Necessary Spinning

Camille Paglia on Stevie Nicks, Adele, and Lady Gaga

Thu, 25 Oct 2012 14:34:48 -0400

From my interview about her new book, Glittering Images: A Journey Through Art from Egypt to Star Wars:

SD: Many people who study visual culture right now don’t see any strong dividing line between works of fine art and mass culture. What do you think are the advantages or disadvantages of lumping those things together?

CP: I have been an apostle of popular culture for my entire career, and I suffered for it in graduate school at Yale (1968-72), when any interest in pop was regarded as trivial and unserious. But I can’t stand what is currently called cultural studies in academe, where high and low culture are chaotically mixed. I think standards of quality can be established and maintained in both pop and the fine arts. For example, I think that Fleetwood Mac’s eerie “Gold Dust Woman”, written by Stevie Nicks, is a true art work. So is Madonna’s “Vogue” video. The same thing with Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and “Set Fire to the Rain”. But the strident, manipulative Lady Gaga has not produced a single song or video that rises to that level of quality.

R.E.M.: Document

Tue, 25 Sep 2012 17:50:55 -0400

Reviewing Document for Pitchfork reminded me of my first exposure to the band via my older brothers’ cassingle of “The One I Love” b/w “Maps & Legends (live).” I was thirteen, and only really just getting into music beyond the top 40 hits played on my town’s only radio station. My brother’s tape case was just as revelatory as MTV would be a year or two later. Through him I discovered Prince and Newcleus and Van Halen and “Fly Girl” and R.E.M. That one was different. The guitars sounded a lot different than the tinny hair-metal riffs that clogged radio playlists, and the lyrics weren’t obvious: “This one goes out to the one I love, a simple prop to occupy my time.” What did that even mean? How could he love her if she was just a prop? Can you love a prop like that? But I could tell from the way that the other, higher voice came in on the chorus and from the way the guitar unspooled into the solo (and I remember settling on the word “unspooled”) that this was something unique. This was special, although I don’t think I could have predicted at 13 that I would obsess over the band quite so much for quite so many years. Eponymous was the first real album I bought with my own money, and I played that cassette so many times that the tape stretched out and the songs slowed down noticeably. The band taught me how to be a misfit in a small southern town, and my older brother taught me how to keep my ears open to new tunes. Both lessons were lifesavers.

Country + Funk = Country Funk

Mon, 23 Jul 2012 09:29:48 -0400

Country + Funk = Country Funk

Best of 2012... So Far (Salon)

Wed, 04 Jul 2012 15:41:48 -0400

I wrote about three of my favorite albums of 2012 (so far) over at Salon. My picks: Beach House, Fiona Apple, and Lambchop.

A few picks that didn’t make the list, in no particular:

- Todd Snider: Agnostic Hymns and Stoner Fables

- Sinead O’Connor: How About I Be Me (And You Be You)?

- Actress: RIP

- Hiss Golden Messenger: Poor Moon

- Killer Mike: RAP Music

- The Men: Open You Heart

- Azaelia Banks: 1991 EP

- El-P: Cancer 4 Cure

- a mix CD I made featuring Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe” on repeat

Regina Spektor in American Songwriter

Thu, 28 Jun 2012 18:00:15 -0400

From my piece in the current issue, on newsstands any day now:

“I think it’s silly to assume that songs are from the direct life of the songwriter,” she says. “Nobody does that with novels. Nobody does that with movies or actors. If George Clooney plays an asshole who walks around murdering people, nobody thinks that George Clooney is an asshole who walks around murdering people. Everybody has this understanding that all these other artists are just channeling something and using their imaginations, but for whatever reason, people don’t seem to feel that way about songwriting, I guess.”

Occupy the Cut-Out Bin?

Mon, 21 May 2012 14:52:49 -0400

Occupy the Cut-Out Bin?

I’m a little baffled by the uproar over this cover, which...

Fri, 22 Jul 2011 13:20:33 -0400

I’m a little baffled by the uproar over this cover, which has proved controversial even ten years after the event. The music is specifically about 9/11, even to the point of including treated excerpts of 911 calls and first responders alerts. If this image is inappropriate, wouldn’t those found sound elements also be inappropriate? Where does the line get drawn? I think that part of healing from this tragedy involves using the images and sounds we associate with it in new ways?

What bothers me about this album cover, then, isn’t that it depicts the second plane just seconds before it hit the Towers. It’s that it’s a terrible image. The sanserif front is just dull, and the photo treatment looks cheap. I’d rather see a starkly untreated image here, with that unnervingly clear blue sky intact.

Or, better yet, I’d rather see a slightly more artful image from that day used, one that isn’t quite so direct. Seth Colter Walls over at Slate has some interesting alternatives, and to that I’ll add my own: a clear blue sky background, with a bit of black smoke invading the bottom of the frame. And since Nonesuch will likely be packaging this with a signature slipcover for the jewel case, I’d have no text anywhere on the exterior.

Ozark singer Almeda Riddle performing “Poor Wayfaring...

Tue, 12 Apr 2011 23:46:51 -0400

Ozark singer Almeda Riddle performing “Poor Wayfaring Stranger” a cappella

My wild Q&A with Todd Snider

Tue, 15 Feb 2011 14:29:34 -0500

This guy has a new double live album that’s more talking than singing, funnier than most stand-up records, and more tuneful than just about any other guy with an acoustic guitar. There are killer squirrels, death threats, onstage tackles, dead mentors, and Elizabeth Cook:

http://www.the9513.com/under-attack-by-squirrels-interview-with-todd-snider/

One of the hallmarks of your songwriting is that you’ll have sympathy for someone like that, or like the guy trying to break into your house on “Highland Street Incident.”

I tried to make up that song for a long time, and I finally thought I could tell their side of the story. I bet they were having a harder night than me. It took me a long time to figure that out, because he hit me with a fuckin’ gun. It took me a long time to forgive him for that. (laughs) ‘Cause it fucked my life up. I was taking a hammer to the mailbox for about a month after that. I didn’t want to get hit by a gun again. I knew that. That was all I could think about for a long time. And then one year that lifted and I thought, how big of a drag would it be to be a crackhead in Orange Mound, Memphis? My goodness. I wish I’d had money to give him. It’s like when people don’t want to give a bum money because he’ll go spend it on alcohol. But I think, “He lives outside. Can’t the guy have a drink? What if he wants to spend it on alcohol? Shit, here’s a little for food, here’s a little for booze.”

A little bit of my youth, documentarized

Sun, 30 Jan 2011 14:52:56 -0500

A little bit of my youth, documentarized

Disco bunny

Sun, 23 Jan 2011 19:35:19 -0500

Disco bunny

Life in the Ozarks

Thu, 13 Jan 2011 10:19:50 -0500

From my interview with Marideth Sisco, who deferred cancer treatment so she could shoot her scene in Winter’s Bone:

I was struck by the party scene, where you’re singing with the group of musicians. It really presents Ozarks music as a living thing, not something that’s part of the past but something that occupies a role in everyday life.

Absolutely. That’s very true in this culture. The music tradition here goes very deep and very far back. A lot of people will look at the music of this area and call it derivative because it certainly does have a lot of the same tunes as the Appalachians and all the music of the upper South. But again, it’s that folk process. It changes according to the situation, and we excel at sad ballads because that’s just a fact of life here. The Ozarks isn’t an easy place to live. It makes for a hard life for a lot of people, and there’s a lot of struggle and a lot of heartache, but feelings and families run really deep here. The music becomes a way to celebrate that.

Read the rest here: http://www.the9513.com/high-on-a-mountain-interview-with-marideth-sisco/

Why I don't like Christmas albums

Thu, 23 Dec 2010 10:50:55 -0500

Don’t get me wrong: I love Vince Guaraldi’s “Charlie Brown Christmas” soundtrack and the Fleshtones’ “Hooray for Santa Claus” cover. But I grew up singing Christmas songs in church or in the car on the way to grandma’s on Christmas day, which means I think of holiday music as participatory, not passive. You’re supposed to do the singing yourself, while you trim the tree or shovel the damn snow off the sidewalk or count to ten and try not to punch an airport line-cutter in the face. Listening to a pop artist cover a yuletide chestnut (never mind that pop artists have historically made songs into chestnuts) always seems a little lazy on my part. I know the words.

"When I do drink and when I do drugs, bad shit happens."

Thu, 16 Dec 2010 09:26:01 -0500

From my interview with Justin Townes Earle:

When I do cocaine, I’m not capable of going to sleep at night. I can never get enough [cocaine? sleep?], and that makes my behavior erratic. And a lot of bad shit happens. I can’t talk about what happened in Indianapolis because it’s still at trial. But the reports that came out in the papers… other than the fact that I was probably intoxicated and that I did break some things in the dressing room, the rest of the story is false. That’s for sure. I don’t give a shit how messed up I get. Some of the shit it says I did in there are things I would never do in a million years.

Read the article here: http://www.villagevoice.com/2010-12-15/music/justin-townes-earle-urban-cowboy/

Excerpt from my Nick Cave interview

Wed, 01 Dec 2010 11:22:39 -0500

I know you keep a very busy pace writing. Does that leave you time to consume much — read books, watch movies?

I watch a lot of films. I seem to do alright. I read every day and I watch I’m notorious for watching a lot of movies and a lot of really bad movies as well. I’ve had that habit for years, so I’ve seen everything. It’s actually come in really helpful now that I do screenwriting and stiuff like that. I can reference stuff that nobody’s ever seen or nobody would ever bother seeing. I know what not to do as well as what to do.

By bad movies, do you mean old creature features? Bad horror?

Just romantic comedies, all of that sort of stuff. Chick flicks and teen movies and all that sort of stuff that you don’t really most sane people don’t go near. I don’t watch a lot of horror because I find most of it really tedious. Or science fiction. But pretty much everything else is fair game.

[Also, if you haven’t caught Grinderman on tour, damn it’s highly recommended.]

from my interview with Alex Ross

Mon, 01 Nov 2010 08:59:22 -0400

It seems rare for a music critic to navigate between the worlds of classical and pop, especially in your case, where classical came first.
It’s actually rather tricky. Classical music is my comfort zone. I didn’t grow up with pop music. I didn’t actively start listening to it and appreciating it until I was in college. Writing an article on a single topic like Dylan or Radiohead or Bjork — with enough work and research and immersion, I can get to the point where I’m quite knowledgeable on that topic. It’s a question of language. I struggle very much over what kind of language I am going to use. If I apply this classical music language, will it come off as hopelessly square and stiff? If I try to use some pop critic jargon, does it really belong to me? Is it persuasive coming from my pen? The whole process is laborious for me and difficult, but I’m glad that I did it in the pieces in this book because I think there’s a gain for me as a writer to expand my horizons.

outtakes to come…

Eric Nadel: Artist of the Year

Wed, 20 Oct 2010 00:34:38 -0400

More than any album or artist this year, I’ve probably spent more time with Eric Nadel, the announcer for the Texas Rangers. He’s been at it for about three decades now (my wife has wonderful memories of listening to him when she was a child), and represents an old-school approach to calling the game: an easy command of franchise history, a natural intuition for choosing the telling statistic, and lots of small, evocative details that most other commentators (including the newly jobless Josh Lewin) might overlook.

He’s calling the game for radio, of course, but that’s become more and more important now that most households around Arlington — all of those loyal Rangers fans who either can’t afford or can’t get tickets — are blacked out. Nadel’s narration is precise, almost poetic in its visuals, as he notes when a pitcher tucks his glove under his arm to scuff the ball, or when a base runner takes a big lead to psych out the pitcher, or when a batter taps the bat against his cleats to postpone the next pitch. These are the moments that never get recorded in statistics, but more than homers or strikeouts, these are the moments that make a game. Nadel realizes the power of these small stand-offs and translates them into undeniable drama. He makes baseball sound like music.

Human Centipede

Sun, 17 Oct 2010 17:33:34 -0400

The problem with provocateurs is that they tend to think all they need to do is provoke, which generally leaves their subtext all in a mess. I watched The Human Centipede hoping for a post-torture porn update on 50s mad science, but Tom Six apparently wanted to avoid any obvious b-movie nods, perhaps because he thinks he has loftier aims than lowbrow cinema. So we don’t get police officers working to locate the missing American tourists, nor do we get any haughty speeches about the uses of science, technology, and personal sacrifice. By which I mean, we don’t get any suspense or motivation but we do get a story that crawls slower than the title creature itself. Worst of all, like Uwe Boll (and you’re in real trouble if that phrase can be applied to you as a director), Tom Six has already imagined his detractors and has fashioned The Human Centipede as a response to those people—maybe even me—who might possibly criticize him for making a movie as repulsive as this. He may be provocative, but he’s also defensive enough to even it all out. But the worst aspect of this movie is how strongly and how clearly he identifies with his villain, the mad scientist Dr. Heiter, who comes across as a psychopath and a Nazi. The long, almost mournful shot of Heiter postmortem may be the most disturbing shot of the movie, because it shows just how clearly the director admires his creation. Apparently, Six is in post-production on a sequel, in which he promises to show a 12-person centipede. Heiter would be so proud.

Wish I were in DC for this “Guillermo Kuitca:...

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 23:15:03 -0400

Wish I were in DC for this “Guillermo Kuitca: Everything” at the Hirschhorn, if only for his violent, magnetic theaters and seating charts

Testing...

Sun, 10 Oct 2010 22:27:48 -0400

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