I have a dim recollection of a family trip to Michigan, listening to Sheryl Crow’s “Hard to Make a Stand” on the Aiwa Walkman my aunt bought me for Christmas that year. As the song segued into the outro, I heard a voice! A voice where there shouldn’t be a voice! I rewound the tape 5 or 6 times, turning up the volume to try to make out the words. Finally, there it was: a faint, “c’mon boys.” After discovering it, I probably listened to it another six or seven times so I could actually hear Sheryl enjoying herself in the studio. In a word, I was shocked at how ‘real’ that toss off was.
Whether intentional or unintentional, stray studio blemishes wind their way onto the master tapes of our favorite and unfavorite recordings. Rarely reproduced live (and almost always viewed as inauthentic if they are), these studio quirks serve as a matter of proof that musicians are not robots – they actually record these songs! None of these are a necessary part of the bare song structure, but become instantiations (to borrow again from Gracyk) of the recording process.
Perhaps the most prevalent “studio authentication” present on recordings is the ‘count off,’ before starting a song. Wilco’s “It’s Just That Simple,” “When the Roses Bloom Again,” and “The Thanks I Get” all employ the count off, as do, well, other artists I’m sure. Billy Joel cuts the crap and incorporates the count off right into “Matter of Trust.”
Another common authentication is the pre-song chatter, between the artists, engineers or producers. Ani Difranco and the Old 97’s start “Imperfectly” and “Victoria,” respectively, with the query, “ya rollin’”? Fastball and Everclear include the ejaculations “We’re burning up tape, godammit!” and “Play the fucking song!” on “Freeloader Freddy” and “Bad Connection.” Elliott Smith’s “In the Lost and Found,” contains nearly a minute of studio clutter before the piano starts. The only studio chatter I think is really worth a damn is the first track on Ryan Adam’s breakthrough, Heartbreaker, “Argument With David Rawlings,” which segues into the ‘real’ opening track “To Be Young (Is To Be Sad, Is To Be High).”
Scroll through your own music libraries to find numerous coughs, hacks, ‘c’mons’ and other sundry instantiations. Arguably, Jandek’s entire catalog pre-1994 is one giant studio blunder, and it is telling that his CD reissues painstakingly remove all microphone bumps, coughs, and motorcycle drive-bys.
Each of these studio moments caught on tape could have easily been edited out on the masters. The inclusion of banter, count offs, and other studio occurrences lend each of the songs a “genuine” quality that seem to say this really happened. The aesthetic quality they lend to the final product is a sense of immediacy, if not intimacy. Interesting, because there really is no other way for the song to be recorded than for at least one musician and one piece of equipment; the tracks thus occasionally urge the listener (or at least this one) to respond, I know this really happened, assholes.
Two of the Wilco songs mentioned, as well as the Everclear and Fastball tracks, are b-sides – a term that is becoming obsolete in favor of ‘bonus track.’ In any event, the banter and count offs also seem to signify a certain ‘unfinished’ quality. Arguably, the effort of preserving these instantiations was probably no more than removing them to appropriately ‘finalize’ the product.
Do these instantiations then further bolster the authenticity of a recording? Would removing them be more of an embellishment of reality than leaving them in when they could have been removed? Will Lassie save Timmy from the well? Tune into tomorrow’s episode, when we explore the authenticity and contemporary purpose of another gem, the b-side.
Tuesday, February 5, 2008
Wednesday, January 30, 2008
On Authenticity (Kevin Bacon, What the Fuck?!)
In the upcoming days, I would like to explore the idea of authenticity as it applies to various aspects of music. After recently finishing Theodore Gracyk's Rhythm and Noise - An Aesthetics of Rock (1996), I have started thinking about the different ways that authenticity and sincerity are both manifest and expected from the music we listen to and the people who create it.
The authenticity of music and artist can shift from song to song, performance to performance, simply based on intention, inflection, and even the medium through which songs are presented. Expanding some ideas from yesterday's post I will first explore the phenomenon of studio flubs, both intentional and unintentional, and the different ways they can change the authenticity of the music. I will continue with discussions on b-sides, demos, bootlegs, concerts, perhaps even a foray into different recorded mediums, and finally, the finally artists themselves.
Gracyk is quick to point out that authenticity can apply to a specific recording in hundreds of different ways: the artist is expected to conform to a specific genre in order for a song to be considered a 'genuine' effort; the medium this song is distributed by is either genuine or bootleg; this bootleg is either the 'original' bootleg, or a derivative of the derivative; the live performance is a genuine replication of the record or the live performance is a genuine re-incarnation of the record, not a phony performance; and last, the artist believes in what he or she is doing.
To apply the measure of authenticity, let us take the mp3 I have provided below: Ryan Adams' near-breakthrough rap effort, "Aw Shit (Look Who Got a Website)". Would-be alt-country hero turned speedballing crackpot goes apeshit with Garageband, resurfaces with 13 unreleased albums on his website and the homepage presents us with his alter-ego DJ Reggie's first 'hit,' and his record goes balsa wood in India (or someplace like that).
Genuine? Some people would argue this is a genuine piece of shit, but it holds a special place in my heart. The rap is flippant but clever, like most of Ryan's output between 2005-2006, and is most definitely coming from a man starved for attention. Or is he just bored? This is certainly not of the genre that gave him his name, and most people would argue that this presentation does not constitute an official release. Nevertheless, Pitchfork jumps at the chance for a track review the day after the song appears.
So why do I view this as an authentic Ryan Adams track? For a man who was playing with remote control cars onstage, leaving nasty messages on Jim DeRogatis's machine, and redesigning his website to better reflect DJ Reggie's tracks, I suppose it got to the point where "Come Pick Me Up" seemed inauthentic.
Dot com, muthafucker!
The authenticity of music and artist can shift from song to song, performance to performance, simply based on intention, inflection, and even the medium through which songs are presented. Expanding some ideas from yesterday's post I will first explore the phenomenon of studio flubs, both intentional and unintentional, and the different ways they can change the authenticity of the music. I will continue with discussions on b-sides, demos, bootlegs, concerts, perhaps even a foray into different recorded mediums, and finally, the finally artists themselves.
Gracyk is quick to point out that authenticity can apply to a specific recording in hundreds of different ways: the artist is expected to conform to a specific genre in order for a song to be considered a 'genuine' effort; the medium this song is distributed by is either genuine or bootleg; this bootleg is either the 'original' bootleg, or a derivative of the derivative; the live performance is a genuine replication of the record or the live performance is a genuine re-incarnation of the record, not a phony performance; and last, the artist believes in what he or she is doing.
To apply the measure of authenticity, let us take the mp3 I have provided below: Ryan Adams' near-breakthrough rap effort, "Aw Shit (Look Who Got a Website)". Would-be alt-country hero turned speedballing crackpot goes apeshit with Garageband, resurfaces with 13 unreleased albums on his website and the homepage presents us with his alter-ego DJ Reggie's first 'hit,' and his record goes balsa wood in India (or someplace like that).
Genuine? Some people would argue this is a genuine piece of shit, but it holds a special place in my heart. The rap is flippant but clever, like most of Ryan's output between 2005-2006, and is most definitely coming from a man starved for attention. Or is he just bored? This is certainly not of the genre that gave him his name, and most people would argue that this presentation does not constitute an official release. Nevertheless, Pitchfork jumps at the chance for a track review the day after the song appears.
So why do I view this as an authentic Ryan Adams track? For a man who was playing with remote control cars onstage, leaving nasty messages on Jim DeRogatis's machine, and redesigning his website to better reflect DJ Reggie's tracks, I suppose it got to the point where "Come Pick Me Up" seemed inauthentic.
Dot com, muthafucker!
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
Anatomy of An Obsession
I’m in love.
Chris had posted a comment on one of my Jandek posts about why we obsess about what we do when we do. While my love for this song doesn’t constitute a full-blown artist obsession just yet, I think it provides a bit of insight nonetheless.
On Saturday night I was closing up shop for the night, when I noticed an mp3 on my desktop I had downloaded about a week ago. The track, “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” is off of Zooey Deschanel’s and M. Ward’s upcoming collaborative effort “Volume One,” to be released under the moniker She and Him on Merge records this March. Chris had alerted me to the collaboration via Hype Machine (so there you go for its usefulness), and I got this album track off of ViaChicago. I finally listened to it, and from the first piano chord to the time I went to bed I had played it successively seventeen times.
My first listen though the song, the lyrics became apparent right away. After “why do you let me stay here/ all by myself?” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know where the lyrics are going. BUT – then the line “it’s not a secret/ why do you keep it?” coupled with the introduction of playful backing vocals just mad my heart flutter. The piano descant that starts at 0:33 followed by the full kit, and then the perfectly placed guitar solo, sealed the deal.
So what is it about this song that pulled me in? This song shares several qualities with my most played iTunes track (Sleater-Kinney’s “Rollercoaster” which, at 81 plays has over 30 plays on the second most-played track) – for one, you immediately get the sense that Zooey enjoys singing this song. The sigh at 0:06, the “uh-huh” at 1:31 and “just give me credit” at 1:36 come from a singer whose smiling, providing the song with a humanizing, energizing sex appeal – reinforced by the oh-so-human missed notes at 1:53 and 2:01. This isn’t a technically perfectly track, it’s an emotionally perfect track.
Similarly, “Rollercoatser” begins when Janet drops one of her sticks, and the track ends with one of the ladies laughing. The tracks also share a quality that lures me in every time, “oooohs” and “do-do’s.” “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” also employs hand claps, another aesthetic weakness of mine. Like the piano descant in “Stay Here,” “Rollercoaster” has an ascending riff on the chorus (first at 0:46) that drew me in the first time. The energizing sex appeal of Zooey’s “uh-huh” is matched by Carrie’s brilliant breakdown, “I’ll be your monkey, your puppy, I’ll be your superfreak/ I fell the first day it took you a whole week.”
The coy lust of each song’s opening gives way to seamless breakdowns (contradiction?) and, ultimately, more enlightened closures.
“Rollercoaster” conveys the arc (rollercoaster, if you will) of a relationship, the emotions one is left with when the initial spark wears off. Opening with a brilliantly cliché trip to the market for a “red cherry tomato,” (tempting her sorely – she’d like to bite one!) the singer then offers to make her lover dinner. Trouble appears in Eden when “appetite isn’t what we predicted/ would you wanna heat it up later?” Well, would you? The song ends with an acknowledgement of reality: “I know that some of our days are bitter/ but stay with me honey, things will get better” and returns to the first chorus, ending the song with the promise, “I’ll go at full boil til you s-s-s-s-stop me later.”
The period of enlightenment, as it were, in “Stay Here” is subtler – more evident in Zooey’s inflection as it is the actual lyrics. The whole song is rather light, but a funny thing happens after the guitar solo/key change. While the first half of the song contains musing and begging, the key change gives way to requests phrased as questions followed by the sly, “just give me credit.” “I’m just sitting on the shelf” goes from a lament to a “who, me?”
In the end, the most brilliant thing about these songs is that they are pop, plain and simple. Clever, yes, but not terribly deep. Pleasing to the ears, but not technically difficult to appreciate. Both of these songs have the ability to inspire longing without hangover, and as everyone knows, a high without the consequence is a sure road to addiction.
Chris had posted a comment on one of my Jandek posts about why we obsess about what we do when we do. While my love for this song doesn’t constitute a full-blown artist obsession just yet, I think it provides a bit of insight nonetheless.
On Saturday night I was closing up shop for the night, when I noticed an mp3 on my desktop I had downloaded about a week ago. The track, “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” is off of Zooey Deschanel’s and M. Ward’s upcoming collaborative effort “Volume One,” to be released under the moniker She and Him on Merge records this March. Chris had alerted me to the collaboration via Hype Machine (so there you go for its usefulness), and I got this album track off of ViaChicago. I finally listened to it, and from the first piano chord to the time I went to bed I had played it successively seventeen times.
My first listen though the song, the lyrics became apparent right away. After “why do you let me stay here/ all by myself?” it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to know where the lyrics are going. BUT – then the line “it’s not a secret/ why do you keep it?” coupled with the introduction of playful backing vocals just mad my heart flutter. The piano descant that starts at 0:33 followed by the full kit, and then the perfectly placed guitar solo, sealed the deal.
So what is it about this song that pulled me in? This song shares several qualities with my most played iTunes track (Sleater-Kinney’s “Rollercoaster” which, at 81 plays has over 30 plays on the second most-played track) – for one, you immediately get the sense that Zooey enjoys singing this song. The sigh at 0:06, the “uh-huh” at 1:31 and “just give me credit” at 1:36 come from a singer whose smiling, providing the song with a humanizing, energizing sex appeal – reinforced by the oh-so-human missed notes at 1:53 and 2:01. This isn’t a technically perfectly track, it’s an emotionally perfect track.
Similarly, “Rollercoatser” begins when Janet drops one of her sticks, and the track ends with one of the ladies laughing. The tracks also share a quality that lures me in every time, “oooohs” and “do-do’s.” “Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?” also employs hand claps, another aesthetic weakness of mine. Like the piano descant in “Stay Here,” “Rollercoaster” has an ascending riff on the chorus (first at 0:46) that drew me in the first time. The energizing sex appeal of Zooey’s “uh-huh” is matched by Carrie’s brilliant breakdown, “I’ll be your monkey, your puppy, I’ll be your superfreak/ I fell the first day it took you a whole week.”
The coy lust of each song’s opening gives way to seamless breakdowns (contradiction?) and, ultimately, more enlightened closures.
“Rollercoaster” conveys the arc (rollercoaster, if you will) of a relationship, the emotions one is left with when the initial spark wears off. Opening with a brilliantly cliché trip to the market for a “red cherry tomato,” (tempting her sorely – she’d like to bite one!) the singer then offers to make her lover dinner. Trouble appears in Eden when “appetite isn’t what we predicted/ would you wanna heat it up later?” Well, would you? The song ends with an acknowledgement of reality: “I know that some of our days are bitter/ but stay with me honey, things will get better” and returns to the first chorus, ending the song with the promise, “I’ll go at full boil til you s-s-s-s-stop me later.”
The period of enlightenment, as it were, in “Stay Here” is subtler – more evident in Zooey’s inflection as it is the actual lyrics. The whole song is rather light, but a funny thing happens after the guitar solo/key change. While the first half of the song contains musing and begging, the key change gives way to requests phrased as questions followed by the sly, “just give me credit.” “I’m just sitting on the shelf” goes from a lament to a “who, me?”
In the end, the most brilliant thing about these songs is that they are pop, plain and simple. Clever, yes, but not terribly deep. Pleasing to the ears, but not technically difficult to appreciate. Both of these songs have the ability to inspire longing without hangover, and as everyone knows, a high without the consequence is a sure road to addiction.
Sunday, January 27, 2008
Plugged In and Strung Out
As a part of my introduction to blogging, I purposely amped up the amount of ‘tracking’ applications I use on the Internet. I am now using Digg, Hype Machine, and Last.fm, and I have to say I feel even more out of it than when I started. Though I understand the purpose of these applications from a more removed perspective, I can’t help but feel that I am creating an artificial representation of my media consumption by using these sites.
Last.fm, for instance, is able to ‘scrobble’ the music that I listen to on my iTunes, on my computer. The application cannot scrobble my iPod tracks, what I play in my car, or how much I listen to NPR. Even iTunes’ ‘Most Recently Played’ application cannot log tracks I listen to multiple times, and so no one really knows how much I listened to “Drivin’ on 9” in the past 24 hours, that The Woods is in my car, and I listen to ‘Morning Edition’ for about 20 minutes each day.
Hype Machine has the uncanny ability to accurately reflect that I have specifically searched for and selected the ‘heart’ icon for specific tracks posted on blogs. This means I like the tracks. Isn’t that why I searched for them in the first place? While I can browse through the most popular blog posts and also view what my friends ‘heart,’ I’ve found that the site really just provides you answers to questions you already knew.
Digg allows me to share favorite news stories and web features with family, friends, and intimate strangers with whom I share the site. I have been digging articles aplenty these past few weeks, but mostly from the Washington Post, New York Times, and Salon.com, places everyone knows I visit anyway. Further, Digg is not able to distinguish from articles you ‘digg’ versus articles you ‘abhor’,’ but simply wish to highlight for the horror of it all. While I can expect my family and friends (none of whom who monitor my activities on Digg) to distinguish the two, unsuspecting strangers on the web have no clue that I really think that Huckabee talking to God is a load of horseshit. For the record, I do.
So what I can’t figure out about these sites is if they are intended to track the regression or your habits, or help you to expand by emulating what other peoples’ trends are indicating? Because if I am reading/listening/digging/scrobbling the same things everyday, and you start reading/listening to what I’m Digging/scrobbling, then as far as I can tell you’re just making my bad habits yours, and we really aren’t getting anywhere in the name of progress. If you find that I’ve selected 20 Sleater-Kinney songs on Hype Machine and already knew I liked Sleater-Kinney, that all you really get out of it as an observer is that I still have a swift trigger finger.
In my album cue this week was Ani Difranco’s Not So Soft, an album I played the heck out of in high school. Though it’s been on my iTunes since I bought this computer in 2005, I apparently haven’t played a track from this album since then. It just didn’t seem right to me that none of that history is reflected in any of the applications I use.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that these sites are completely useless, and I do enjoy seeing what my friends like. I just thought that the whole point of all of this was to expand our horizons. and reflect our tastes If anything, my introduction to these sites has limited my exposure to certain music/news/cultural events, if only because I feel inclined to ‘pad’ my early use to create a foundation composed of my interest. (Not to mention the duality of rejecting ‘Big Brother’ surveillance in favor of self-selected surveillance – I suppose it’s not evil so long as you can manipulate it to present a better version of yourself.)
And you know what? That’s exactly what I don’t like about the sites – it is so hard to project an accurate image of how I use the Internet/listen to music daily. While these tools are easy to manipulate, I find it incredibly frustrating that I can’t manipulate them to tell the truth. So why do you use these sites? What do you personally gain from digging articles and scrobbling your music? Who has turned you on to what based on these tracking sites, and have you found your tastes to change since tuning in to tracking?
Last.fm, for instance, is able to ‘scrobble’ the music that I listen to on my iTunes, on my computer. The application cannot scrobble my iPod tracks, what I play in my car, or how much I listen to NPR. Even iTunes’ ‘Most Recently Played’ application cannot log tracks I listen to multiple times, and so no one really knows how much I listened to “Drivin’ on 9” in the past 24 hours, that The Woods is in my car, and I listen to ‘Morning Edition’ for about 20 minutes each day.
Hype Machine has the uncanny ability to accurately reflect that I have specifically searched for and selected the ‘heart’ icon for specific tracks posted on blogs. This means I like the tracks. Isn’t that why I searched for them in the first place? While I can browse through the most popular blog posts and also view what my friends ‘heart,’ I’ve found that the site really just provides you answers to questions you already knew.
Digg allows me to share favorite news stories and web features with family, friends, and intimate strangers with whom I share the site. I have been digging articles aplenty these past few weeks, but mostly from the Washington Post, New York Times, and Salon.com, places everyone knows I visit anyway. Further, Digg is not able to distinguish from articles you ‘digg’ versus articles you ‘abhor’,’ but simply wish to highlight for the horror of it all. While I can expect my family and friends (none of whom who monitor my activities on Digg) to distinguish the two, unsuspecting strangers on the web have no clue that I really think that Huckabee talking to God is a load of horseshit. For the record, I do.
So what I can’t figure out about these sites is if they are intended to track the regression or your habits, or help you to expand by emulating what other peoples’ trends are indicating? Because if I am reading/listening/digging/scrobbling the same things everyday, and you start reading/listening to what I’m Digging/scrobbling, then as far as I can tell you’re just making my bad habits yours, and we really aren’t getting anywhere in the name of progress. If you find that I’ve selected 20 Sleater-Kinney songs on Hype Machine and already knew I liked Sleater-Kinney, that all you really get out of it as an observer is that I still have a swift trigger finger.
In my album cue this week was Ani Difranco’s Not So Soft, an album I played the heck out of in high school. Though it’s been on my iTunes since I bought this computer in 2005, I apparently haven’t played a track from this album since then. It just didn’t seem right to me that none of that history is reflected in any of the applications I use.
Now, don’t get me wrong. I don’t think that these sites are completely useless, and I do enjoy seeing what my friends like. I just thought that the whole point of all of this was to expand our horizons. and reflect our tastes If anything, my introduction to these sites has limited my exposure to certain music/news/cultural events, if only because I feel inclined to ‘pad’ my early use to create a foundation composed of my interest. (Not to mention the duality of rejecting ‘Big Brother’ surveillance in favor of self-selected surveillance – I suppose it’s not evil so long as you can manipulate it to present a better version of yourself.)
And you know what? That’s exactly what I don’t like about the sites – it is so hard to project an accurate image of how I use the Internet/listen to music daily. While these tools are easy to manipulate, I find it incredibly frustrating that I can’t manipulate them to tell the truth. So why do you use these sites? What do you personally gain from digging articles and scrobbling your music? Who has turned you on to what based on these tracking sites, and have you found your tastes to change since tuning in to tracking?
Monday, January 21, 2008
I Couldn't Make This Stuff Up
This morning I kicked off my Saturday with Jandek’s “Foreign Keys,” not because I love Jandek so much I simply can’t get enough even after 10 installments of Interstellar Discussion, but simply because that was the next album in the queue. Que? Well, if we’re going to be talking so much about music obsessions, perhaps the best place to start is how we listen.
Now, I have an inkling that the way I listen is entirely different than the way 99% of the populace listens to music. Like all listeners, I believe I have a tendency toward regression – playing the same records and songs over and over – and I have devised a rather neurotic scheme to overcome my favoritism.
Every Sunday morning, after my shower and before my coffee, I visit random.org, where I randomly select an integer between 1 and 18, corresponding to the number of playlists in my iTunes. These playlists include my entire library, three general playlists, unplayed tracks, radio (internet or ‘real’), and several artist-specific playlists. When I have generated the integer, that corresponding playlist becomes my ‘background music’ for the week (this week: 6 = Bob Dylan). I keep a catalog of the eight most-recently played lists, and don’t repeat a playlist until the eight weeks are up (also corresponding to how frequently I wash my duvet cover, if you’re interested).
My album queue is drawn from my entire list of shows and albums, which I keep in a Word document. I’ve divided up longer anthologies to avoid fatigue (all four discs of Billy Joel’s box set at once might give me a brain aneurism), but for the most part I like to keep all titles intact as a single selection. Rather than regenerating the queue weekly like the playlist, I simply create a new one when the previous queue has been exhausted. Again, I go to random.org, this time selecting the Sequence Generator instead of the Integer Generator, and used the first 10 integers in the sequence out of 168, the current number of ‘unlistened albums’ in the document.
This isn’t to say, of course, that I have never heard any of these remaining 168 albums in their entirely (the original Word document was well over 300), but simply that they haven’t been placed in the queue yet. I usually listen to an album completely several times after I buy it, and most from my high school and junior high days have been played to death through my older music listening schemes (I have employed many throughout the past decade).
This installment of the queue, per usual, had an even mix of Jandek (a 51 titles kind of stacks the ‘unlistened music’ list), live shows (which comprise 40% of my library) and Wilco/Wilco-related music (the band and Jeff Tweedy alone are 30% of my library). In this queue:
1. The Rocks Crumble – Jandek
2. The Showbox: 1998-09-16 – Elliott Smith
3. Side 4 – Ryan Adams (the bonus disc to the album Gold)
4. Brooklyn Wednesday – Jandek
5. Not So Soft – Ani Difranco
6. Bootleg Series Vol. 5: 1975 Rolling Thunder Review – Bob Dylan
7. The Fillmore: 2000-07-29 – Wilco
8. The Giant Pin – Nels Cline Singers
9. 2004-02-07 – The Autumn Defense
10. Wesbeth Theater: 1996-03-30 – Elliott Smith
When explaining a similar method I use to choose and renew passwords for various Internet sites to a co-worker, he laughed and said that I do it in this convoluted way because I enjoy the process more than I find it helpful, and I would agree that this is true. On the other hand, I also believe that one should listen to albums the way one might read a book or watch a movie, and what’s a better way to do that than a randomly chosen queue? The playlist of the week was something I began to use when I was buying lots of new music, and wanted to make sure that new artists were played on their own for a week so I could get into the music.
So, I thought I would close this post with how this scheme allows me to revisit music I haven’t heard in a while/et cetera, but basically I do it because I enjoy the process of selecting the albums, taking a break from Wilco/Sleater-Kinney/Silver Jews, and sometimes there really doesn’t need to be a moral to the story. Random.org!
Now, I have an inkling that the way I listen is entirely different than the way 99% of the populace listens to music. Like all listeners, I believe I have a tendency toward regression – playing the same records and songs over and over – and I have devised a rather neurotic scheme to overcome my favoritism.
Every Sunday morning, after my shower and before my coffee, I visit random.org, where I randomly select an integer between 1 and 18, corresponding to the number of playlists in my iTunes. These playlists include my entire library, three general playlists, unplayed tracks, radio (internet or ‘real’), and several artist-specific playlists. When I have generated the integer, that corresponding playlist becomes my ‘background music’ for the week (this week: 6 = Bob Dylan). I keep a catalog of the eight most-recently played lists, and don’t repeat a playlist until the eight weeks are up (also corresponding to how frequently I wash my duvet cover, if you’re interested).
My album queue is drawn from my entire list of shows and albums, which I keep in a Word document. I’ve divided up longer anthologies to avoid fatigue (all four discs of Billy Joel’s box set at once might give me a brain aneurism), but for the most part I like to keep all titles intact as a single selection. Rather than regenerating the queue weekly like the playlist, I simply create a new one when the previous queue has been exhausted. Again, I go to random.org, this time selecting the Sequence Generator instead of the Integer Generator, and used the first 10 integers in the sequence out of 168, the current number of ‘unlistened albums’ in the document.
This isn’t to say, of course, that I have never heard any of these remaining 168 albums in their entirely (the original Word document was well over 300), but simply that they haven’t been placed in the queue yet. I usually listen to an album completely several times after I buy it, and most from my high school and junior high days have been played to death through my older music listening schemes (I have employed many throughout the past decade).
This installment of the queue, per usual, had an even mix of Jandek (a 51 titles kind of stacks the ‘unlistened music’ list), live shows (which comprise 40% of my library) and Wilco/Wilco-related music (the band and Jeff Tweedy alone are 30% of my library). In this queue:
1. The Rocks Crumble – Jandek
2. The Showbox: 1998-09-16 – Elliott Smith
3. Side 4 – Ryan Adams (the bonus disc to the album Gold)
4. Brooklyn Wednesday – Jandek
5. Not So Soft – Ani Difranco
6. Bootleg Series Vol. 5: 1975 Rolling Thunder Review – Bob Dylan
7. The Fillmore: 2000-07-29 – Wilco
8. The Giant Pin – Nels Cline Singers
9. 2004-02-07 – The Autumn Defense
10. Wesbeth Theater: 1996-03-30 – Elliott Smith
When explaining a similar method I use to choose and renew passwords for various Internet sites to a co-worker, he laughed and said that I do it in this convoluted way because I enjoy the process more than I find it helpful, and I would agree that this is true. On the other hand, I also believe that one should listen to albums the way one might read a book or watch a movie, and what’s a better way to do that than a randomly chosen queue? The playlist of the week was something I began to use when I was buying lots of new music, and wanted to make sure that new artists were played on their own for a week so I could get into the music.
So, I thought I would close this post with how this scheme allows me to revisit music I haven’t heard in a while/et cetera, but basically I do it because I enjoy the process of selecting the albums, taking a break from Wilco/Sleater-Kinney/Silver Jews, and sometimes there really doesn’t need to be a moral to the story. Random.org!
Sunday, January 13, 2008
Interstellar Discussion, Part Ten (FINAL!)
There’s Bugs In My Brain, I Can’t Feel Any Pain
For many Jandek fans, the myth has become the central feature of his appeal. While some fans adamantly maintain that they do not want to know who Jandek ‘is,’ others devote many hours scouring public records and examining lyrics to find any clues that will reveal some sort of ‘truth’. It has become apparent in my research, however, that no matter what fans find out about Jandek, the ‘truth’ will never be satisfactory.
Today, it is well accepted in the Jandek fan community that all of the records are created and distributed by Sterling R. Smith, who owns and operates Corwood Industries. He is based in Houston, Texas, and has been writing and recording music for a good portion of his life. For a good portion of his life, he has or has had a day job that pays enough for him to independently record, release and remasters nearly 50 original works and allows him to travel internationally. He values his privacy, but will accept and return calls and mail regarding orders, and occasionally responds to fan mail. When he plays live, he is billed as ‘a representative of Corwood Industries,’ and is usually the first person out of the venue.
In their imagined subjectivities, quite a few fans believe that Jandek has created a myth himself, and they are merely trying to uncover what is unknown. As a fan wrote in 1999, ‘he's definitely interested in creating a mythology around his records…regardless of how few people know or care about his music or his history’ (mailing list, May 5, 1999). A 2004 discussion about Library of Congress records on Jandek revealed that Sterling R. Smith held copyrights to all the songs, and also revealed his date of birth. One fan replied to this discussion, ‘I personally think that Jandek is cleverer than that... I don't think if he was going to such lengths to conceal his identity he would himself register the copyrights...’ (mailing list, January 21, 2004). Another fan responds to this hypothesis by illustrating that it is fans who create the myth: ‘Jandek has never said you COULDN'T find him… Rather, with Jandek it's that he doesn't WANT to be found. Leave the man alone’ (mailing list, January 21, 2004).
Riddles Riddling Me
Jandek fans provide a glimpse into a world of unmediated fandom, in which the object of devotion rebukes and avoids any dissemination of his art outside of the records themselves. Even Jandek’s current live performances are comprised of original pieces, none of which have reappeared except in the recording of their performance. Each Jandek album is a self-contained artifact that still manages to reference other Jandek works and almost never the world outside. His fans’ penchant for scouring public records in search of his ‘real’ identity is perhaps indicative that we feel entitled to a certain amount of information in our hyper-mediated age.
While outsider music fans are not the only fans who define their identity based on the music they listen to, the activities that they engage in are unique to outsider fandom because of the lack of information surrounding their artists. Jandek fans cannot discuss the finer elements of Jandek’s personal life as Bruce fans can, nor have they been able to engage in the community atmosphere of Jandek concerts until recently – and that is still a bit of a stretch. Instead, Jandek fans engage in an endlessly deferred narrative in which they frequently project their own lives and feelings onto Jandek only to absorb them again. Fans distance themselves from other music listeners, but also fans within the Jandek community, as a way of intensifying their personal connection with Corwood Industries.
As with other fan communities, the Jandek mailing list provides an opportunity for fans to share their admiration and speculation for an artist they admire – or, at the very least, are curious enough about to discuss. The myth that surrounds Jandek, largely created and perpetuated by the fan community itself, will continue so long as records appear from Corwood Industries. Whoever the man in Texas making the music happens to be, every fan on the list is quite sure who Jandek is.
For many Jandek fans, the myth has become the central feature of his appeal. While some fans adamantly maintain that they do not want to know who Jandek ‘is,’ others devote many hours scouring public records and examining lyrics to find any clues that will reveal some sort of ‘truth’. It has become apparent in my research, however, that no matter what fans find out about Jandek, the ‘truth’ will never be satisfactory.
Today, it is well accepted in the Jandek fan community that all of the records are created and distributed by Sterling R. Smith, who owns and operates Corwood Industries. He is based in Houston, Texas, and has been writing and recording music for a good portion of his life. For a good portion of his life, he has or has had a day job that pays enough for him to independently record, release and remasters nearly 50 original works and allows him to travel internationally. He values his privacy, but will accept and return calls and mail regarding orders, and occasionally responds to fan mail. When he plays live, he is billed as ‘a representative of Corwood Industries,’ and is usually the first person out of the venue.
In their imagined subjectivities, quite a few fans believe that Jandek has created a myth himself, and they are merely trying to uncover what is unknown. As a fan wrote in 1999, ‘he's definitely interested in creating a mythology around his records…regardless of how few people know or care about his music or his history’ (mailing list, May 5, 1999). A 2004 discussion about Library of Congress records on Jandek revealed that Sterling R. Smith held copyrights to all the songs, and also revealed his date of birth. One fan replied to this discussion, ‘I personally think that Jandek is cleverer than that... I don't think if he was going to such lengths to conceal his identity he would himself register the copyrights...’ (mailing list, January 21, 2004). Another fan responds to this hypothesis by illustrating that it is fans who create the myth: ‘Jandek has never said you COULDN'T find him… Rather, with Jandek it's that he doesn't WANT to be found. Leave the man alone’ (mailing list, January 21, 2004).
Riddles Riddling Me
Jandek fans provide a glimpse into a world of unmediated fandom, in which the object of devotion rebukes and avoids any dissemination of his art outside of the records themselves. Even Jandek’s current live performances are comprised of original pieces, none of which have reappeared except in the recording of their performance. Each Jandek album is a self-contained artifact that still manages to reference other Jandek works and almost never the world outside. His fans’ penchant for scouring public records in search of his ‘real’ identity is perhaps indicative that we feel entitled to a certain amount of information in our hyper-mediated age.
While outsider music fans are not the only fans who define their identity based on the music they listen to, the activities that they engage in are unique to outsider fandom because of the lack of information surrounding their artists. Jandek fans cannot discuss the finer elements of Jandek’s personal life as Bruce fans can, nor have they been able to engage in the community atmosphere of Jandek concerts until recently – and that is still a bit of a stretch. Instead, Jandek fans engage in an endlessly deferred narrative in which they frequently project their own lives and feelings onto Jandek only to absorb them again. Fans distance themselves from other music listeners, but also fans within the Jandek community, as a way of intensifying their personal connection with Corwood Industries.
As with other fan communities, the Jandek mailing list provides an opportunity for fans to share their admiration and speculation for an artist they admire – or, at the very least, are curious enough about to discuss. The myth that surrounds Jandek, largely created and perpetuated by the fan community itself, will continue so long as records appear from Corwood Industries. Whoever the man in Texas making the music happens to be, every fan on the list is quite sure who Jandek is.
Saturday, January 12, 2008
Interstellar Discussion, Part Nine
I Love You Now, It’s True
Jandek’s first live appearance, in October of 2004 at the Instal Festival in Glasgow, was met with familiar anxiety, not to mention utter shock. Perhaps the most fitting response was from a member named Bob: ‘hells bells. keep an eye out for the plagues of locusts and the pale gent riding a horse’ (mailing list, October 18, 2004). The next five persons to respond to the list all believed the announcement to be a false rumor, and even after one of the musicians participating at the Festival confirmed that it was Jandek playing that night, several list members remained in a state of disbelief or disappointment: ‘Imagine if Thomas Pynchon started giving interviews and appearing on the Today Show. Someone who has such an aura of genius and mystery about them suddenly becomes just another shmo on the television’ (mailing list, October 18, 2004).
Why do Jandek fans form this myth around the artist? Several particular points of interest caught my eye when conducting my ethnography: I was surprised to find that many Jandek fans do not very much care for each other. I attribute both of these to the fact that Jandek fans desire to have a connection with Jandek outside of the collective identity. That is, Jandek fans very much perceive their relationship with Corwood to be ‘personal’. Therefore, they express themselves territorially, discounting other’s relationships and communications with Corwood, describing other Jandek fans with very undesirable traits, and enhancing their own relationship with Corwood.
One of the questions I submitted to the list, ‘What is your perception of other Jandek fans?’ elicited responses that I was certainly not expecting: Jandek fans on the whole spoke quite negatively of other Jandek fans. The most succinct response I received stated simply, ‘buncha tards’ (questionnaire, April 28, 2006). Kyle’s response, however, was more representative of the overall feeling about other Jandek fans: ‘Most of them seem like annoying, over-educated debaters, passive agressives and know-it-alls’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Of 36 responses to my survey, 33 responded with negative perceptions of other Jandek fans, two responses were neutral regarding other Jandek fans, and only one was positive.
Many of the responses were not only negative, but portrayed other Jandek fans as mentally unstable or deviant. One respondent described fans as ‘borderline art-fags’ (mailing list, April 16, 2006). Brian wrote:
Musicians, depressed people, record collectors, obsessive/complusives, depressed musicians obsessive/complusive record collectors, people who feel they don't belong and found a voice in him (probably depressed musician obsessive/compulsive record collectors). Not people who are suicidal though because the act of constantly putting out albums is completely life affirming.
- questionnaire
Every Jandek fan that replied with a negative perception of other Jandek fans seemed to do so as a way of disassociating themselves from other fans. They are deranged, but I am not. This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that, the day after I distributed the survey, one user completed my questionnaire and mailed it out to the mailing list as a way of encouraging others to participate. After he did so, all but four of the other respondents followed suit and mailed their questionnaires out to the list; even persons that had already emailed questionnaires back to me reposted them online. The three respondents with neutral and positive perceptions of Jandek fans were of the four who did not post their responses to the list. I interpreted this to mean that Jandek fans do not regard each other with hostility, but as they come together on the list modify the aforementioned statement to read: they are deranged, we are not. Given the number of fans who contacted Corwood Industries for reasons other than placing an order, these negative perceptions of other Jandek correspond with their desire to establish a personal connection with Jandek.
All fans uniformly reported on the questionnaire that they preferred listening to Jandek alone. A significant reason for this is that much of their family and friends cannot stand Jandek’s music, however respondents to the questionnaire also reported that they did not especially like to share Jandek’s music with others; for many, listening to Jandek was a personal experience. Pat wrote, ‘Leaving yourself open and feeling the music is more intense and satisfying than simply deconstructing it…I prefer to listen to Jandek when I’m by myself. Early mornings, late evenings, in the car’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Kevin echoed these sentiments: ‘I love the catharsis. I enjoy the tension of the dissonance and bleakness and melody and humor. I love the revelation of pain side by side with the joy of creation’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Listening to Jandek alone intensified the personal connection many fans already felt to the music and the man.
Because Jandek’s albums, ordered direct from Corwood, are always personally packaged and addressed by hand, each record takes on the spirit of an artifact. As an outsider musician, Jandek does not experience a great deal of distribution, and his records are therefore a unique find among fans. Cavicchi wrote about one Springsteen fan who remarked that every time she heard Bruce mentioned, her ears perked up (1998:57); for Jandek fans, hearing about Corwood outside of the Jandek community is nearly mind baffling. The nature of the record as artifact renders it more personal, intensifying the connection some fans feel with Corwood.
Explicitly, Jandek fans will deny that Jandek has an identity. Tisue’s website proclaims on its homepage, ‘Everybody knows one thing about Jandek, that no one knows anything about Jandek’ (A Guide to Jandek 2006). A post on the mailing list in 2000 regarding the relationship of Sterling R. Smith to Jandek wrote, ‘part of the beauty of his anonymity [is that] there's no acknowledged "personality" to build a cult out of’ (mailing list, July 17, 2000). However, the very lack of identity is the identity that fans have projected onto Jandek. The idea of Jandek seems to be one that many fans find seductive: Jandek possesses the ability to be obscure and anonymous, while having enough of a myth surrounding him that people actively seek out his work.
Through generating a myth of Jandek and endlessly debating it on the mailing list, fans have created an identity for Jandek as that of a sought-after recluse. Fans that identify with Jandek perpetuate his myth as a way of enhancing their own connection with him and reinforcing their own identity. As Adorno writes, ‘Reality becomes its own ideology through the spell cast by its faithful duplication’ (2002:63). If a fan identifies with Jandek as a sought-after recluse, then in order to perpetuate this identity fans must continue to see him as a recluse and desire to know who he is ‘in reality’.
These projections of identity continue on throughout discussions of Jandek’s personality and mental stability. Without fail, fans project their own disorders or experiences onto Jandek when interpreting lyrics. One fan began a discussion about Jandek’s a capella album Worthless Recluse as being composed of vocal inflections used in military code, citing his own career in the military (mailing list, March 6, 2006). In a recent discussion regarding a lyrical analysis of Jandek’s music, one fan proposed that Jandek was epileptic, because he shared characteristics that she experiences as an epileptic (mailing list, April 28, 2006). Projecting their own experiences onto Jandek, fans are able to have someone to ‘share’ their experiences with.
Jandek’s first live appearance, in October of 2004 at the Instal Festival in Glasgow, was met with familiar anxiety, not to mention utter shock. Perhaps the most fitting response was from a member named Bob: ‘hells bells. keep an eye out for the plagues of locusts and the pale gent riding a horse’ (mailing list, October 18, 2004). The next five persons to respond to the list all believed the announcement to be a false rumor, and even after one of the musicians participating at the Festival confirmed that it was Jandek playing that night, several list members remained in a state of disbelief or disappointment: ‘Imagine if Thomas Pynchon started giving interviews and appearing on the Today Show. Someone who has such an aura of genius and mystery about them suddenly becomes just another shmo on the television’ (mailing list, October 18, 2004).
Why do Jandek fans form this myth around the artist? Several particular points of interest caught my eye when conducting my ethnography: I was surprised to find that many Jandek fans do not very much care for each other. I attribute both of these to the fact that Jandek fans desire to have a connection with Jandek outside of the collective identity. That is, Jandek fans very much perceive their relationship with Corwood to be ‘personal’. Therefore, they express themselves territorially, discounting other’s relationships and communications with Corwood, describing other Jandek fans with very undesirable traits, and enhancing their own relationship with Corwood.
One of the questions I submitted to the list, ‘What is your perception of other Jandek fans?’ elicited responses that I was certainly not expecting: Jandek fans on the whole spoke quite negatively of other Jandek fans. The most succinct response I received stated simply, ‘buncha tards’ (questionnaire, April 28, 2006). Kyle’s response, however, was more representative of the overall feeling about other Jandek fans: ‘Most of them seem like annoying, over-educated debaters, passive agressives and know-it-alls’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Of 36 responses to my survey, 33 responded with negative perceptions of other Jandek fans, two responses were neutral regarding other Jandek fans, and only one was positive.
Many of the responses were not only negative, but portrayed other Jandek fans as mentally unstable or deviant. One respondent described fans as ‘borderline art-fags’ (mailing list, April 16, 2006). Brian wrote:
Musicians, depressed people, record collectors, obsessive/complusives, depressed musicians obsessive/complusive record collectors, people who feel they don't belong and found a voice in him (probably depressed musician obsessive/compulsive record collectors). Not people who are suicidal though because the act of constantly putting out albums is completely life affirming.
- questionnaire
Every Jandek fan that replied with a negative perception of other Jandek fans seemed to do so as a way of disassociating themselves from other fans. They are deranged, but I am not. This is particularly interesting in light of the fact that, the day after I distributed the survey, one user completed my questionnaire and mailed it out to the mailing list as a way of encouraging others to participate. After he did so, all but four of the other respondents followed suit and mailed their questionnaires out to the list; even persons that had already emailed questionnaires back to me reposted them online. The three respondents with neutral and positive perceptions of Jandek fans were of the four who did not post their responses to the list. I interpreted this to mean that Jandek fans do not regard each other with hostility, but as they come together on the list modify the aforementioned statement to read: they are deranged, we are not. Given the number of fans who contacted Corwood Industries for reasons other than placing an order, these negative perceptions of other Jandek correspond with their desire to establish a personal connection with Jandek.
All fans uniformly reported on the questionnaire that they preferred listening to Jandek alone. A significant reason for this is that much of their family and friends cannot stand Jandek’s music, however respondents to the questionnaire also reported that they did not especially like to share Jandek’s music with others; for many, listening to Jandek was a personal experience. Pat wrote, ‘Leaving yourself open and feeling the music is more intense and satisfying than simply deconstructing it…I prefer to listen to Jandek when I’m by myself. Early mornings, late evenings, in the car’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Kevin echoed these sentiments: ‘I love the catharsis. I enjoy the tension of the dissonance and bleakness and melody and humor. I love the revelation of pain side by side with the joy of creation’ (questionnaire, April 13, 2006). Listening to Jandek alone intensified the personal connection many fans already felt to the music and the man.
Because Jandek’s albums, ordered direct from Corwood, are always personally packaged and addressed by hand, each record takes on the spirit of an artifact. As an outsider musician, Jandek does not experience a great deal of distribution, and his records are therefore a unique find among fans. Cavicchi wrote about one Springsteen fan who remarked that every time she heard Bruce mentioned, her ears perked up (1998:57); for Jandek fans, hearing about Corwood outside of the Jandek community is nearly mind baffling. The nature of the record as artifact renders it more personal, intensifying the connection some fans feel with Corwood.
Explicitly, Jandek fans will deny that Jandek has an identity. Tisue’s website proclaims on its homepage, ‘Everybody knows one thing about Jandek, that no one knows anything about Jandek’ (A Guide to Jandek 2006). A post on the mailing list in 2000 regarding the relationship of Sterling R. Smith to Jandek wrote, ‘part of the beauty of his anonymity [is that] there's no acknowledged "personality" to build a cult out of’ (mailing list, July 17, 2000). However, the very lack of identity is the identity that fans have projected onto Jandek. The idea of Jandek seems to be one that many fans find seductive: Jandek possesses the ability to be obscure and anonymous, while having enough of a myth surrounding him that people actively seek out his work.
Through generating a myth of Jandek and endlessly debating it on the mailing list, fans have created an identity for Jandek as that of a sought-after recluse. Fans that identify with Jandek perpetuate his myth as a way of enhancing their own connection with him and reinforcing their own identity. As Adorno writes, ‘Reality becomes its own ideology through the spell cast by its faithful duplication’ (2002:63). If a fan identifies with Jandek as a sought-after recluse, then in order to perpetuate this identity fans must continue to see him as a recluse and desire to know who he is ‘in reality’.
These projections of identity continue on throughout discussions of Jandek’s personality and mental stability. Without fail, fans project their own disorders or experiences onto Jandek when interpreting lyrics. One fan began a discussion about Jandek’s a capella album Worthless Recluse as being composed of vocal inflections used in military code, citing his own career in the military (mailing list, March 6, 2006). In a recent discussion regarding a lyrical analysis of Jandek’s music, one fan proposed that Jandek was epileptic, because he shared characteristics that she experiences as an epileptic (mailing list, April 28, 2006). Projecting their own experiences onto Jandek, fans are able to have someone to ‘share’ their experiences with.
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