BoogMusic

Karen Elson, semi-retired supermodel and wife of Jack White, has recently recorded an album debuting her talents as a singer-songwriter.  The album will be released in conjunction with Mr. White’s label; he also produced and played drums on the album.  Other members of the band include Mark Watrous of the Raconteurs, and Jackson Smith, who is married to Meg White.  At recent gigs she has worn a vintage peach dress that matches her hair, suede shoes the designer named after her, and playing a $4000 Gibson from 1917.

Everything mentioned above belies one fact: Karen Elson has a decent singing voice.  In both the video for the single off the album and a grainy cellphone video from a recent gig in New York, Ms. Elson’s voice sounds both comfortable and strong.  If it seems as though the pedigree of the album, and indeed of this whole venture, is viewed through a snarky lens, that’s because it is, or rather very easily can be.  Therein lies the largest critique that can be leveled at Karen Elson, singer-songwriter: the whole thing stinks of vanity project.  Karen Elson might actually turn out to be a talented musician (vocal talent aside, the songwriting needs work), but who the hell at this point is paying attention to that?  Most write-ups I’ve read seem more concerned what she’s wearing and who is or isn’t at the show; they read like the gossip page of a high school news paper, which is about right.  At their most insidious, the worlds of rock and fashion are cool tables in the lunch room of pop culture; Ms. Elson is jumping from one popular clique to another.  Let’s assume there are countless lithe redheads with decent voices releasing an acoustic-based album of their own material- how many of theses striving sirens do you think got gigs at this year’s South By Southwest?  Let alone the uncounted legions of young women hoping to get heard whom genetics has preordained will never grace the cover of Vogue.

If a music blog were a lead pipe, I’m sure there are plenty lining up to swing theirs at the kneecaps of Ms. Elson.  I simply want to offer this advise: try harder.  Go it alone.  Fire your drummer; get a different producer- if you want people to take you seriously as a musician, do it without relying on, or appearing that you rely on, your husband and his friends.  Wouldn’t it be a more satisfying experience if the asterisk was removed?  Rock people have such a sexist, patronizing, knee-jerk reaction to women trying to make it in music- why give them any ammunition?  Fight against (or better yet, abandon) the innate hipness of your station- it so easily can be read as insincerity.  Second acts are possible in American lives, they just can’t be built solely on the strengths of the first.

In the course of one weekend recently I read that both Bell Biv Devoe and House of Pain were playing live (not on the same bill), tickets for a Faith No More show would be going on sale the following week, and Pearl Jam was on Saturday Night Live.  I then started thinking about twenty year cycles and how it’s 2010 and it struck me- shit, we’re on the cusp of a nineties revival.

I turned 13 in 1990, so I pretty much spent that decade both reasonably aware of and overly spiteful of things around me.  I was into the alternative band scene (the revival will include all stupid terminology as well) about a year to nine months before peer group and was extremely possessive about it, so I was pretty pissed my freshman year when every douche at my school was walking around in Fugazi or Dinosaur Jr. t shirts (what kind of an idiot owns a Fugazi t shirt anyway?).  I’ve been trying to get over that one for twenty years now, and I think I’ve finally been able to come to terms with it.  So, you know, while I’m not really looking forward to a resurgence of Soundgarden and Candlebox on the radio, I don’t think I’ll go shoot myself in the head with a shotgun after taking a very large amount of heroin over it.

But saying that assumes what form the revival will take.  Maybe it won’t be a grunge thing.  Maybe it’ll be Smashmouth and Chubbawamba and Sugar Ray.  Maybe it’ll be a Britpop thing.  Maybe everyone will be really into X-Clan (finally).  These things are always fairly capricious in nature, so it’s basically impossible to predict whence this nostalgia rocket shall find it’s fuel.  Unfortunately, whatever form the nineties revival takes, it’s shape will most certainly be molded by the most vacuous cultural signifiers that one might say defines “the nineties”, and it most certainly won’t pay any mind to the many passing lameities and true horrors that happened, just as the atrocities of the 70s and 80s seemed to get a pass (I’m sure Rwanda will be given as much attention by nineties revivalists as Cambodia and Lebanon were given by 70s and 80s enthusiasts, respectively).

Which brings me to my point.  I don’t really care if people start wearing Phillies Blunt shirts again or White Sox caps or revisits the Macarena.  What I dread, and what I really hope we can nip in the bud, is the coming of a nostalgia for the 2000s ten years hence.  Please let’s all remember that this decade we are coming out of really really sucked.  The politics were totally poisonous.  Many many people died for terrible reasons.  More in the perview of this blog, the music kind of sucked.  Rap was really boring.  Pop was disgustingly mindless (even for pop).  Autotune.  As for the indie scene- yes, the internet made it easier for “indie” bands (indie being the alternative of today) to get an audience.  Is that always the a good thing?  Perhaps there’s something to be said for an apprenticeship period playing bars, high school dances, and pool parties where you actually figure out how to play and whether or not you’re any good.  And why aren’t more of these twerps getting bullied in high school?  Maybe the nineties people will get all hopped up on Limp Bizkit and strike down the Cera Brigade once and for all!  Or at least until fifteen years from now, when I catch my kid wearing a Shins t shirt, and it all begins again…

“Introducing [Iggy Pop], Billie Joe Armstrong of Green Day had described him as “the most confrontational singer we will ever see.’”- New York TImes 3/16/2010

Iggy Pop is the shit.  I would never be foolish enough to argue against that.  Iggy Pop is a legend because he expanded our expectations of a rock & roll frontman.  Frantic, spastic and feral, Iggy Pop burst onto an heavily stoned rock scene and totally harshed everyone’s vibe.  Just as James Brown redefined the archetype of a soul singer ten years earlier, Iggy made it impossible after 1972 to just be another pretty boy in skinny jeans clapping along or shrugging your shoulders to the beat.  No longer could you stand awkwardly by as the rest of the band took their solos.  It isn’t the Stooges, but this video gives you a pretty good idea of how electric Iggy was on stage.

Iggy left it all on stage, and god bless him for it.  Sexy, wasted, totally empathetic- he’s total rock id in service to the groove.  And if the world ended in 1975 then perhaps he could hold claim to the most in-your-face singer we’ll ever see.  But it didn’t…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRJD3PLsh7Q&NR=1

Yes, Iggy was in your face, but he still inherently was on your side.  GG Allin hated your fucking guts, and the more you claimed to like him, the more shit he’d throw in your face.  And that’s no metaphor- he would shit on stage and throw it in your face (these antics and more can be seen in Hated: GG Allin and the Murder Junkies directed by Todd Phillips,  better known for Old School and The Hangover).  GG Allin hated everything about our society, from the sanctimonious to the hypocritical.

Which brings us back to Mr. Armstrong.  Sure, you’re on stage, you’re inducting one of your idols on stage, but come on.  Why even bother saying something so obviously bullshit?  Are you really at a loss to find superlative things to say about Iggy Pop or The Stooges that aren’t total crap?  If anything, the fact that so many (GG Allin, Blackie Lawless, Extreme Elvis, et. al)  followed the example of Iggy and pushed harder and harder against the normative modes of behavior and performance is a testament to the man’s influence and genius.

But how the hell would Billy Joe know that?  Green Day was always a simulacrum of a punk band as opposed to the real thing, and the more they exist the phonier they become.  Broadway musical?  Bite it, you scum.

Below is a video for the Sparklehorse song “It’s a Wonderful Life”, which is the first Sparklehorse song I ever heard.  Mark Linkous, the songwriter and driving creative force behind Sparklehorse, killed himself this weekend by shooting himself in the heart.  Even if you don’t know any of the details of Linkous’ life you probably wouldn’t be surprised that he would commit suicide after hearing a sampling of his music.  I’m not the biggest Sparklehorse fan, but I’m certainly sorry that he’s dead, and it’s a real fucking tragedy when someone who’s obviously talented and consistently puts out interesting work gets so overwhelmed by the troubles in their life that they are incapable of seeing how stupid killing yourself is, how much cooler the world is with them alive.  If this is your first Sparklehorse song, my advice is you go out and listen to more Sparklehorse.  And keep the guns away from your talented friends.

Below are pairs of songs; I think they sound similar, or at least have parts that sound very similar.  Tell me if you disagree.  Feel free to suggest some of your own.

Wilco Vs. The Cure

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My Morning Jacket Vs. U2

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Oasis Vs. The Doors

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Pulp Vs. Laura Branigan

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There’s nothing wrong with any of this; indeed, lifting passages, either consciously or through musical osmosis, has a long and storied history.  It’s not exactly breaking news that Noel Gallagher freely steals from all over the FM dial.  If anything, it just goes to show how small a world we live in, where Jarvis Cocker is perhaps less intentionally tongue-in-cheek with his pop references then he lets on and Jeff Tweedy is as big a fan of Robert Smith as he is Gram Parsons.  Of course, I guess the lesson from recent history is, if you’re going to lift your riff from someone else’s stuff, don’t go release it as the first single off your album (sorry Coldplay).