perfidy

Goddamn it.

There's lots of exceptional writers in the world. Nothing incredibly special about that. It's quite another thing to be an exceptional writer with the generosity of spirit and spiritual energy to nuture the careers of other writers whose talents dwarf yours. He will be missed.

Just because I feel like doling out a tiny crumb of largesse today (too much caffeine, too little rest), please visit cdbaby.com.

They only carry music made by small artists, on small labels. Their search engine lets you search by mood, geographic location, or random word, and they have a terrific associative function that lets you enter an artist's name, say "The Flaming Lips," and gives you back a list of albums they carry that you'll like if you like the Flaming Lips. And most stuff is about ten bucks.

This, folks, is how it is done. Please give them your support.

The french author of the book that claimed that no plane ever hit the pentagon has produced a deck of cards intended to mock the deck that the US military produced to aid in the hunt for the top leaders of the Baathist regime in Iraq.

Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld is the ace of spades, and President Bush is the king of diamonds. Thierry Meyssan, the man behind the French deck, said, "We thought this card game would allow us to ... explain why we consider the government of George Bush a threat to international security."

Words fail me.

Space.com relates that Xinhua News Agency reported that China's Science and Technology Minister Xu Guanha stated that the preparations for the Middle Kingdom's first space launch were going smoothly. While no specific date has been set (and the communist government is notoriously tight lipped about such matters, talk around the campfire has settled on two possibilities: Oct 1, China's National Day and the anniversary of the founding of the state in '49, or later in the month. Obviously, weather, technical difficulties, solar radiation levels and acts of God (or acts of nature for you atheistic commie bastards) could interfere with the plan.

I hope that the mission goes well, not because I look forward to a lifetime of servitude to our new ant, I mean Chinese masters, but because hopefully this will light a fire under someone's ass here in the good 'ol U S of A. Either get serious about government funded space travel, or get the hell out of the way and let us do it.

Buckethead,

It's because you're in your mid-Thirties, and had your hip ticket torn up years ago. Let me cite an example of what you're complaining about, from Johnny Cash. In fact, I'll cite two.

1) On his live collaboration with Willie Nelson for VH-1's "Storytellers", Cash mentions that he stole the tune for "Don't Take Your Guns To Town" from an old Irish ballad, "Clancy Lowered The Boom," and later jokes that Kris Kristofferson always wanted to write a song called "Let's Get Together and Steal Each Other's Songs."

2) The Johnny Cash hit "Ballad of Barbara" steals its tune, whole, from the English Ballad "Barbara Allen." The words are totally different, but it's the same EXACT version of the tune, down to the tempo, that I have heard most often from Appalachian musicians.

Regrettable as it might be sometimes (I'm talking to YOU, Sean "P.Diddy Puffy Daddy" Combs), theft is the one constant in pop music through the ages.

The difference, I think, is that the recombinant tendencies of pop music are much more in the forefront than they used to be, since the radio drives the market. For about six months there, about half the hip-hop on the radio had Pakistani or Indian music samples (NYC taxi-driver music), because one hit had it, and so everybody else did. A parallel example from the golden age would be the time in the 1930s that a troop of Danish yodelers toured the American backcountry for months on end. They were a sensation. The net effect? The early second generation of country music was full of yodels. Still is, if you know where to look.

Also, don't confuse your distaste for excrescent pop music with the decline of music as a whole. You remember the '80s well because the market has worked its Darwinian magic, ensuring that most of what survived from the era was pretty good. You don't remember Calloway, Rick Astley, The First Coming Of Kylie Minogue, or Tiffany because they sucked at the outset, and once they disappeared from the radio, they were gone forever. Ditto the '90s. You don't hear Candlebox that much any more.

But you're getting the current stuff unfiltered, and it hurts, a lot. At the same time, there are a lot of high points in the mediocrity. In twenty years I will welcome Outkast, Ludacris, Nelly (Hot in Herre!!!!!), 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Christina Aguilera, and even Ashanti's stuff as produced by Irv Gotti back to my ears with great pleasure, as long as we can forget about Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, and Staind.

I would recommend trying not to listen to Top 40 or Adult Contemporary formats. They will rot your brain. In fact the narrowing of radio formats is a symptom of the problem you describe, and I long for the day when you could hear two different-sounding songs back to back on the same station. Like so many other things, the marketing of radio has become so refined and the models so revenue-driven that there is no such thing as music for music's sake, with a few noble exceptions like WFUV in New York, WXPN in Philadelphia, KPIG in San Fran, and their ilk.

[moreover] But you're SO right about sex in the lyrics. It's the audial equivalent of Penthouse (which is RATHER more than I want to see). Insinuation, innuendo, and misdirection are sexy. Talking about fucking is crass. But I would recommend you revisit your old blues records and see if they are all as subtle as you think.

The Buckethead clan was at Taco Bell the other day, thanks to the lack of power at casa de Buckethead. After several days of blessed silence, we were subjected to some stupendously banal pop music. My dear wife asked, "will they publish anything?" Johno's point that the emphasis is on industry rather than music makes it clear that the answer is "yes."

I've been thinking, in my charmingly non-musical way, about music. Especially the pop music that causes me so much pain. Take sampling, for instance. A recent Janet Jackson song doesn't just sample America's Ventura Highway, it hijacks the entire thing. It's one thing to take a small bit of something, and combine it with other small bits from something else, and create something new. A lot of electronica does this without seeming completely derivative and lacking of originality. But the bits have to be small, I think. Rule of thumb - sampling should not consist of ripping off an entire song.

And the lyrics, dear Jeebus help us. Certainly, popular songs are about sex. They always have been. But as far as I can hear, innuendo is dead. Sex is no longer mentioned obliquely, let alone subtly. It's embarrassing to listen to. Granted the innuendo in the early days of rock, let alone blues, was thin. But at least it was there. Many people complain about the misogyny of rap music, but in a way, this is worse. Love is dead, we now sing about sex. And Brittney Spears' singing style sounds as weird to me as old songs from the twenties, nasal and grating.

The fallen state of modern music might be a sign of the apocalypse, or merely a sign that I am in my mid-thirties. But every time I hear this pabulum, I creep closer and closer to Plato's condemnation of music in the Republic. I remember music being terrible in the 80s. But it was awful in a completely different and better way. It was awkward, and used primitive synth too much. It was mawkish and saccharine. But they were trying, it seemed. Then as now there were gems, and you hoarded them. But the vast sea of mediocrity was merely mediocre, not offensively coarse and unoriginal.

There is good new music, and I listen to it. But you don't hear it on the big stations, and you don't see it at the top of the charts. Perhaps if the forces of light defeat the RIAA and a new era is born, the internet will allow a thousand flowers to bloom. But the bastards and beancounters in alliance are a powerful enemy. And one that, sadly, the musicians must collaborate with. 

The Bottom Line will remain open, at least for now. Good news!

Comments from my previous posting to Blogcritics had argued that the club's booking and management have gone downhill in the last decade, and that closing wouldn't be such a shame. Based on the postings on the marquee back when I lived in New York, that's fair enough. The club should be booking Jason Mraz and Josh Rouse instead of faded older stars. In their defense, both Ute Lemper (!) and Odetta are in town soon, and, c'mon folks. Those ladies kick much ass.

Well, maybe a near-death experience will help re-invigorate the club and return it to prominence and quality. It will never be the Mercury Lounge, booking-wise, but at least it can compete with the Village Underground, Town Hall, and maybe even Tonic (if they're smart) in the boutique music niche.

Bill Hobbs links to a sordid little story from the music industry's past, in which a young country singer was shot before he could reveal to the world that the industry-rag "Cashbox" was a corrupt piece of shit.

See folks, those are the cats that presided over the "golden age" of rock and country. Old-school song pluggers, gangsters, and used-car salesmen with a little extra capital who would think nothing of dangling you off a building, breaking your legs, signing you to a contract so crooked that your corpse is scheduled to do live appearances, or in the case of George Jones, kidnapping your family every time you try to kick cocaine, because your management are also your dealers. What they did NOT do was scrutinize quarterly balance sheets, worry about balanced budgets and projections, manipulate share prices, or employ teams of lawyers analysts to defend "their" intellectual property from Benelux to Boise. That all happened when the neighborhood gentrifed and the beancounters took over.

So ask yourself: who's better-- the bastards or the beancounters?

(Extended parenthetical statement: I've worked in the music industry, and I know this for a fact: the beancounters are firmly in charge almost everywhere. Leaving aside the legions of noble-minded smaller labels whose numbers are tiny compared to the whole, the music industry has shifted emphasis far away from "music" and placed the emphasis squarely on "industry."

Granted, A&R guys are still allowed to be hairy and weird, and artists are still coddled while being bled white, but the focus is almost totally on the health of the parent company's bottom line. Accounting & control run the joint, while Legal Affairs runs interference. While this means that people don't get dangled out of windows anymore-- except in the rap world-- the music is now subjected to microscopic scrutiny and its sales potential projected out for years to come. Ears are secondary now, and demographics and marketing are king.

All this is by way of saying that the music industry has always been a filth-pit, and even though the means may change, the criminals remain the same. )

(Second parenthetical note: I'm not pleading for sympathy for the RIAA. Buncha vampires.)

(Third parenthetical note: Read "Hit Men" for the story of how the bastards and
beancounters came to work together.)

(also posted to blogcritics.)

Barbra Streisand says she finds listening to her own songs is so boring that it was one of the reasons she gave up public performing three years ago.

Well, that makes two of us.

Late last night, power was finally restored to the Buckethead Mansion in Lower Alexandria. The linemen, a team from Georgia, were highly competent and helpful, even fixing some problems left by the electrician who "upgraded" the electrical system in the house. Thanks to Lowell and Champ and their team good work. Hopefully, they will be able to take a break and see their families soon.

And keep in your thoughts the linemen have died in the process of restoring power to the states hit by Isabel.