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Janelle Monáe – Video For “Tightrope” From “The ArchAndroid”

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 27, 2010 by admin in Music

Tuesday, April 27th, 2010

Janelle Monáe is an utterly mind-blowing talent that is sure to change the face of popular music in 2010. My hyperbole is seriously no match for what she does in the video for “Tightrope”

Imagine if Stevie Wonder, Michael Jackson, Prince, Shirley Bassey, James Brown, Grace Jones, and Rihanna had a daughter, and Outkast produced her. Scratch that. I don’t think there are really words to describe what Janelle Monáe is up to. Her vocal delivery effortlessly slips between sultry, R&B ballsy, and almost childish in the span of single verse. She moves like there’s no such thing as gravity, and she has a keen sense theatricality. Oh. And she’s gorgeous. I’ll just shut up now. Watch the video. I’ll try to say something useful below.

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Robyn With A Why

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 21, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, April 21st, 2010

How and why I finally succumbed to the Europoptasticalness of Robyn


Swede Dreams Are Made Of This

Make that three whys. Why, why, why do I like Robyn? I’m supposed to be a mildly snobbish follower of quality indy music like, I dunno, Grizzly Bear, and Hot Chip, and Flying Lotus. That sort of thing. The effects-and-compression slathered beatbox pop of someone like Robyn should be total anathema to me. And frankly, when I first heard her a few years ago, her music was. On my first listen, I thought “Ack! It’s like Pink meets MIA meets Ephemera meets Powerpuff Girls”. Or something like that. And then I listened to it a few weeks later, and was mortified to find myself liking it. I think I was resisting because it was so much like music I was trying to do in the eighties, except what Robyn is pulling of is perfectly, plinkily, Europoptastical. I think I was also struggling with the fact that in her pretty/ugly asymmetrical perfect-hair androgyny, she looks like the the girl I used to WISH I looked like AND the guy I would want to want to date me. If I were a girl who looked like that. And if I liked guys that way. So it’s been a struggle, but I finally relented. Robyn rocks, and if you don’t agree, you probably don’t like pure, perfected pop. I’m not surprised she hasn’t really broken in a big way in the states; self-aware Europop genius like this is often lost on us. And to add to the challenge, appreciating the fairly genuine sentiments expressed in her best tunes requires being thoroughly in touch with your inner melodramatic teen. Check out the widget and video below, or learn more about the odd career of the Swedish/Brit pop phenom on Wikipedia.  Read the rest of this entry »

I’m With The Brand: Musicians As Corporate Groupies

[ 1 Comment ]Posted on April 14, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, April 14th, 2010

You know it’s over when Iggy Pop Licenses “Lust For Life” to Royal Caribbean Cruise Lines

If you’re a working musician who understands anything at all about how the music industry works and want to earn a decent living, you’ll quit your job right now and start a record label. Oh wait. That doesn’t even work anymore. So what’s a penniless musical genius to do these days to make a living? Well, if you’re Radiohead or Nine Inch Nails – the two acts always cited when talking about making a fortune online with your music – you’re all set. But the fact is that these are pretty exceptional cases, and both acts had a major label deal before their success on line. In reality, there probably are a lot of acts out there that are happy with what they’re making if they self-produce, choose the right distribution channels, and remember that oft-forgotten secret ingredient, HAVING FANS. We’ve come a long way since the days when the typical artist/label arrangement meant the band would sell a couple million units, the label would make a mil, and the band would end up 50 grand in debt. If you think that’s an exaggeration, read this classic piece by Steve Albini (probably best known for producing Nirvana’s In Utero) that breaks it down in detail, or this quick Wikipedia entry about “recoupment”. To get an idea of how many songs an artist has to sell these days – and how – before they make US minimum wage, check out this handy infographic. So while it’s possible these days to make some kind of living as a musician, how does one make “superstar” money? Well not by being Lady Gaga selling tunes on Spotify, that’s for sure. No, much like any other art-meets-business activity, whoring yourself is probably the best solution. Devo was one of the early geniuses of this, building their brand as anti-corporate rebels while making fistfuls of money as savvy and willing team players with Warner. More recently, according to this Wall Street Journal piece, we’d have to tip the hat to Black Eyed Peas. Apparently will.i.am pitches his band-slash-brand to major sponsors like BlackBerry with PowerPoint presentations. Yes, it’s hard to tell the band from the brands these days. In fact, try this clever FastCompany quiz to see if you can tell the names of the bands from those who name the brands. Read the rest of this entry »

Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat – Innovative? No. Noteworthy? Yes.

[ Comments Off ]Posted on April 7, 2010 by admin in Music

Wednesday, April 7th, 2010

Charanjit Singh’s 1982 release Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat has made quite a splash in the hipper music press, but my band’s manager in 1982 always threatened to pull the plug when we played stuff like this.

For many who consider themselves sophisticated listeners, the words “synthesizing” and “disco beat” in an album title would pretty much wrap it up in terms of whether or not they’d listen to it. And if they weren’t into Indian music, throwing the word “raga” in there would seal the deal for good. Which would be too bad in the case of Charanjit Singh’s 1982 release Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat. It’s worth a listen. Although I wouldn’t give the raves a lot of pop media blogs are giving it and say it’s history-dismantling or absolutely shock and awe inducing or that Charanjit Singh accidentally invented house music. No, to me the recording is remarkable for other reasons, primary amongst them being the fact that it exists at all. Partly because it’s electronic, partly because it was from an Indian artist in 1982, but mainly because someone took the time to record it so well, and that there was still a master to work with decades later. Although fans of acid and other techno-inspired club music would strangle me for saying this, the music on this record is remarkably unremarkable not because it’s bad in any way, but to be blunt, whenever my band’s manager in 1982 caught us pursuing this kind of repetitious multicultural noodling with our Roland synth and drum machine, he threatened to pull funding. And you could often hear music much like this coming through the studio walls when musicians of the era were stoned and jamming. You never would have thought at the time to record the stuff, and if you did, you probably would have done so on some crappy 4-track portastudio. It took a generation of drugs and clubbing for dance music to evolve to the point where this kind of machine-driven droning was actually perceived as music. I jest a little, but I’m partly serious. Ten Ragas To A Disco Beat is definitely worth a listen simply because it’s worth a listen. In terms of being ahead of its time though? It’s probably more worthy of note because of the fact that the recording made it to tape and lasted long enough for a re-release almost 30 years later than because it was prescient or eerily visionary. I’m just gonna go see if I can find those portastudio tapes now. I may have found an aftermarket for my post-punk era rejected demos . Read the rest of this entry »

Erykah Badu, Lady Gaga & Beyoncé Try To Go Too Far But Don’t Get There

[ 2 Comments ]Posted on April 2, 2010 by admin in Music

Friday, April 2nd, 2010

But Gettin’ Naked & Lesbian Prison Love Still Pays The Bills


We’re tastefully passing on the rhyming
possibilities of the Grassy Knoll.

[Note: If you've been living in a pop music isolation chamber lately, there are spoilers ahead] Okay. This whole “get naked while walking down the street singing your song” meme is getting reeeally tired. Don’t get me wrong – I have no desire to become a critic, and I really love Erykah Badu – but I can only imagine the production meeting for the recent video for her song Window Seat: “Yeah, we’ll have you walk down the street in broad daylight stripping your clothes off, and – WHAT? Matt and Kim and Make The Girl Dance have already done it? Well sure, but I bet they didn’t get SHOT at the end, did they?” Although I’d give her a 6 out of 10 for meaningful and useful artistic expression, and a 9 out of 10 in the trunk department (did I really just type that?), I otherwise am not too stunned with the statement the video aims for. And who’d have thought that getting naked would still have an impact in the 21st century in the first place? Or that Lady Gaga and Beyonce could drive even India.Arie to say “you’ve gone too far!” by making a video that looks like Quentin Tarantino collaborated with Madonna and Oliver Stone to do a remake of Prisoner Cell Block H? Anybody who thinks this video “goes too far” has obviously never heard of this thing called “the 1980′s” and acts like GG Allin. Here are the videos. I’ll shut up now. Read the rest of this entry »

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