My real name is Methuselah
The thing is that I have tried and tried. I even bought that shit on vinyl. But I'm really just not that super blown away by the Arcade Fire record. I mean, it's obviously good, and the design is amazing. But I prefer it when singers have pleasing voices. I feel moderately redeemed by my affection for the M.I.A. record, despite its obvious distance from my aesthetic comfort zone, though let's be honest: I still hear it through the filter of that New Yorker piece from a few months back, which I saved because it was so good (and because the photo of Maya Arulpragasam is a stunner). That guy Sasha Frere-Jones is obviously the best music critic around at this point. And, let's be even honester: It's not like, even if M.I.A. was able to enter this country to do her live show--scheduled for Seattle last Tuesday 3/15 and cancelled--it's not like I could ever dance in public. On stage is fine, but in a crowd, I just feel conspicuous and awful. It's embarrassing, yo, but let's not get too personal. Other than that, let's see: Razrez was amazingly good live in the KEXP studio with me, and their four-song demo (produced by my friend Ryan Hadlock is really promising), the new Decemberists is my favorite, and I also enjoy that LCD Soundsystem song. Other than that, my listening tastes are pointedly 30s-ish, honky, rock-centric, and "totes" unfashionable. As opposed to anti-fashionable, which is what I wanted to be this time last deacade. I have no hope of keeping up. I don't even know the difference between These Arms Are Snakes. Or between The Popular Shapes and The Impossible Shapes. Or whatever. I turn on the MTV and everybody looks like extras from the damn Class of 1984 or Tuff Turf or something. I get that youth culture is energetic and important, and certainly moreso now than a few years back, but the older I get, the more I can't help feeling relieved that my advancing age is carrying me further away from the point where I'm expected to know what's happening. And anyway, this fetishization of the young and their slang and their favored fashion by people my age and older (I guess I'm thinking mainly of music people, artists and journalists alike): am i the only one who remembers feeling utterly left behind by that shit even and especially when i was young and it actually hurt to be a complete outsider? Shouldn't one relish the freedom to not know what's going on? I do like "totes" though. Totes is good.
The music that is giving me the most pleasure of late is/are Robyn Hitchcock, Teenage Fanclub (Bandwagonesque, no less), Todd Rundgren, Elastica, Smog, half of the newest Graham Coxon, Sparks, Sly, and, weirdly, that new-ish Fiona Apple record that the label rejected. 2004 was all about Echo & The Bunnymen (a short lived immersion, and a major bummer of a live show, but two new all-time fave LPs: Ocean Rain and Heaven Up Here) and the '70s period Kinks, which I may have started listening to with an ear toward the narrative angle (http://www.thestranger.com/2004-11-18/music5.html), but kept on listening to, beyond the dreams of critical defense. I just love those concept records. Then, in Thailand, I stumbled back down the rabbit hole of Britpop, courtesy of that fantastic book by whoever it was, and remembered that even though my embrace of a few of those bands had as much to do with their stories as their songs--British people really do make the best pop stars, and singles culture really does make for bad records--there were some real gems to be re-mined. So February was for Pulp and Blur and Suede and Elastica and such. I even entertained Oasis for a brief moment, but they are just indefensible, no matter how you slice it. SINGLES! BETTER THAN LPS! FACT! "Galang" > Arular. Et cetera. I have no idea where this is going, or where it came from. I do know, however, that Iron Composer is tonight, and I have to drink 5 shots in 45 minutes on stage while writing a song, then my flight to Austin is at 6AM, then I have a Long Winters show (original recipe: Roderick and Nelsonfunkel-style) at 3:30, and an on-camera interview at 4:30 somewheres else. I'm hoping for a moveable feast, but SXSW has been cruel before. Kind, too. The guaranteed good part is that it always makes coming home much sweeter. Seattle rejoices.
The music that is giving me the most pleasure of late is/are Robyn Hitchcock, Teenage Fanclub (Bandwagonesque, no less), Todd Rundgren, Elastica, Smog, half of the newest Graham Coxon, Sparks, Sly, and, weirdly, that new-ish Fiona Apple record that the label rejected. 2004 was all about Echo & The Bunnymen (a short lived immersion, and a major bummer of a live show, but two new all-time fave LPs: Ocean Rain and Heaven Up Here) and the '70s period Kinks, which I may have started listening to with an ear toward the narrative angle (http://www.thestranger.com/2004-11-18/music5.html), but kept on listening to, beyond the dreams of critical defense. I just love those concept records. Then, in Thailand, I stumbled back down the rabbit hole of Britpop, courtesy of that fantastic book by whoever it was, and remembered that even though my embrace of a few of those bands had as much to do with their stories as their songs--British people really do make the best pop stars, and singles culture really does make for bad records--there were some real gems to be re-mined. So February was for Pulp and Blur and Suede and Elastica and such. I even entertained Oasis for a brief moment, but they are just indefensible, no matter how you slice it. SINGLES! BETTER THAN LPS! FACT! "Galang" > Arular. Et cetera. I have no idea where this is going, or where it came from. I do know, however, that Iron Composer is tonight, and I have to drink 5 shots in 45 minutes on stage while writing a song, then my flight to Austin is at 6AM, then I have a Long Winters show (original recipe: Roderick and Nelsonfunkel-style) at 3:30, and an on-camera interview at 4:30 somewheres else. I'm hoping for a moveable feast, but SXSW has been cruel before. Kind, too. The guaranteed good part is that it always makes coming home much sweeter. Seattle rejoices.
posted by Sean Nelson at 12:04 PM
1 Comments:
You probably know this already, but Sparks were the band playing in the amusement park in the 1977 schlock-thriller Rollercoaster. It's on AMC every once in a while.
I get the Arcade Fire confused with Broken Social Scene, so I'm not doing much better on the keeping-up-with-youth-culture scale. (Which is especially bad, given my research interests...)
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