Belly

Full on 1993.

One of my favorite albums in the 1990s was Belly's Star.  Belly was  group formed by former Throwing Muses and Breeders member Tanya Donnelly. From what I've read, many of the songs were originally supposed to be on the Breeders follow-up to their amazing 1990 album Pod, but then Kim Deal got busy touring with the Pixies so Donnelly decided to form a new band. Many of the songs on Star have the same warped perspective as the early Breeders, so it isn't hard to imagine songs like "Every Word" being Breeders' songs. Belly is best known for "Feed the Tree," their biggest hit.

That song is a bit more pop than the rest of the album, but it does capture Belly's combination of sunny hooks and dark lyrics. Much like the contrast between Donnelly's own cute, elfin looks and her actual personality. Being a human being, she was/is much more complicated than the image of her that the media picked up on. As someone who has dated many a cute, short woman (and is married to one), I can tell you that they often resent being stereotyped as cute. That label doesn't do justice to the fact that their is much more to them than the fact that they are little and pretty. Of course, Belly might not have gotten as much traction had Donnelly not been a looker whose winsome appearance and pretty voice contrasted so well with her lyrics.

There was a dreamy, romantic quality to Belly's music that made them perfect for listening to late at night. I was a freshman in college when I got into them, and I remember how the music seemed to open up a new world to me, both sonically and literally. It was "girlier" than most of the music I listened to, and yet maintained an edge. I listened to it obsessively for much of 93-94. Their follow up, King, went in a more rock direction and as such was a disappointment both commercially and critically. Belly broke up soon after. Tanya Donnelly had a brief solo career before delving into motherhood, but she has continued to release music in the 2000s. 

Black Metal

As part of my New Year's resolution to listen to music outside of my comfort zone, I've been exploring black metal. Black metal is a form of extreme metal that is based around blast beats, screeching vocals, and tremolo picking, which basically means quickly strumming the same note. It was born in the late 80s out of the thrash scene, and has become kind of a Big Deal in the last ten years. A lot of critics and musicians seem to take it seriously, and it seems to be the metal sub-genre that is generating the most excitement. My knowledge of black metal is mostly limited to the violence, racism, and church burnings associated with the early 90s Norwegian scene, and the fact that they all wear goofy corpsepaint. I find the screeching vocals incredibly annoying, and the aesthetics, theatricality, anti-Christian rhetoric, and overall creepy vibe kept me far away from black metal until recently. 

 After Deafheaven's "Sunbather" was voted one of the best albums of the year by Pitchfork, I decided to give it a listen. Deafheavan aren't a "true" black metal band: they don't dress up or wear make up and there is a distinctly hipster vibe to their music. Like Brooklyn's Liturgy, they are essentially hipster post-black metal, but stick largely to the black metal sonic template. They seemed like a good enough starting point for my entry into the genre. 

So after listening to "Sunbather" and Liturgy's "Anasthetica," I have to say that I kind of get black metal. I don't think I'm going to listen to a lot of it, but I get why people dig it. First the good: sonically, it can be interesting. It lends itself to a more orchestral, epic vibe than normal metal. Normal metal is all about precision and riffs. Black metal is more about walls of sound and textures. Done well, it can be very powerful, and it sounds different from most music out there. It's heavy, but there is also room to explore different song structures and incorporate other elements. It's not as staid or rigid as a lot of metal or hardcore. 

It is also very effective outsider music. It is so extreme and grating that there is no danger of your little sister's friends getting into it. Normal people will never like black metal. Emperor will never be on a Toyata commercial. It is totally extreme and totally exclusive. 

Deafheaven in particular explores the contrast between the aggressive and ugly and the soft and pretty. In some ways it reminds me of Fucked Up's "Chemistry of Modern Life," in that it has these rich textures and thoughtful lyrics presented in a package of extreme music. The play between the pretty and ugly works well with Deafheaven. It's a powerful, epic album, and one I find myself enjoying despite my aversion to the screeching vocals. 

The svocals still make no sense to me, and I find them annoying. I like some extreme music, and I can listen to Cookie Monster vocals with no problem, but there is something so grating about black metal vocals. It also doesn't make sense to me that a genre so fixated on their lyrical themes has lyrics that are impossible to understand. I never understood this about grind core or power violence either - if you are just growling and screaming into a microphone, don't pretend you are saying actual words. That's what's so interesting about "Sunbather." He's screaming like he's singing about satan and Norse gods or whatever, but the lyrics are actually collegeate poetry about love and longing. The lyrics to the title track are:

I held my breath and drove through a maze of wealthy homes

I watched how green the trees were

I watched the steep walkways and the white fences

I gripped the wheel

I sweated against the leather

I watched dogs twist through the wealthy garden

I watched you lay on a towel in grass that exceeded the height of your legs

I gazed into reflective eyes

I cried against an ocean of light

[…]

It's 5AM and my heart flourishes at each passing moment

Always and forever

I totally relate where singer Gary Clarke is coming from. Like, literally relate because I too spent a good chunk of my twenties being broke in wealthy San Francisco, and I know that mix of longing and jealousy towards the wealthier classes. Those emotions come through on "Sunbather." It's an intense album, but I can't help but feel that it would be so much better if they had an actual, you know, singer singing. Even angry hardcore singing. Anything but dying-eagle screeching.

The other problem I have with black metal is that the music is exhausting. It's being hit in the face repeatedly, or having to take public transportation during rush hour in a bus full of teenagers and drug addicts. There is not a millimeter of space - it's all blast beats and strumming guitars. It's one of the few types of music that genuinely scares me. Partially because it sounds so damn evil, but also because of its history as the music of choice for sociopaths and racists. I know that the whole racist thing was supposedly years ago, but people still love Burzum, and that is a project of an outspoken racist and neo-fascist. People poo-pooing black metal's racist past remind me of people poo-pooing Oi!'s racist past. Maybe the bands are overtly racist, but part of its DNA is that racism. 

And what better music for white racists than black metal? Unlike most metal or rock music, it has nothing to do with black American blues music. It has zero groove. It has no beat. It is the whitest music in the world. Despite being called black metal, I am pretty sure that it is the type of music that has the fewest black people actually engaged with it. 

My biggest beef with black metal is how deliberately wallowing and self-margianalizing it is. It's music for outsiders by outsiders, and it is guaranteed to keep making you feel like an outsider. I'm not proposing that disenchanted youth should pump some Taylor Swift, but it doesn't seem healthy to me to bury yourself in music that is so intent on making you feel alienated and terrible. Maybe it is like the blues in that there is a catharsis in embracing your misery, but it doesn't sound healthy. And yes, I realize that is what the boomers thought about punk and their parents thought about rock and their parents thought about Frank Sinatra. In the end I'd rather listen to something that isn't as focused on feeling like shit. Like Coltrane. Or just about anything else, really.

Even after delving into black metal, I don't understand why it has become the new hip metal genre. NPR writes about it, and it is Pitchfork's new favorite thing, along with abstract electronic music compositions and whatever Arcade Fire and Kanye release. It makes no sense to me that mainstream and indie music sites are covering this fringe extreme metal while giving other forms of loud music (i.e. contemporary punk and hardcore) largely a pass. Why choose this particular form of loud music to intellectualize about? Is it because it is fringe and outré and dangerous? It's similar to how they get really excited about street rap mix tapes but tend not to cover underground or indie rap. Since it is way cooler for white hipsters to write about poor black kids dealing drugs and shooting people than to listen to rappers closer to their actual demographic and experience. God forbid. (Pot.Kettle.Black)

Favorite Songs of the Year

Favorite songs of 2013

Savages, “Husbands”

Wavves, “Demon to Lean On.”

Danny Brown, “Dope Song”

Tree, “Devotion.”

Chance the Rapper, “Everybody’s Something”

The Hunters, “Nosebleed”

Superchunk, “Staying Home”

Run the Jewels, “36 Inch Chain”

Daft Punk, “Get Lucky”

Laura Mvula, “That’s Alright”

Rhye, "Open"

Low, "Plastic Cup"

TeeFlii with Nipsy Hustle, "F*n in the Function"

Earl Sweatshirt, “Chum”

Colleen, “Geometria del Universo”

Cate Le Bon, “No God”

Juicy J, “Stop It”

Joanna Gruesome “Wussy Void”

Special Request, “Ride VIP”

Zomby, “Soliloquy”

Favorite albums of the year

Having a kid changed my listening habits this year. Most of the time I was listening to music with my daughter, often early in the morning. As a result, I listened to a lot of mellow music, old jazz, old Sabbath, and old soul. The other stuff was limited to my hour-long commute on Bart, which is incredibly noisy, with shitty headphones. Not a lot of room for subtlety or nuance. Here’s what I liked the most out of what came out this year. If I had to pick my favorite it would be the Colleen record. It is such a delicate, beautiful album and it made my 5 A.M. wake up times much more bearable. I would put it on, get a cup of coffee, and watch my daughter interact with the world in our living room while we waited for the sun to come up.

Cate Le Bon, Mug Museum

Chance the Rapper, Acid Rap

Colleen, The Weighing of the Heart

The Hunters S/T.

Rhye, Woman

Run the Jewels

Savages, Silence Yourself

Special Request, Soul Music.

Superchunk, I Hate Music

Tee Flii Annie RUO’Tay 2

Tree, Sunday School 2

Favorite Rap Albums of the Year

My yearly list of favorite rap albums is up at RapReviews.  The albums are:

Danny Brown, "Old." 

Chance the Rapper, "Acid Rap." 

Juicy J, "Stay Trippy." 

Ka, "Night's Gambit." 

Run the Jewels, "Run the Jewels." 

Special Request, "Soul Music." 

Earl Sweatshirt, "Doris." 

TeeFlii "Annie RUO'Tay 2." 

Tree, "Sunday School 2." 

Zomby, "With Love."

Danny Brown and London Posse reviews

I reviewed Danny Brown's Old on RapReviews a few weeks ago. I'm into it. It's drug music that captures how terrible drugs are.

I also reviewed London Posse's Gangster Chronicles. They were a British group from the 90s who were pretty good.

Kiss

I've been on a Kiss kick lately. I got into them in college, at first because they were so silly, but then because they have some genuinely catchy songs. Stupid, but catchy. The band's early records owed a lot to the Rolling Stones and maybe a tiny bit to the New York Dolls, although Kiss had none of their edge. They did have some good moments, like "Parasite":

Or "Firehouse." 

The band were always shamelessly opportunistic and commercial. They went disco in the late seventies when that was cool (but I guess so did the Stones, so what are you gonna do). In the eighties, they found their brand of hard rock replaced by glam bands that they had inspired. Some of Kiss's most amazingly terrible music came out of the eighties in their bald-face attempt to ape trends. The result was a string of mediocre albums, and some terrifically shitty songs, like "Heaven's on Fire." 

It's basically an AC/DC song, only less meaty. And it has one of the best double entendres ever "Baby don't stop/Take it to the top/Eat it like a piece of cake." What the fuck is that even supposed to mean? I'm assuming he's talking about blow jobs, but the analogy doesn't work. 

Gene Simmons is a giant asshole, and I've never been into his schtick. Paul Stanley, on the other hand, is my hero. For one thing, he is so flaming in this video. So, so flaming. He has kids and has been married twice, so he's probably not gay, but you would never guess that from this video. Because he is prancing around in make up. And wearing chaps. And hanging out with a fat guy in leather pants and a perm. It bums me out that he isn't actually gay. That would be so much cooler than just being a straight sleaze bag who is kinda effeminate. 

Stanley also has some great stage banter I admire his energy and showmanship, although sometimes he sounds like your dad doing a "cool black guy" impression. 

Ghostpoet/Danny Brown/Superchunk

I reviewed Ghostpoet's sophomore release on RapReviews.  I liked his debut, but I was less into this album. It was a little too formless for me. It does have some good songs, like "Meltdown":



I'm working on a review of Danny Brown's Old. It has some of the craziest songs of his career, embracing club rap in a way he hasn't done before. And lots of songs about drugs.



I've also been listening to Superchunk's new album I Hate Music. It's really good, and I don't think that's just nostalgia talking. I liked 2010's Majesty Shredding, but I think this album is even better.

Juicy J/In Utero

I reviewed Juicy J's Stay Trippy last week on RapReviews. It's sexist and mindless but fun. Sort of the hip-hop equivalent of Motley Crue.

It has also been twenty years since Nirvana's In Utero came out. That album was the first album I ever bought the day it came out, and was the soundtrack for my first year of college. Like all Nirvana records, In Utero has its share of issues. Bleach wallows too much in tuneless Melvins worship. Nevermind is overproduced and oversaturated. Incesticide has its share of B-sides that rightly never made it onto an album. And In Utero is a little too obsessed with how icky fame is. (Is there anything more boring than listening to a successful artist bitch about being famous? That's why I've avoided all of Drake and Kanye's output.) What all Nirvana also have in common was that they were an incredible band who managed to channel Kurt Cobain's suicidal depression into incredibly powerful music.

Revisiting In Utero has reminded me of just how good it is. Not all of it, mind you. I think "Heart Shaped Box" is one of their worst songs, "Rape Me" is embarrassing to listen to, and it is a little too self-conciously abrasive and uncommercial. But it is still an incredible album. If you want pure energy, you have the noisy stomp of "Scentless Apprentice" or the rage-ahol of "Tourette's." If you want their more sensitive side, you have "Dumb," "Pennyroyal Tea," and "All Apologies." My favorite song is "Frances Farmer Will Have Her Revenge On Seattle," which masters Nirvana's loud-quiet-loud formula, and has the crushing chorus "I miss the comfort of being sad." Nirvana songs never make a lot of sense, but Kurt was great at producing memorable one-liners. "I think I'm dumb/or maybe just happy," "What is wrong with me?," "I'm so tired I can't sleep," and my favorite, "If you ever need anything please don't/Hesitate to ask someone else first/I'm too busy acting like I'm not naive/I've seen it all I was here first." That last line, from "Very Ape," encapsulated the indie rock holier than thou attitude of 1993.

One song that I had totally forgotten about in the fifteen years or so since I listened to In Utero is "Milk It." It's another heavy Melvins-type track, full of grinding guitars and not much melody. Kurt sings in an agonized wail, and the lyrics sound straight out of Naked Lunch. It's an incredibly weird and dark song for the one of the biggest bands in the world to have made. The shitty band I was in in college used to play it at practice.

Music for Little Girls Part 2

I'm back at work after four months off. What did my daughter and I listen to for most of the summer? Black Sabbath and a lot of it. Not "Black Sabbath" or "Iron Man" or any of the scarier songs, but most of their early stuff was basically heavy blues.

I finally bought Sleep's "Dopesmoker," after listening to it on Spotify. It's definitely a headphone album, and one you need to sit with. It's an hour long and all built around the same riff, but it gets heavier and heavier as it goes along. It's a well-deserved classic and has made my commute more bearable/deafening. The lyrics are friggin ridiculous - all about science fiction stoner stuff, like marijuanauts. Whatever, dude.



As part of my metal kick, I got Windhand's latest album. They are a Virginia doom metal band who are very, very heavy.



I've also been listening to Juicy J's Stay Trippy. Every song is about paying strippers money to strip and fuck. EVERY. SINGLE. SONG. Except for the two about robbing and killing. It's ignorant as all hell, sexist as shit, and yet I kind of love it. I can you not like a guy who'll rap "you're baby mama ain't a ten but when I'm drunk she's close enough?"

The Other F Word

I watched Andrea Blaugrund's documentary The Other F Word last night.



I had a lot of hope for the movie, a documentary about punk rock fathers. It ended up bumming me out. For one thing, it is really hyperbolic and myopic in its description of punk. It acts like punks were the first and only rebellious youth movement, totally ignoring jazz, the beats, and rock n' roll. How did those guys become fathers? How did Pete Townsend or Miles Davis make the transition to adulthood?
I also am not a huge fan of most of the bands profiled. They are almost all Epitaph bands whose idea of punk is very different than mine. Their idea is much more rooted in suburban rebellion, getting fucked up and saying fuck the system. For me, punk was less about nihilism and more about a progressive alternative to America's shift towards conservatism in the 80s. It was about being anti-capitalist, anti-corporate, and pro-women and gay rights. It was about trying to find an alternative to commercial culture. That punk ethos isn't really analyzed at all in the movie. Instead, it's basically about how hard it is to be a dad when you tour constantly in a rock band. That is interesting, but it's not really about punk rock dads per se. And they aren't really very rebellious. Jim Lindberg, the guy from Pennywise, acts like it is the height of rebellion to get his daughter's name tattooed on him. Newsflash: tattoos are no longer rebellious. Every square-ass in finance under 40 has a tattoo. Every frat boy has their greek letters tattooed on them. It is more rebellious to not have tattoos, or go Lars Frederiksen's route and get "Skunx" tattooed on your forehead in shitty prison style. Lars drove me nuts, because he was so self-marginalized. He dressed like an anachronistic clown, and then acted put out that people looked at him funny. You are dressed like a punk extra from an 80s action movie: of course people are going to look at you funny. Bondage pants have been out of style for at least two decades.

That's the thing: punk isn't really rebellious anymore. You look at a Total Chaos video and they are basically like a hair metal band, with more power chords.



The women's voices are also pretty silent. Sure, it's hard to be on tour 200 days a year when you have three kids, but what is it like trying to take care of three little girls by yourself while your husband is gone?

I could definitely relate to some aspects of the movie. I was never really a punker, but there is a part of me that identifies with punk, and it's hard to reconcile that with being a parent. There's a part where Lindberg describes how he used to be against the system, and now he is part of it. I struggle with that too. I have the house and the mortgage and a gardner and a cleaning service, and all of these trappings of upper-middle class life that I used to scoff at. I had a realization a few years ago that you can't fuck the system, the system fucks you. The best path forward is to try to play within the rules of the game while hanging on to your decency and integrity by what Buddhists call right livelihood and right action. I try to treat other people with respect and not get addicted to money and stuff.  So I went back to school for management, and I worry about my earning potential, and how I can best provide for my family. It's a weird shift to have to make, and there are times when I become painfully aware that I have become what so many kids mock: safe, suburban, middle-class. But I don't think living hand to mouth in squalor sounds like a great idea. I'd rather be boring than irresponsible at this point.

But I'm rambling. My main point is, The Other F Word is disappointing. Lindberg wrote a book on being a parent that I might check out. I also recommend reading Rad Dad, which is about how radical and activist dads. It's often a little too lefty for my tastes, but it is still an interesting take on alternative approaches to fatherhood.

When Rich White People Imitate Poor People of Color

I want to chime in real quick about the reaction to Miley Cyrus's twerking on the VMAs. I've read a few articles written by black women about their reaction to Miley, and the general tone is: Fuck Miley and her cultural appropriation bullshit. People are pissed that she is using blackness to be cool, using black people as props, and

As Jacqui Germain wrote on Racialicious, "expressing your sexuality at my expense isn’t okay. You don’t get to claim sexual freedom while simultaneously perpetuating the oppression of another body. When you feel the need to express your sexuality by turning my body into an accessory, the black feminist in me—two identities which I refuse to separate—can’t have your back anymore."

On Jezebel, Dodai Stewart wrote "Miley and her ilk need to be reminded that the stuff they think is cool, the accoutrements they're borrowing, have been birthed in an environment where people are underprivileged, undereducated, oppressed, underrepresented, disenfranchised, systemically discriminated against and struggling in a system set up to insure that they fail."http://www.racialicious.com/2013/08/28/miley-cyrus-feminism-and-the-struggle-for-black-recognition/

(Rush Limbaugh said that the media wouldn't have cared had she twerked on a woman, since evidently the media hates heterosexual sex but loves teh gays. "Obama might have called Miley to praise her for her heroism had she twerked with another woman" he opined, ignoring the fact that she was being sexual with women in the act as well as Robin Thicke. Also, fuck Rush Limbaugh).

First off, let me say that the opinions of actual women of color about Miley's co-opting of black culture and how it makes them feel should be weighed much more heavily than my opinion. But there was something about those responses that rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe they sounded too much like the pearl-clutching outrage of an old white person: "Well, I NEVER!" Maybe it's that they were defending twerking as if it were some sort of high art that Miley was sullying, when it's more like the cultural equivalent of two sorority girls making out to turn on their frat brothers. 

There's also the fact that I think Miley was the one who looked the fool on stage, not her backup dancers. She's also been co-signed with a number of African-American rappers and producers, who are all too happy to work with this crazy white girl in order to have a chance at some of her money and exposure. I think the Juicy J's, Mike Will's, and backup dancers Miley works with are smart enough to know what they are doing. I don't think they are being played. Yes, Miley is slumming it in order to get cred, rebel against her goody-two-shoes past, and prove that she is a sophisticated young lady. But I'm guessing if you go to most clubs in the U.S., they will be full of white girls shaking their asses to hip-hop.

The debate around Miley twerking is part of a larger story that has been going on for years with African-American culture: blacks get shit on, they make art as a release and/or reflection of the pain of being shit on, and then the people indirectly or directly responsible for shitting on them consume that art as being authentic, unlike their privileged lives. Because shitting on people offers much less opportunity to make great art than being shit on. 

In my review of Chief Keef's Finally Rich, I wrote, "there is something inherently sad about the fact that Keef has gotten huge by celebrating the traumatic, disfunctional world he comes from. Half his fans love his music because it reflects the world they know, and the other half love it because it shows them the edgy, "real" world that exists outside the safety of their parents' suburban homes. I don't know which is more depressing. Equally depressing is the fact that there is a high possibility that Keef will fall victim to the violence he came up in, and an almost certainty that he'll end up in jail for parole violations."

Benjamin Nugents book American Nerd noted that one thing that separates most white nerds from the popular crowd is the fact that they don't use hip-hop slang or embrace hip-hop culture. Their hyperwhiteness separated them from the rest of society. Young privileged white people are all about calling their friends "homie," bumping hip-hop, and safely embracing elements of a culture that they would never want to interact with face to face. The same kids dancing to Juicy J at a club in San Francisco's wealthy Marina district stay far, far away from Hunters Point or the Bayview, where the actual poor blacks live. 

In other words, the racial problems that plague society are reflected in our pop culture, and years of black coolness hasn't done a lot to make African-Americans more equal in society. Black music may dominate the pop charts, but black men are still disproportionally represented in the prison systems. I think it is a step in the right direction that music is no longer as segregated as it was in the 1980s, but it is worth reminding ourselves that liking hip-hop or R&B doesn't cure racism.



(image from Getty, stolen from the Huffington Post)

Lee Bannon and Steve Arrington and Dam Funk

I reviewed Lee Bannon's instrumental ep this week on RapReviews. It's a hip-hop take on British electronic production, yet another example of hip-hop producers embracing ambient music.

I also reviewed Steve Arrington and Dam Funk's album Higher. It's an interesting slab of 80s funk, but is a bit unpolished.

Feminist Oi

My daughter and I have been listening to Hard Skin's Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear all week. Hard Skin are an oi band that have been around since the mid-nineties. The band plays in the vein of classic oi/street punk bands like Sham 69 and the Angelic Upstarts, while both celebrating and taking the piss out of skinhead culture. From what I can tell, the members both sincerely appreciate early street punk, but also realize how ridiculous it often is, not to mention the latent chauvinism and racism of the scene. (Most street punk bands describe themselves as "apolitical," but they tend to be apolitical in the same way that Tea Party Republicans aren't racist.)

Hard Skin's lineup includes members of 90s punk bands Wat Tyler and Thatcher on Acid, and their original drummer was in 90s shoegaze band Lush. Their first album was called "Hard Nuts and Hard Cunts," and contained songs like "Oi! Not Jobs!" and "Bunch of Pissed Up Cunts." They have the mix of punk rock, pub rock, and glam rock that are the cornerstone of oi, complete with shoutalong choruses and hooks. Lots and lots of hooks. For their latest album, they've released two versions. The first, Hard Skin on the Balls, contains twelve songs with Fat Bob's gruff vocals. The second version, Why Do Birds Suddenly Appear, contains the same twelve songs with a rotating lineup of female vocalists singing instead of Fat Bob. It's pretty amazing.

First off, the vocalists range from obvious (Beki Bondage, who's band Vice Squad was part of the original wave of Oi in the 80s), to really surprising (folk singers Joanna Newsom and Alela Diane).  The female vocals soften some of the rough edges of the songs, and add an ironic twist to the lyrics. Some of them are kind of stunt-ey: Joanna Newsom doesn't totally sell herself as a cockney punk, for example. But most of them are spot on. Veronica Falls singers Marion Herbain and Roxanne Clifford's sweet voices work perfectly with opener "Council Estate," the one millionth street punk song about council estates. Lush's Miki Berenyi proves that she could have been a punk singer on "You Still Here?" My favorite song is "Another Terrace Anthem," sung by Fucked Up's bassist Mustard Gas. Her vocals have a tunefulness that Fat Bob's version is missing, and add a lot to the song. It's not that the female vocals make the songs softer, it's that they offer another opinion, another take, another example of what it feels like to be pissed off about being marginalized. Diversity has become a cliche, but it is important not because it is politically correct, but because it makes life richer and more interesting. As illustrated so beautifully by Hard Skin.

Oh Miley, Up Yours!

It is traditional for young women who have come up through the Disney machine to slut the fuck out when they come of age as a way to show the world that they are no longer innocent little girls. Cristina did it with her Dirrty video, Britney did it over and over again, Vanessa Hudgens leaked nude photos of herself, and then starred with Selena Gomez in Spring Breakers. But no one has slutted out quite like Miley Cyrus. The former Hannah Montana star first raised eyebrows for her video for "We Can't Stop,"  which showcased her newfound love of molly, black people, and strippers. Then during the MTV self-congratulatory strokefest Music Video Awards Sunday, she danced like a gakked out 19-year-old who just had her first lesbian experience at a strip club in the bad section of Baton Rouge. This has gotten the internet all worked up. Her dad is convinced that she is possessed by the devil, liberals are proclaiming her act as a "cultural appropriation at its worst" (to quote the Guardian), while Fox called her act a cheerleading squad for hookers. 

If Miley wants to do a bunch of drugs and ho the fuck out, that's her business. Go have some threesomes. Dance like a stripper. Slap some asses. Kiss your girlfriends and make out with a dude you just met. Try lesbianism. Go crazy. That's what being 19 is for - to act like an ass and explore your sexuality. Some people have said she's too young to act like that, but I think if she was much older she'd be too OLD to act like that. And let me be clear: as long as people are being safe and respectful of their sex partners, I don't care how many people they sleep with. I think labeling a woman as a slut because she likes sex, or thinking a woman can't have self-respect if she chooses to be sexual is bullshit.  Some of the strongest, most together women I know had phases of major promiscuity. A woman can be sexual and not have self-esteem or daddy issues. She can just like sex. So if Miley wants to sleep with hella people, go for it. That's a perk of being young, beautiful and rich.

And if she wants to appropriate black culture to rebel, whatever. Yeah, it's problematic yar yar yar, but she didn't invent the rules, she's just playing by them. She's not the first white kid to embrace hip-hop as a way to freak her parents out. Hopefully she is genuine with her black friends, but if she's treating them as tokens I'm sure they are smart enough to know whats up and are doing just fine with letting the white girl buy the drugs and booze in exchange for being cool by association. I'm a little concerned that she's such a terrible singer and dancer, given that has been her job for years, but that's nothing new either.

What really bothered me about the event, beyond the fact that everyone was freaking out about something so calculated, is the fact that there you had Miley, in her undies freaking on anything that moved, surrounded by half-naked women, while the three dudes on stage were fully clothed and not sexualized at all. What the fuck is up with that? THAT is what I hate about mainstream pop culture, and especially mainstream hip-hop and R&B. The girls are all in booty shorts gyrating while the guys are in their fucking football jerseys acting like they couldnt' give a shit. I'm not offended by the half-naked women, but let's make the stakes even, for crissakes. Robin Thicke coulda taken his shirt off, at least, or did some Magic Mike stripper moves with Miley. THAT woulda been amazing.

What's ironic is that before the VMAs MTV released a video of Grimes and Kathleen Hannah talking about what it means to be a feminist musician. Grimes had a wonderful point in which she said that she never considered herself a  feminist when she was starting out in her insular scene because her gender didn't matter. It was only when she got out of her liberal, supportive bubble into the terrible world and all of a sudden her gender was the ONLY thing that mattered that she started getting pissed off about how unequally she was being treated, and got into feminism. How rad would it be if Miley's next move was quoting bell hooks and doing a duet with Peaches?

Zomby Review

I reviewed Zomby's latest at RapReviews this week. With Love is a two-disc set that combines drum n bass, techno, ambient and Southern trap instrumentals. I've heard that trap was the latest EDM fad, but I hadn't heard much of it. In my head, EDM/trap sounds like With Love: moody ambient music with rolling hi-hats and snapping snares. In reality, it sounds like your typical bombastic techno only with a some hi-hats.

I can imagine Juicy J or Rick Ross rapping over "The Things You Do."


Compare that to the stuff on Into The AM's list of best trap artists of 2012. It sounds to me like it is hitting the notes that all stadium dance music hits. I think that is amazing if you are gakked out at a club or festival, but there is no subtlety or artistry to it at all. It's like watching hardcore porn - all sensory overload, no nuance or thought. Awesome if you are 20, not so great if you are a 38-year-old dad. I'll settle for Zomby.

In Praise of Green Day

Summer 1994. I had just gotten my first apartment (paying $400 a month to live in a two-bedroom townhouse in Park Merced near San Francisco State University), I was working at a record store, I thought I had it all. And then I got my first heartache. My first serious girlfriend broke up with me in a sort of shitty way, but then there aren't ever good ways to break up with someone. I was devastated. Even though we had only been together for only about four months, I was madly in love with her, and had no idea that our relationship would end. She was a quirky indie girl who looked like Bjork. Her ex was the comic book artist Adrian Tomine, whom she left for me, who wrote a strip
about it.

It was my first serious relationship and serious breakup, and I did not know how to handle it. I had invested so much into the relationship and it suddenly went up in smoke. I shared things with her that I never told anyone else. She had talked about getting married and having kids. It seemed so unfair. I talked about it endlessly for months. I called her for weeks on end trying to understand why she broke up with me. I didn't understand the impermanence of young love, and the fact that things fade. Or that the more that I acted like a pathetic weirdo, the worse off I was. I did understand that wallowing in my misery was a losing proposition, and I knew that the gloomy, downer grunge music I had been listening to was not the right thing to help me get over my heartache. Luckily, I discovered Green Day about that time.

Green Day and Jawbreaker were the first local punk bands I listened to, and the first local scene I felt a part of. By 1994 I had been listening to punk for about six years, but always as an outsider, listening to bands from L.A. or DC that had broken up already. The East Bay pop punk scene was going strong in 1994, and I got to be a part of it. I saw Green Day at Slims that year, right after their major label debut Dookie had been released, but before it had sold millions of copies and gotten endless play on MTV and the radio. I liked Dookie well enough, but my favorite Green Day album was and still is their debut CD, 1,039/Smoothed Out Slappy Hours, which collected their first album and two early EPs. Green Day were three high school drop outs who made pop punk songs about crushes, and that early album perfectly captures teenage romantic angst. The album opener "At the Library" is a brilliant song about trying to talk to a cute girl at the library:



Then there was "Don't Leave Me," an impassioned plea to an ex:


My favorite song was "Going to Pasalaqua," which showed a songwriting maturity that was leagues ahead of anything else anyone in the East Bay scene was doing.



What I loved about Green Day was that they were fun and positive and happy, while wallowing just a little in being screwed up. Compare that to the Smashing Pumpkins or Nirvana, the two other bands I was really into at the time. Their music was intense, it was emotional, and it was mostly based on feeling depressed and miserable. That's not what I needed when I was depressed and miserable. I was also 19, I was living in San Francisco, and I knew that the world was my oyster if I would only try to grab it.

My interest in Green Day waned pretty quickly. By 1995's Insomniac, I was over them. I won't accuse them of selling out, because they've taken their sound to millions of people, had their music adapted to a Broadway musical, and taken their poppy sound much further than I ever thought possible. I may not love their post-Dookie output, but I can't begrudge a band whose music has meant so much to millions of young people. I sold all their CDs ten years ago when I was purging my collection, so now I listen to them on Spotify from time to time.

 I managed to get over my ex by the end of 1994, and soon had another girlfriend (who also broke my heart). I've never found my ex girlfriend online to see how she's doing. I'm sure she's doing well, and I hope she doesn't cringe too much when she thinks of me.

Castle and Joey Bada$$ Reviews

I reviewed Castle's new album Gasface this week on RapReviews. It's pretty good, and has the virtue of being one of the few rap albums I've actually been able to pay money for.

I also reviewed the new Joey Bada$$ mixtape.  Makes me wish I was in New York.

Peeps Review

I reviewed Australian rapper Peeps' latest EP at RapReviews last week.  Wasn't really my jam, but it's available for free if you want to check it out.

Run the Jewels has a video for "36" Chain," that is buddy cop meets grind house. It made me better appreciate the brilliance of the album. The whole thing is meant to be ridiculously aggressive, like a Tarantino movie put to wax.  In an effort to get their kidnapped squirrel, they beat up a hipster, tear a homemaker's eye out, kill a grandma, and blow away an entire surprise party.




I also found the first three Black Sabbath records for super cheap, so I've been enjoying them. My daughter, not so much.



That got me in the mood to revisit some doom/stoner metal, so I listened to Sleep's hour-long "Dopesmoker," which is pretty amazing.



And Noothgrush, a crust/doom band who I guess are still playing. This video was from a show last month at Gilman, which is like three miles from my house.



Of course, none of this works for a six-month old. With her I've been listening to old show tunes and dance music.

Half Time

Given that the year is a little over half done, it seems like a good time to look back on the albums released so far in 2013.

The Good

There are several albums that have been in heavy rotation at my house, including:

James Blake, Overgrown
Chance the Rapper, Acid Rap
Disclosure, Settle
Rhye, Woman
Run the Jewels, S/T
Savages, Silence Yourself
Tree, Sunday School II

I've enjoyed but had a harder time getting into:

Daft Punk, Random Access Memories
Deerhunter, Monomania
Laura Mvula, Sing to the Moon
Thao and the Get Down Stay Down, We the Common
Wavves, Afraid of Heights

And I conciously avoided the new Jay Z album, since it has been years since Jay has had anything interesting enough to say to fill an album, the new Kanye, which has lyrics as terrible as the beats are great, and the new My Bloody Valentine, because I'm not shelling out twenty-six bucks to hear them do the same thing they were doing 22 years ago.