 2012 21:24:00 -0500

[Flash 10 is required to watch video.]

The other night I tweeted something about Clams Casino being a “breakbeat Slowdive,” so tonight while I was going through my samples and acapellas, I decided to make a track that aims to find out what a breakbeat Slowdive might sound like with Liam Gallagher on vocals. I’m not sure how I got from A to B on that one either, but surprisingly, the early prognosis is quite promising! I just might finish this one.

My boyfriend John told me he loved Ernie as a kid, but I loved...

Mon, 05 Mar 2012 13:39:00 -0500

My boyfriend John told me he loved Ernie as a kid, but I loved Bert. He couldn’t understand why anyone would love Bert — he is the boring one, after all — but in my mind, it made total sense that I’d want to be best friends with someone who collects paperclips. For one, my family couldn’t afford your fancy stamp and baseball collections, but my mother was delighted to buy office supplies for her five-year-old son. (I am not even making this up.) More importantly, you need to have a brilliant imagination to sit around and actually appreciate the nuances of a paperclip. That’s not always the person I am, but that’s still the type of person I want to be.

Dear Patrick Stump: When Rolling Stone published a story about...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 12:04:00 -0500

Dear Patrick Stump:

When Rolling Stone published a story about the blog post you wrote this week using the headline “I Am a 27-Year-Old Has-Been,” the first thing I thought was: I hear you, dude. If anything, I might have even been a little jealous over the fact that you had a few more years (and a few more million dollars) than I did when I came to that conclusion for myself. But whatever the case, I’d love to take this opportunity to usher you into the exclusive social club of People Who Made That Record Once. We’re happy to have you.

Membership requirements are not so stringent. In order to keep your membership in good standing at this club, you need only provide proof of personal contact (or Internet criticism) initiated by exclamations such as, “You made That Record once!” or concluding with inflexible, and preferably snide broadsides like, “You’ll never be as good as the Person Who Made That Record Once!” Senior status is awarded to those members who can provide proof that a.) present-day musical or nonmusical performances are consistently marred with requests for songs from (or stories about) That Record, b.) recent interviews still continue to focus on That Record, regardless of the artistic merit and/or contemporary relevance of your current work, or c.) reviews of your current work privilege the discussion of That Record over your new stuff at a word-count ratio of 26:1. That’s when we know you’re really one of us.

So first, the bad news. That thing you call a “barrage” of hatred from kids who “liked me better fat” and “paid for tickets to my solo shows to tell me how much I sucked without Fall Out Boy” will probably never end. The problem with making That Record is that, for many psychologically underdeveloped people with Internet access, you have become That Record, and therefore, cease to exist as a human being with the capacity to feel, change, and/or do anything else. So while I can’t say that I’ve ever had a threatening letter sent to my home the way you have, I can say that just last month, someone actually went to the trouble of making a blank Facebook profile using a variation of my name combined with the words “Fatfaced Dork” so that he — let’s face it: women don’t do this shit! — could friend-request me, and presumably, make me angry. (Unfortunately for him, I can’t say I was angry so much as I felt like I was on an episode of Glee.) In other words, it’s been more than sixteen years since I made That Record and I’m still on the receiving end of vitriol. You’ve got a ways to go.

Once this initial shock subsides, however, you’ll find that membership to this club has its privileges. Playing in a popular rock band is a difficult drug to kick, and as with all difficult drugs, the chase for that original high is a self-destructive one — perhaps because, quite simply, it can’t be done. Life before That Record happens only once, and after that, the seal is broken. Your enablers will tell you it’s a matter of scale, but that’s just a lie to keep the party going: The first time I performed in front of 15,000 people only felt marginally superior to the first time I played to a sold out 300-capacity club. Meanwhile, going from Fall Out Boy to Soul Punk was basically like going from crack to heroin. You thought you could beat the addiction by changing the recipe, but by the time you realized the high still wasn’t there — and that the game had, in fact, only gotten darker — you’d already “blown your nest egg.” As with every life-altering drug, there’s a rock bottom. But as with every stretch of sobriety, there is freedom at the finish line.

To break this grip and join the functioning ranks of People Who Made That Record Once, Mr. Stump, you only need to undergo one step. That’s eleven steps less than almost any other program! (We are nothing if not efficient.) It may take some time to fully inhabit this principle, but it’s important. So here it is: Be grateful for That Record.

That Record put you on the map and gave you privileges that you will enjoy for the rest of your life. The hatred may seem more unbearable at some points than others, but the love you will receive for it is immeasurable, and it is stronger than a chorus of boos or a mock Facebook profile. People will tell you how That Record saved their lives, scored their first kiss, soundtracked their wedding, or helped them love themselves a little bit more. If you ever get hit by a tow truck and wind up in a hospital for two months, you will receive literally hundreds of letters from perfect strangers who took time out of their day to write and mail physical letters just to tell you how much That Record means to them, and how you’ll always mean something to them for making it. You’ll get comped meals at restaurants, discounts at record stores, and career opportunities in almost any field you choose to pursue thanks to people who love That Record. And the residuals from That Record will help you buy a little something special for yourself every few months. This year, I think I’ll finally get an iPad.

What’s most important, however, is that you realize that not everyone gets to make That Record, and that there are thousands of boys and girls with guitars who would kill to be a flash in the pop-cultural pan instead of making records that no one will ever hear. (And when I say “no one,” I pretty much literally mean no one: Of the 98,000 albums released in 2009 that sold at least one copy, for example, a staggering 81,000 of those titles went on to sell less than 100 copies!) Think about this and accept it as something wonderful, no matter the unwanted side effects: What we have is special.

I’m ten years older than you now, Patrick, and I can tell you with confidence that it gets better. (Should we start a YouTube channel for this?) I went back to school. I actually managed to find a stable relationship. I’m living my pre-rock band dream of teaching at a New York City college. There is a good life waiting for People Who Made That Record Once, and while you may want to shrink away in your fingerless gloves now, you will inevitably come up for air. We’ll be here when you’re ready, and we’re looking forward to welcoming you at our next meeting.

"The Promise Ring’s zippiest, poppiest numbers predictably went over the best with this crowd. While..."

Sat, 25 Feb 2012 17:27:00 -0500

“The Promise Ring’s zippiest, poppiest numbers predictably went over the best with this crowd. While the ballad “Become One Anything One Time” from the polarizing 2002 swan song Wood/Water remains a very pretty would-be prom-night classic, it was received as a cue to hit the bar until something more upbeat came along. Clearly, even something of early ’00s vintage was too far out of the Nineties emo comfort zone on this night. (The audience even reacted enthusiastically to a Texas Is The Reason reference.)”

- Bizarrely, Rolling Stone seems surprised that the Promise Ring’s Milwaukee audience “even” reacted enthusiastically to a Texas is the Reason reference, perhaps forgetting that our bands were as attached to the hip as two bands could be — touring together, releasing a split 7-inch together, combining our line-ups for an impromptu Rolling Stones cover band called the Crossfire Hurricanes that mysteriously showed up after our shows — and that Milwaukee, being the smart and loyal town that it is, probably knows that. (Maybe the writer missed this week’s AV Club oral history?) Just saying.

It is an unspoken truth that many of us work hard to manipulate...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 23:51:00 -0500

It is an unspoken truth that many of us work hard to manipulate memory and rewrite ourselves with the hope that, someday, we’ll be remembered for that one “good” thing and not that one “bad” thing, because as much as we’re told that identity is layered and complex and certainly never all one thing or the other, we still bury our dead with the distinction of being Those Who Did No Wrong or Those Who Did No Right. But try as we might, the outcome is consistently leveled by chance: when the music stops, you just hope there’s a chair underneath you.

I’ll remember Whitney Houston for everything that she was, the good things and the bad things, and I won’t love her any less for falling than I did for her soaring. I’ll also remember her for writing songs that sounded jovial when the music played, but elicited pain a cappella. Like the way she exposed her midriff and simpered for the picture sleeve in spite of the fact that “I Wanna Dance With Somebody” seethes with the desperation of feeling unlovable, I too know how it feels when your packaging betrays the product. I’ll remember Whitney Houston most for showing me how to smile when you’ve never felt more alone.

This is, perhaps more than any other, an extra-gratuitous GPOY...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 19:08:00 -0500

This is, perhaps more than any other, an extra-gratuitous GPOY that Mike Dubin took last month. It is Wednesday after all.

The Jealous Sound are not the type of band that get Best New...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 13:40:00 -0500

The Jealous Sound are not the type of band that get Best New Musics or ubiquitous thinkpiece subjectification, which is to say that when their new album, A Gentle Reminder, comes out today, chances are you will not have heard about it unless you’ve already been paying careful attention. These are the records that are hardest to write about because they’re not instantly polarizing — like that other record that’s coming out today — or even particularly heady; it’s music with the potential to make you feel inarticulate. But thinking about this record makes me think about this thing Joan Didion wrote about lifting the unfussy title to George Orwell’s “Why I Write” for an essay of her own: “I stole the title not only because the words sounded right but because they seemed to sum up, in a no-nonsense way, all I have to tell you.”

There’s a modest refrain in this song where Blair Shehan sings, “I can’t do this on my own,” and it’s just inexplicably affecting. Like so many of the songs on this record, “Change You” sums up in a no-nonsense way all he has to tell us. Shehan thrives in such unembellished sentiment — he, virtuoso of the downstroke pick and palm-muted guitar riff — but not without leaving behind the dismal premonition that so many of the records that will quite possibly go on to eclipse this one are teeming with the kind of nonsense this album plainly rejects. This is the kind of record that changes lives, unbeknownst to everyone.

"No matter how long you work, it’s always going to end sometime. And there’s always going..."

Sun, 29 Jan 2012 11:43:00 -0500

“No matter how long you work, it’s always going to end sometime. And there’s always going to be things left undone. And it wouldn’t matter if you lived until you were 75. There would still be new ideas. There would still be things that you wished you would have accomplished … Part of the reason that I’m not having trouble facing the reality of death is that it’s not a limitation, in a way. It could have happened any time, and it is going to happen sometime. If you live your life according to that, death is irrelevant. Everything I’m doing right now is exactly what I want to do.”

- Keith Haring, Rolling Stone (August 10, 1989). The clarity with which Haring closes this interview is both inspiring and tragic. I do think we’re a death-fixated culture — ours is an obsession that fuels rigid religiosities, notions of “legacy” and monolithic identities, and the rush to supplement and enhance our physical natures in an attempt to convince us that we’re that much closer to living forever, among other things — so Haring’s introspection seems pointed. What he’s trying to say, I think, is this: An active resistance to death, which is inevitable, can actually become an active resistance to living if we let it. Haring died eight months after giving this interview, at the age of 31.

Mark Owen “Makin’ Out” How the Mighty Fall,...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 11:51:00 -0500

Mark Owen “Makin’ Out” How the Mighty Fall, 2005

I’ve written about Take That before, so I’ve already made the case for their astonishing transformation from manufactured boy-band to middle-aged singer-songwriters. But if you want to get all specific about it, I’ve always been particularly awed by Mark Owen — the guy in the middle doomed to be perpetually overshadowed by Gary Barlow and Robbie Williams — whose solo albums introduced a surprisingly sophisticated pop songwriter with a deep intuitive sense about the canon of British music, from the Beatles to the Kinks to Blur, that has never really been acknowledged by anyone. Blame the boy-band albatross around his neck.

Pomplamoose covered “Makin’ Out” once, which indicates that I’m not the only person who sees this connection, but I imagine Owen’s solo records will continue to languish in the bins until Jon Brion or Elvis Costello start covering his music or something. But it’s the guy’s fortieth birthday today, so I just figured I’d put this out there again. I’ve never rooted for a millionaire underdog so hard.

Abner and Harper Willis are a pair of brothers who front...

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 02:00:00 -0500

Abner and Harper Willis are a pair of brothers who front “the New York City-based indie rock band” Two Lights. Their idea of success includes scoring a worthless “VIP pass” for an unnamed British pop star and then being surprised when the backstage room didn’t look like a P. Diddy White Party, a review in a third-tier NYC free magazine that meaninglessly describes their music as having “the magical power to obliterate wintery thoughts,” and hiring “a manager who’s helped break artists like Blur and the Smashing Pumpkins” — which is code that anyone familiar with the music industry can easily decipher as: “Our manager did some shit at Virgin Records in the ’90s.”

Time Magazine recently gave the floor to the Willis brothers for a slot in their “Entrepreneurial Insights” special, and the thesis came together almost instantly. Abner and Harper want you to know something: Being in an “indie rock” band is hard!

It’s also expensive. By their estimation, a handful of blog reviews and the privilege to work with someone who sent Lenny Kravitz posters to record stores in 1995 has already cost the band upwards of $109,000. I want to write that number again because it’s so absurd, and then pick up a sandwich board and write it again — next to the words YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG — so that I can boycott Two Lights shows around the country with a small, but angry cult called The Church of Rational People. I want to take them into a bank and show them what $109,000 looks like, and then slap them over the head with a fistful of hundreds. I want to drive their equipment into the most dire, economically oppressed neighborhood, sell it all to the local pawn shop, and then donate the proceeds to any number of families that could use a hundred extra dollars to make rent this month. Two Lights are like the Mitt Romney of sad boys with guitars, ambitious and chiseled white men who weren’t asked to release their financials under duress, but did so anyway because their utter lack of self-awareness never tipped them off to the fact that spending $109,000 to play Wednesday nights at the Mercury Lounge is on the same level of crazy as donating $4 million to the Mormon church in one year. Maybe even crazier.

Of course, I would be remiss to simply yell YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG and not explain myself. I played in financially viable bands for years without the money of major labels — or sometimes, for that matter, anyone — and while it certainly wasn’t always a P. Diddy White Party, I made a living in New York City without going bankrupt. Let’s crunch some numbers:

Training: Our folks shelled out for 15 years of piano and guitar lessons (times two of us!). These days, we’re spending $250 to $500 a month on voice lessons. Cost to date: $30,000.

OK, stop. First of all, it’s completely unfair to include your parents’ investment in music lessons into this equation — unless we also plan on adding the grocery receipts, too. (All that basement jamming makes you hungry!) But even if you take that out, there is no reason why these guys should be spending $250 to $500 a month on vocal lessons. (I listened to your single: they’re not working, you guys!) Learn how to breathe, learn how to warm-up your voice, and then treat yourself with an extra session when you’ve got the extra money. Otherwise, just lock yourself in the bathroom for the acoustics and fire up YouTube. Seriously.

As for me, I have a few books about guitar and took a music theory course in college once, but that’s about as much as I’ve ever spent on training. Cost to date since 1991: Maybe $50.

Rehearsal: We rent a space in Brooklyn for $50 per three-hour session. Cost to date: $3,000.

Oh hey, I think I know that practice space! $50 for three hours is great, but it sounds like these guys practice a lot, which means they could (and should) be sharing a monthly space with at least one other band. At the current going rates, you should be able to find a room in Brooklyn that costs the same as a few hourly-rate practices. That their ever-so-useful manager hasn’t filled them in on this point says something about the value of their services.

Technically, I’ve spent a good amount of money on rehearsals, but it’s always been strategic: Hourly practices are saved for upcoming shows or running through a set-list, but writing always takes place somewhere less expensive — like your drummer’s mom’s house in New Jersey, which also comes with free soda and chips. In that sense, I’d probably say I’ve also spent at least $3,000 on rehearsal space — but that’s including every rehearsal I’ve ever booked since 1990, which is, incidentally, the year young Abner was born. Pro-tip: Going on tour is like practice that pays you.

Gear: Our family has invested in dozens of musical instruments and other gear (pianos, guitars, drum sets, keyboards, mandolins, PA systems, amplifiers…). And, oh yeah, it cost more than $500 to move a piano down three flights of stairs and then up to Maine (a story for another time). Cost to date: $25,000.

Again, your family’s investment is not your own. But even if it were, you’re paying too much. I owned just one guitar throughout most of the ’90s — a Gibson SG that I paid $300 for — and a Marshall half-stack that I found at a pawn shop for $500. I spent another $150 on pedals. The only time I’ve ever spent real money on a guitar was after Texas is the Reason sold out two nights at Irving Plaza in 2006. I celebrated by buying a Gibson Les Paul that I’ve always wanted for $2,000. The only other guitar I’ve ever owned is a Fender Telecaster my brother gave me in 1991, and that’s it for my entire career in band gear.

Total cost: $2,950. You do with what you have, and it’s amazing how the creativity will come.

Performing: For gigs here in New York, we hire taxis to lug our keyboards, stands, guitars,basses, amplifiers and drums to and from the venue. Whatever cash we earn beyond that usually goes to our current drummer. And expenses soar when we hit the road. Cost to date: $1,000.

Here’s the thing: You pay for taxis in New York anyway, whether or not you’re carrying a guitar. One time, when I lived on the corner of First Avenue and E. 10th Street, I actually walked my gear around the block to play at (the now-defunct) Brownies. It happens.

Interestingly, a thousand bucks isn’t a lot to spend here, and that’s surprising considering that neither of these guys work day jobs. If they spent as much money going out on tour — and sleeping on floors and eating at gas stations like normal people — as they did on voice lessons, we might actually know who Two Lights is. We probably still won’t like them, but that’s not the point.

My bands have spent lots of money on performance and production, but except for the very first tour I ever went on in 1992, I’ve always recouped. For real. Even when we were playing to a hundred kids on a good night. I’m not even particularly good at math, but I know how to make it work on tour, and a lot of it is about making friends with sofabeds, asking the promoter to make some cheap veggie stew, or making smart merchandise at fair prices. As a result, total cost: $0.

Promotion: Once you have music out, you need to promote it. We pay a guy to send email blasts to databases of hip music blogs. Postcards, demo CDs and other materials are also essential. Cost to date: $1,000.

Actually, none of this is “essential” for a band no one has ever heard of. None of it. Abner and Harper Willis ostensibly have the Internet and access to the Hype Machine; they should be sending out their (tasteful and infrequent) “email blasts.” (Although as a former music writer, I can tell you that there is a very special place in my trash for “email blasts.”) Also, postcards? That’s just fucking gauche.

None of my bands used a publicist of any sort until we were signed to a record label, and truthfully, there is really no reason to have one until you’ve got an honest-to-goodness album to support. The same goes for management. It seems insane to have to explain this to anyone in their early 20s — who should probably be playing music because they have something to say and not because they want to “earn a lot more money than even doctors and lawyers” — but play shows, be nice to people, make friends with other bands, and send free music to anyone who will listen to it. Also, don’t write about how much money you have in Time Magazine. My well-tested strategy will cost you $0.

Lost wages: The two of us each put about 20 hours a week into band-related work. Abner (still in school) could easily make $10 an hour working at a bar on weekends. Harper (a freelance writer) has to turn down writing assignments worth around $400 a week. Cost to date: $25,000.

I’ve been trying hard to refrain from using the word “privileged” here, but come on. I always worked when I played in bands — even when I didn’t technically have to work. I was a freelance writer, a record label owner, a data entry clerk, a record store guy, an executive assistant at a publishing company, whatever. I did it because having a job made the band feel less like a job, and that’s a good thing. (Also, I don’t think it’s particularly noble to be a poor musician.)

So if the Willis brothers have “lost” wages, it’s simply because their privilege allows it and their pride demands it. But since I cannot relate to such nonsense, my “lost wages” to date come to $0.

Living in New York City: Our cousin Abby lives in Atlanta in a house — a house! — with a couple of friends. They pay a third of what we pay for our combined living spaces. New York is absurdly expensive — but the band’s future demands that we live here rather than, say, our hometown in Maine. All told, we estimate that decision costs us an extra $1000 a month. Cost to date: $18,000.

“The band’s future demands that we live here.”

No it doesn’t. Being a band in New York City is prohibitive for a million reasons, and the imagined big-city promise simply does not warrant the sacrifice unless, as it was in my case, this is where you grew up and it’s just home to you. If Two Lights were really good — spoiler: they’re mediocre — then A&R guys would fly out to meet them. Labels would fly them into New York for a showcase. The Internet would discover them immediately. There is no such causal connection between living in New York and “making it,” so if I were these guys, I’d call my cousin Abby and move to Atlanta. Fact: Once you’re in a van, on tour, it really doesn’t matter where you live.

Which brings us to our final tally. Two Lights: $109,000. Me: $6,000 over 20 years.

If I were a name-caller, I’d even call the Beatles fucking stupid if they’d spent that much money before having recorded Please Please Me. But hey, Abner and Harper Willis, I’ll spare you. I just hope we all learned something here.

If his tweets were any indication, Michelangelo Signorile...

Tue, 24 Jan 2012 16:14:34 -0500

If his tweets were any indication, Michelangelo Signorile dedicated his entire radio show yesterday to the question of Cynthia Nixon’s sexuality.

That’s weird.

It’s true that the public loves a good riff on some variation of the is-she-or-isn’t-she question, but in this case, we know. Cynthia Nixon is gay. She has a girlfriend. She isn’t hiding anything or campaigning against gay rights or donating millions of dollars to the Mormon church to help defeat same-sex marriage. The how or why is better left to the scientists, but the what — that she is an out lesbian woman — is well established.

Amateur biologists that we are, however, many of us just couldn’t resist taking the bait when Nixon gave an interview in which she asserted that “for me, [my sexuality] is a choice. I understand that for many people it’s not, but for me it’s a choice, and you don’t get to define my gayness for me.” Of course, that didn’t stop Signorile’s followers on Twitter (and others) from doing just that, dismissing the comment as a byproduct of misguided bisexuality, using it to illustrate “another example of the difference between gay men and lesbians,” or just chalking it up to the very male perception that “women are allowed to be more sexually open in our culture.” (Really?) Incredibly, only a few people — all women, it seems — actually gave unconditional credence to the notion that Cynthia Nixon has a right to define her own experience, even when it appears to threaten everything we believe about ourselves.

First, the obvious. Cynthia Nixon “knows” that her being gay is a choice in the same way that I “know” my being gay is an inborn trait. We just feel it. Of course, sheer introspection is not a sound epistemological method by any stretch — for either of us! — but in lieu of a credible and falsifiable explanation, it’s all we have. So in this case, it’s not even a situation of respectful disagreement, but personal truth: Nixon is not telling me that I chose to be gay, but that she did. I can’t possibly know whether or not that is true because I do not inhabit Cynthia Nixon’s body and mind.

I can, however, think about choice and freewill and the fact that we are a species famous for claiming categorical agency when we have none. For example, most of us don’t ever question the moment we “chose” to be right-handed or left-handed, but this predicament was actually one of my childhood’s most pressing questions. I practiced writing left-handed for years, I mimicked certain left-handed affectations that I’d see on television or elsewhere, I even started wearing a watch on my right hand. I heard about this thing called ambidextrousness — supposedly my grandmother had it — and I thought maybe that was me, too. At one point, I realized that my handwriting as a lefty actually got pretty good! But in the end, I “decided” that it felt more natural for me to be a righty. Just like Nixon, who said, “I’ve been straight and I’ve been gay, and gay is better,” I tried righty and I tried lefty, and righty is better. As far as I was concerned, I made that choice, and there was nothing you could have told the 14-year-old me to convince him otherwise. It was as obvious to me as the fact that Knightwatch was going to become legendary television. (It didn’t.)

I realize now that it’s more complicated than that. That even if there is a “choice” involved, it’s not one of unmitigated freewill, and that — as with most of, if not all of the major markers that we use to construct identity — there is also some sort of genetic influence or predisposition. But what if there isn’t?

It seems obvious that the row over Nixon’s comments go way beyond personal truth and more into the thorny territory between social perception and civil rights: If “they” think we choose our sexuality, some argue, gay people will never be free from discrimination and oppression. But considering that the lack of choice that went into my identity as a person of color failed to provide any such immunity from the discrimination and oppression of being Hispanic or nonwhite in America, I struggle to see the logic (or dignity) in such a fear. At its worst, this argument proposes that a pure biological basis for homosexuality is the only escape-hatch from the moral argument against LGBT people, and in turn, submits that without this basis, there may be something to that moral argument in the first place. But there isn’t. Let’s not forget that the rhetoric of an “innate nature” is historically fraught with ideological self-interest, and that this point is not exclusive to a queer context: Late nineteenth-century theorists, for example, “presented the nonwhite person — ‘the savage’ — as lower down the evolutionary scale than the white” in an attempt to perpetuate a myth about the sexual insatiability of non-Europeans and to curb “the threat they consequently pose for the purity of the white race.” (If this sounds familiar, consider Pat Robertson’s recent warning that “there isn’t one single civilization that has survived that openly embraced homosexuality,” and that “if history is any guide, the same thing is going to happen to us.”) Still, at its core, this fear also enforces the wrongful assertion that nature operates in clean divisions of inborn and acquired traits, and totally disregards those evolutionary certainties that factually exist in-between the binaries — such as the way many “plants and animals are hermaphroditic before they are bisexual and are bisexual before they are heterosexual” or how “bees and flowers coevolve through mutually beneficial ‘deviations.’” (Timothy Morton can speak more about this point.) In other words, by placing a caveat-free premium on innate sexuality, gay people are actually making the same argument they are being oppressed with — that there are certain immutable “natural” binaries that exist for human beings in a way that defies the reality of pretty much every other plant and animal species on the planet. By yielding to such exceptionalism, we are clamoring to squeeze human sexuality and gender expression into a rigid box that we invented, which as such, enjoys no right to an existence in perpetuity.

The other thing, then, is this: Without any sort of real epistemic evidence for nature or nurture or neither, gay people ask straight people for the right to define our own experience every single day — even when it appears to threaten everything heterosexuals believe about themselves. Straight people certainly can’t imagine what it’s like to grow up gay, and many of the less sophisticated in their ranks can’t even imagine the possibility that two men or two women can love each other with the same kind of affection, desire, and commitment that they enjoy with their opposite-sex partners. Similarly, I have no idea what it must feel like to grow up with common, uncomplicated worries — such as whether or not a girl I like thinks I’m cute — and without attaching the fears of sin, morality, impending antigay violence, mental illness, and total ruin to every basic boyhood crush. Until we figure out how to inhabit the bodies and minds of other people, we might never know these things of each other.

Which is to say that, as improbable as Cynthia Nixon’s claim plays out in my own experience, I have no choice but to afford her the same benefit of the doubt that I demand for my own personal truth, which persists, unaffected. I mean, I believe I was born this way. But there is nothing about my personhood that would change if I weren’t.

“I must confess that over the last few years I have been...

Mon, 16 Jan 2012 11:45:00 -0500

“I must confess that over the last few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate. I have almost reached the regrettable conclusion that the Negro’s great stumbling block in the stride toward freedom is not the White Citizens Councillor or the Ku Klux Klanner but the white moderate who is more devoted to order than to justice; who prefers a negative peace which is the absence of tension to a positive peace which is the presence of justice; who constantly says, ‘I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I can’t agree with your methods of direct action’; who paternalistically feels that he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom; who lives by the myth of time; and who constantly advises the Negro to wait until a ‘more convenient season.’ Shallow understanding from people of good will is more frustrating than absolute misunderstanding from people of ill will. Lukewarm acceptance is much more bewildering than outright rejection.”

I’ve been reading Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from a Birmingham Jail” today, and this excerpt stood out as still particularly relevant — especially in a country where political expediency is often more valued (or at least more practiced) than the unmediated justice our so-called principles demand.

These are the ideas we should consider when conservative Republicans and Libertarians try to shore up MLK as a member of their side, even when they belittle the civil disobedience of Occupy Wall Street as “socialism” or “class warfare,” and not the inevitable pushback of economic oppression. This is the argument we should present when Democrats try to shore up MLK as a member of their side, even as they regularly inform millions of gay Americans that the heterosexists are not yet ready to cede power, and that 2012 is still too inconvenient a time for full equality under the law.

What King says here is clear: Dismantling the ideology of the oppressor is an active pursuit, not a passive one, and the right time will always be now. There are no exceptions. Let’s not get it twisted.