the replacements - let it be

(My farewell column for my college newspaper.)

I always imagined my last few weeks of college would be different.

In my mind, my remaining days would pass by in an introspective blur, my thoughts reaching back to all the memories I've made around campus in my four years here. In truth, the exact opposite is happening. I can't wait to get out of here, and I cringe thinking about all the embarrassing things I've said and done on all those regrettable weekend nights.

In that same vein, I feel no real desire to do this grandiose final column to sum up my time here or cement my legacy within the paper. (If the Rebecca Black column doesn't do that, nothing will.) Instead, I'm just going to write about my favorite album in the world and call it a day.

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Fun fact: “Let It Be” by the Beatles is the second best rock album entitled “Let It Be.” By a significant margin.

Aside from the fact that the Beatles' version is an incredibly mediocre effort, a Minneapolis punk band called the Replacements put out a record in 1984 that completely dwarfs it, along with pretty much everything else the Beatles ever did.

The Replacements were the last true “drugs, sex, and rock 'n roll” band, and they have the scars to prove it. The Replacements would play a song called “Beer For Breakfast,” then start their day out with vodka. They lived the life every rock band in the 1980s claimed to live, only they did it for real.

The quartet battled drug and alcohol addictions throughout the 1980s, and guitarist Bob Stinson died in 1995 by simply wearing his body out through drug use. This album catches the band between their early punk immaturity and the more grown-up college sound that would characterize their later albums, with both playing styles deeply affected by the substance abuse that permeated the band.

“Let It Be” is almost directly split between these two sounds. Childish songs like “Tommy Gets His Tonsils Out” and “Gary Got a Boner” are heavily contrasted by the emotional outpouring in “I Will Dare” and “Sixteen Blue,” effectively documenting those adolescent moments where you're not quite done being a kid, definitely not ready to be an adult, and desperately searching to make sense of everything around you.

For an album that will turn twenty-seven in October, this teenage concept holds up incredibly well. The inherent duality of adolescence rings true for any generation. Paul Westerberg's angst-ridden vocals, the best in rock 'n roll (save for the Boss), turn even the most lackluster lyrics into anthems. Every song is seemingly fueled by the very frustration and confusion Westerberg sings about, based off the same treacherous experiences that color everyone's teenage years, resulting in an album that anyone over the age of sixteen can relate to.

Given that I haven't matured that much since high school, this is clearly the album for me. I'd like to say my relationship dynamics have changed since I was sixteen, but they really haven't. The same old crap rears it's ugly head time after time, and luckily I'll always have “Let It Be” to make some sense of it.

- 4/26/11

warm-weather recommendations

As my work really started to pile up in the last few months, even my newspaper column started to take a dive. This one was completely phoned in, but I still stand by my recommendations, so here it is.

Just when you think the warm days are here for good, the cruel mistress that is Maryland weather gives us another stretch of rainy days. One gorgeous 85-degree day, then the same old gloomy cloudy awful days. Well, at least the snow's over with. (Probably).

In memory of that one delightful day of sunny awesomeness we got on Monday, I've decided to present of that warm-weather music I promised to write about way back in September. So without further ado, my spring recommendations:

Vivian Girls – Vivian Girls

This is the album I was personally blasting all day on Monday. Vivian Girls play delightful bubble gum pop at a blistering pace through a wall of feedback, resulting in what you could ultimately call “noise pop,” in the purest sense. It's nice, simple music at its core, but you can still rock out uncontrollably to it at any given time. Perfect music for those long, windows-down drives on the backroads off 140.

Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out

Seemingly-depressing album title aside, this is perfect music for just lounging around and enjoying a nice afternoon after class. There are a few upbeat tracks to pique your attention from time to time, but most of it is simply lush guitar melodies over perfect instrumentation, music to drift off and get lost to. One of my favorite albums from a band that's been making incredible music for twenty-five years.

Das Racist – Shut Up, Dude

Das Racist is frat-house hip-hop with brains. “Combination Pizza Hut and Taco Bell,” their most well-known song,” is an addictive slacker anthem that you'll be reciting in your mind for days on end the first time you hear it, and the album is chocked-full of similar hook-laden tracks. The lyrics have a Lil Wayne-esque random of quality—only they're actually really funny. I keep waiting for these guys to blow up, and it's bound to happen at some point.

The Beta Band – The Three E.P.'s

The Beta Band gained some notoriety from the movie High Fidelity, which used their song “Dry the Rain” in a classic record store scene, and this album is that song times twelve. Laid-back, trippy, hypnotic, funky—there's no way to properly describe the amount of sounds the Beta Band packed into this collection, and yet it's all still immediately accessible and instantly enjoyable. For my money, the best chill-out record ever made.

The Jesus and Mary Chain – Psychocandy

I'm well aware that I might be alone on this one, but hear me out. These guys invented the whole “playing doo-wop songs really loud with ridiculous amounts of feedback” that's become a genre in itself over the last decade. (Hell, Vivian Girls are a part of that very genre.) They aren't a Christian band, despite the title—they're more likely to sing about staying up all night on drugs than mentioning Jesus—but the music is so mind-meltingly loud that you can't tell anyway. There's something about spring that makes me want to here intolerable screeches of noise in my music. Maybe I'm just crazy.

Bunnygrunt – Jen-Fi

Yes, there is really a band called Bunnygrunt. And yes, they are as adorable as their name suggests. Allmusic famously dubbed them “the world's cutest band,” and numerous other publications have called their brand of music “cuddlecore.” The band hates the label (as they should), and besides, I wouldn't really call them the cutest band in the world. (That would have to go to The Boy Least Likely To.) In any case, these guys are a big ol' bundle of loveable fun, playing their sloppy brand of twee pop that's designed to make you go “aww.” Who could resist a song called “I Just Had Broken-Heart Surgery, Love Won't Bypass Me Again”?

- 4/12/11

the shaggs - philosophy of the world

Rock music is an endless parade of recycled riffs and stolen images that has been trudging on for nearly sixty years.  Everyone rips off everyone else.  The only real key to success is ripping off the right people, a fact that's been true since the birth of rock 'n roll itself.

Elvis Presley covered all the right delta blues singers, the Beatles copied the right Chuck Berry licks, Brian Wilson stole the right Phil Spector techniques—it's a time-honored, reliable tradition that has resulted in some of the greatest music ever made.

True originality, however, is incredibly rare, so much so that it can arguably be traced back to only a few dozen artists. While it's impossible to create art without being at least partially influenced by outside forces, this elite group of artists managed to contribute unique ideas to an art form so firmly rooted in its own past that it often seems to oppose progress of any kind.

Chuck Berry, Kraftwerk, Black Sabbath, James Brown, the Velvet Underground, the Stooges, Run-D.M.C., the Ramones, Bob Dylan—without artists like these, modern music as we know it would cease to exist.

Yet this accepted canon of legends is almost always missing one of the greatest bands in history, a group so monumentally groundbreaking that they were declared “Better Than the Beatles,” a group that rewrote the very rules of pop music and inspired legions of followers to demolish every possible musical boundary available.

The Shaggs.

Their story is truly mythic in its sweep.

Three sisters, Dot, Helen, and Betty Wiggin, created a rock band in New Hampshire at the urging of their father, Austin. Austin's mother had made three palmreading predictions when he was a teenager, claiming that he would marry a strawberry blonde woman, have two sons after her death, and start a band with his daughters. After he indeed married a strawberry blonde and had two sons, he decided to continue on and make the third premonition come true as well.

Austin promptly took his daughters out of school in 1968 and signed them up for music lessons, effectively making music their top priority without their consent. The daughters dutifully practiced their instruments, naming their band “The Shaggs” after both the “shag” hairstyle and shaggy dogs. After less than a year, Austin booked his daughters studio time, and Philosophy of the World was released to an unsuspecting world.

There has truly never been an album quite like Philosophy of the World, and there likely never will be again.

It is impossible to overstate how wonderful this album is. Every preconceived notion of rock music, everything that had been taken for granted by artists for decades, was thrown out the window on this record. A steady beat, in-tune guitars, proper harmony, established melodies—all concepts completely overthrown by a schoolgirl trio.

The Shaggs are at once horrifically dissonant and primitively beautiful. Their music is unlistenable by modern standards, lacking any of the comforts that simple song structure provides, yet their lyrics are wonderfully innocent, juxtaposed violently against the tense amusical noise spewing behind it.

“My Pal Foot Foot” ostensibly follows the tale of a missing dog named “Foot Foot,” who is found by the protagonist at the end of the song. (Or the dog died, depending on how you interpret the piece.) “Philosophy of the World” is a shockingly honest depiction of class warfare and the enormous social pressures we face every day, ending with the most honest line in the history of music: “You can never please anybody in this world.”

The album bounces between childish themes and surprisingly mature treatises on existence in an effortless fashion, effectively bringing us into the chaotic world of a Christian schoolgirl growing up in the 60s.Philosophy of the World is a snapshot in time, a perfect depiction of musical innocence created rather forcefully by Austin Wiggin.

In many respects, the Shaggs are simply the vehicle of Austin, much like Malcom McLaren took a bunch of scummy London kids off the street and formed the Sex Pistols to fulfill his punk fantasies. But just as the Sex Pistols grew into a monster even Malcom couldn't contain, the Shaggs have ceased to become a “rock band” in the image Austin wanted them to be.

Over time, they've become an embodiment of the otherness of rock 'n roll, the true freedom rock 'n roll always offered yet nobody quite took advantage of. It's more avant-garde than the Velvet Underground, more punk than the Ramones, and more poetic than Bob Dylan, on a level none of them could even fathom reaching.

Thankfully, numerous artists have taken up the challenge posed by the Wiggin sisters, including Frank Zappa, Kurt Cobain, Ida, Deerhoof, R. Stevie Moore, and countless other musicians working to further push the limits of this whole “rock music” that continues to exist in the Shaggs' shadow.

For the more daring among you, the “Better Than the Beatles” tag will ring loud and clear throughoutPhilosophy of the World. For others, this column will amount to nothing more than rock journalism at its worst. Which is sad, but understandable.

In time, however, you'll come to know the truth: “Yesterday” and “A Day in the Life” are good songs and all, but they really can't compare to “My Pal Foot Foot.”

- 4/5/11

sebadoh - live at the black cat, 3/26/11

I've been sympathetically described by my friends as “excruciatingly awkward.” I've been told I walk around like I'm completely lost, staring at the ground to avoid all possible eye-contact. I often daydream about building a teleportation device that would send me straight from my room to anywhere on campus, completely eliminating all unnecessary social interaction.

Naturally, I'm also a huge Lou Barlow fan.

Lou Barlow got his start playing in hardcore punk bands in the early 80s before joining the seminal alternative rock band Dinosaur Jr. with childhood friend J Mascis. After playing bass in Dinosaur Jr. for five years, the two had a legendary fallout, leading to Lou being fired in 1989. From there, Lou decided to focus on his solo career, recording noisy tracks under the name Sentridoh and reconnecting with an earlier side-project, entitled Sebadoh.

Barlow is a legend in the world of “lo-fi,” a genre characterized by rudimentary recording techniques and the use of four-track recorders. His songwriting is startling introspective, marked by deeply personal confessions and the stark display of his emotions and weaknesses. It's the kind of music you don't particularly want to be able to relate to, but once you can, it's an experience unlike any other.

This is loner music, through-and-through, made by a loner for loners. This is music for people who daydream about not having to talk to other people, like myself. So in proper fashion, I went to a Sebadoh concert on Friday alone, where I stood amongst other loners and sang songs with them about lost love and an increasingly fractured sense of self. An interesting experience, to the say the least.

Lou Barlow is exactly what I hope to be in twenty years. Who wouldn't want to be in their mid-forties playing loud, noisy, fun music for a living? Best of all, he's apparently managed to deal very well with his own personal awkwardness, something I struggle with constantly.

It was still there, noticeably apparent every time he pushed his bangs out of his face after songs and let them hang like a veil every time he launched into a brutally honest song about past relationships, but it was different. He had accepted it, made it a part of him, and even turned against his audience at times. (One interaction in particular stands out in my mind: “I love you Lou!” “Yes.”)

After playing thirty songs in incredibly frantic fashion, the band lumbered off the stage at the Black Cat, and I slowly made my back to the merch table to see what they had to offer. Lo and behold, none other than Lou Barlow was standing behind the ramshackle table selling t-shirts.

As I waited in line for my t-shirt, watching person and after person shake his hand and share some kind words, I was surprisingly calm. When I got to the table, I grabbed the t-shirt I wanted, gave him my money, shook his hand, and said the first thing that came to mind, which was probably the stupidest thing I could've possibly said:

“I've been a fan for a long time. Thank you.”

Two things to note there.

First, Sebadoh formed three years before I was born. Also, the albums they were touring to promote, Bakesale and Harmacy, came out when I was five and seven years old, respectively, and I didn't actually listen to them until I was almost out of high school. So the sight of a kid who must be like 16 years old telling him he'd “been a fan for a long time” must've been hilarious beyond words.

Second, I somehow managed to make that brief little exchange the most awkward experience of my entire life. I picked up a t-shirt, held out a twenty-dollar bill out in-front of me, and Lou stared at me like I was a crazy person. When he finally took the money, I reached out my hand to shake his, and he looked down at it like he had never shook anyone's hand in his entire life. When I spoke those unfortunate words, he smiled, nodded, and thanked me for thanking him. And then I walked away. It couldn't have been any worse.

It was only on my way home that I realized everything I should've said: “Bakesale and Harmacy and Sentridoh and your solo album all changed my life, your work with Dinosaur Jr. made we want to be a better bass player, and your bass line on 'In a Jar' is the absolute pinnacle of all recorded music.”

Oh well. Maybe next time.

- 3/29/11

rebecca black - friday

Being the Internet man-about-town I am has a number of advantages, including the ability to learn about the many monstrosities spawned by the Internet before they seep into mainstream culture. I've managed to avoid some of the worst evils the Internet has to offer, from Rickrolling to 2Girls1Cup, and I can now add “Friday” by Rebecca Black to that prestigious list.

The first time I heard about Rebecca Black, I was convinced she was just some sick joke cooked up as the feminine counterpart to Justin Beiber. Accompanying the generic picture of some 13 year-old brunette, I found some of the most inane lyrics ever formed with the English language, like something Ke$ha would freestyle from the inside of a toilet bowl after a three-day bender:

“Partyin’, partyin’ (Yeah) / Fun, fun, fun, fun / Lookin’ forward to the weekend.”

I had a laugh, looked at the endless stream of comments describing how unbelievably terrible it was, and went on with my life, never expecting to hear about it again.

That was Saturday, March 12^th, a day after a Tosh.0 blog post opened up the song up to an unknowing audience across the Internet. The video only had a few thousand views, and Internet was still at peace.

As of Monday night, Rebecca Black's official music video has over 30 million views.

Somehow, this cheesy pop song, autotuned to hell and back, written by a tiny L.A. record label and recorded for $2,000, has become a phenomenon that threatened to overshadow one of the deadliest natural disasters in human history.

That's the Internet for you.

Honestly, I've yet to listen to this song. I've been fighting against it for weeks—especially since last Friday, when the fervor surrounding the song reached truly unbearable levels.

As endless links of the song and its many covers blanketed Facebook news feeds worldwide, I stuck to my guns, refusing to listen to a song Yahoo! Music actually declared “the worst song ever.” But I fear my time has finally come.

I've made similar stands against obnoxious pop songs in the past—including “Whip My Hair,” Justin Beiber's “Baby,” and everything Ke$ha's ever done—but I eventually ended up listening to them all, somehow. (I heard “Baby” for the first time at a family barbeque last summer. I laughed until I cried, and then debated its artistic merits with by 10 year-old cousin for hours.)

As a (technical) member of the music press, I feel that it would be downright irresponsible of me not to listen to a song so culturally significant. So here goes: my immediate reaction to hearing “Friday” by Rebecca Black for the first time.

(Three minutes and forty-eight seconds later.)

Not gonna lie... I'm a little disappointed.

It was only slightly less grotesque than 2Girls1Cup (though just as hilarious), but honestly, my musical palette is more offended by the average Glee episode.

Maybe I'm just turning into a grumpy old man, but this just sounds like pop music to me. The vocals are worse than usual, and the video is a whole other level of bad I'm not comfortable with addressing in this forum, but the song itself is simplistic, fun, and almost catchy for a few brief seconds at a time.

Leave the kid alone. There is much, much worse music out there. “Friday” is easily better than “TiK-ToK,” and judging by her unplugged performance on ABC News, she's already infinitely more talented than Ke$ha is.

If you really have that much personal hate for a 13 year-old singing a song about “lookin' forward to the weekend,” then you have a blackness to your soul that even I cannot begin to comprehend.

Let's be clear here: this is a terrible, terrible song, without a doubt. But it's inherently terrible.

To call it “the worst song ever” is completely missing its true nature. This is art circumventing the very definitions of art itself, vaulting itself into a level of intellectual brilliance so lofty that only the most truly unhinged fans of music, people completely free of all artistic, critical, and musical limitations, can appreciate it.

Critics around the world are tearing this song to pieces, just as they once ravaged Bitches Brew, Led Zeppelin, The Velvet Underground & Nico, and countless other works that were ahead of their time. No surprise there. But unlike my aging brethren, I'm not in the business of prematurely rejecting art I simply can't comprehend.

“Friday” will be hailed for generations to come as the breakout song of the “post-good” artistic movement, which will be carried on by the likes of Lil B, BrokeNCYDE, and the Black Eyed Peas in complete and unrelenting opposition to all critical forces that renounce them.

They will one day be recognized as the triumphant new carriers of the Dada torch, using it to burn everything in their path and build a new creative landscape where the old world once stood, enshrining their limitless musical forms as a model to wave after wave of bright young talent eager to break barriers where no previous barriers stood.

And I will be right beside them, championing them until my last breath.

“I don't want this weekend to end...”

- 5/1/11

music and i

For most of my life, I thought I was insane. At least a little.

Ever since I was a kid, I never knew anyone who listened to music the way I did. I would listen to bands no one else liked, take in huge amounts of strange music whenever I could, and never seemed to be able to connect with anybody when it came to the music I loved.

My idea of a fun afternoon was sitting in my living room surrounded by my mom and dad's CD collections, listening to hundreds of artists I'd never heard before, and building up a collection of random music knowledge that impressed no one beyond a few uncles who were amused that I knew Bono's real name.

Up until I decided to come to the Mount, I still thought I was crazy. I would occasionally find friends who would be able to tolerate some of my music, but even then I knew they were just humoring me. I was alone and crazy, and I had accepted it.

Then, the summer before my freshman year, a funny thing happened.

I attended Virgin Fest at the Pimlico Race Course in July, where I would see the Beastie Boys, LCD Soundsystem, Peter Bjorn & John, the Fratellis, Modest Mouse, and a handful of other bands. (Unfortunately I could only afford a ticket for the first day, so I missed an even better lineup on day two.)

I brought my friend Mandy with me because of one more band that was playing that day: Incubus, her favorite band in the world.

While we were in the crowd waiting for that band, she took off into the mass of people in front of us, weaving herself between impossibly small gaps to get closer to the stage, completely losing me in the process. So while she took off, I stood helplessly in the middle of the crowd.

The high point came not from the band itself, but from a remarkably small woman who pushed her way through the masses and found a spot directly in front of me.

After a few minutes, I noticed she was taking frantic notes on a small pad of paper, with a professional label on the top that said “Spin Magazine.” Which happened to be my favorite music magazine at the time, and still is to this day.

I was apparently staring pretty intently at this discovery, because she turned around and took notice. After a brief conversation, she too turned and headed up toward the stage.

At that point, I already knew that music journalism was what I wanted to do, without a doubt in my mind. So when I got back home later that night, I looked up the Spin writer who covered Incubus at the festival and sent her a sprawling email asking what I should do to basically get her job.

To my surprise, she wrote back, with a surprisingly extensive response. In her email, she recommended that I get a few anthologies by a guy named Lester Bangs, who I had only known at that point as a character from Almost Famous. Apparently he was a real guy.

So I bought the first two books I could find, but I never found time to read them until college. Three pages into the anthology “Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung,” I realized I wasn't crazy.

It was as if someone had tapped into my manic relationship with music and put it down on paper.

“It's not exactly that records might unhinge the mind, but rather that if anything is going to drive you up the wall it might as well be a record. Because the best music is strong and guides and cleanses and is life itself.”

Those might as well have been my exact words. For once I wasn't alone. A chance encounter with a Spin writer in the crowd of an Incubus performance lead me to pure enlightenment.

From there my musical appetite became truly insatiable. And today I have a music library of 30,000+ songs, with an ever-expanding list of 250+ bands I still hope to listen to at some point before I die, and a music column that is completely indebted to those anthologies that random writer told me to buy.

The oddness of that whole experience hit me in full today as I sat down trying to figure out what to write about this week, so I decided to share it with you all. I hope you enjoyed it.

- 3/1/11

radiohead - the king of limbs

Radiohead really outdid themselves this time.

Thom Yorke and the gang emerged from four years of relative silence with a surprise statement last week, announcing the release of a new album, entitled “The King of Limbs.” A release date was set for February 19^th, and the Internet roared with rumors and speculation as to what the album would be like.

Then, out of nowhere, the band made the album available on their website a day early, with zero warning or advance notice. Everyone in the world—fans, journalists, critics, and friends—was delivered the album at the exact same time, an achievement that is simply unprecedented in the age of digital music.

Album releases are no longer tense, anticipatory events. Everything gets leaked before its release date—absolutely everything—except for Radiohead albums. A combination of a tight production team, near-immediate releases of digital copies, and the delayed production of easily-leaked physical copies ensured that King of Limbs was available to fans worldwide at the exact same time, an achievement that's nothing short of incredible.

And for all that hype surrounding the album, fans worldwide experienced the same disappointment at the exact same time: eight tracks, totaling just over thirty-seven minutes of music. It was the shortest Radiohead album in their career, by five minutes, and it felt even shorter. To even call it an album is an overstatement.

As I attempt to write about the King of Limbs, I'm struggling to find a real precedent for what happened over the last seven days. For Radiohead fans, it's been absolute joy, followed by incredible anticipation, followed by total shock, followed by immense disappointment, followed by complete denial. It's hard to remember the last time a piece of music garnered this much attention while delivering so little on the immense hype placed behind it.

It's a good album, possibly even a great one, but it doesn't rank up among Radiohead's best work. It can be best described as a more melodic version of Kid A, with the rampant experimental instrumentation from In Rainbows carried over—only without the songwriting. You reach the end of the album, and you can't help but want more. It feels empty, like someone over at Radiohead HQ only included half the album in the digital download by accident.

The cult-like Radiohead fanbase has been trying to fill that emptiness ever since. Rumors continue to swirl regarding a secret second-half of the album, or even a few bonus tracks, but so far nothing has emerged (as of press time). The signs are everywhere, however, and it's hard not to buy into the conspiracy theories at least a little.

The digital downloads for the King of Limbs were given order numbers, all of which start with “TKOL-1,” leading many fans to believe that a second release—presumably “TKOL-2”—is waiting to be unleashed upon the world. Further evidence for this lies in the fact that the last Radiohead album, In Rainbows, was released in 2007 with a bonus disc of ten additional songs.

The final track on the album is entitled “Separator,” and contains the lyric “If you think this is over, you're wrong,” both leading fans to believe the album is incomplete. Even more interestingly, the track was titled “Mouse Dog Bird” in its live form, with the name changed just for the album. (The lyric in question was also included in the live version, however.)

The main problem fans have with the King of Limbs, however, is the fact that Radiohead has a lot of music leftover. And I mean a lot.

A good friend of mine who eats, sleeps, and breathes Radiohead estimates that the band has fourteenunreleased songs that are complete or nearly complete, yet they're nowhere to be seen. And that's just what we've heard. After four years of recording, there has to be more.

He also claims to have inside sources of his own who have been vaguely hinting at bigger things to come, and adds that the fact that Radiohead has yet to give interviews regarding the album means they're probably not done yet.

I'm still cautiously optimistic that we'll hear more from Radiohead in the coming weeks. Until then, I'm hesitant to pass full judgment on the King of Limbs. If this is really all we're getting, then at the very least it's impossible not to be disappointed. But I'm still patiently waiting.

- 2/21/11

Note: This may look ridiculous now, given the fact that the mystical TKOL-2 never showed up, but I still think this remains a fairly accurate description of the initial reactions to the album.

arcade fire wins a grammy; eminem fans shocked, confused

It's very rare that Rosie O'Donnell says anything that connects even remotely with mainstream society. Her career can be effectively divided between being the crazy lady with a talk show and being the crazy lady who got kicked off a crazy lady daytime talk-show for being too crazy. But her post-Grammy's tweet regarding the Album of the Year award effectively summarized the reactions of much of the viewing public:

“album of the year? ummm never heard of them ever” [sic].

The recipient of the Album of the Year Grammy was Arcade Fire, an indie rock band from Montreal.

From my perspective, these guys are seasoned veterans of the modern music scene. They started out as a solo act, headed by current lead songwriter Win Butler, and slowly grew over time into a sprawling seven-piece band, not counting whoever they decided to bring with them on tour.

They retain their “indie” moniker due to their placement on the (sort of) independent label Mirge Records, but their last two albums have debuted at number one and number two on the Billboard 200, respectively, which is not very “indie.” These guys have sold millions of albums, toured the world countless times, headlined dozens of music festivals, and effectively become a household name among music fans.

Yet for some reason, the backlash against them winning that award was so huge, it prompted the creation of its own Tumblr account to document it—whoisarcadefire.tumblr.com. Here are some of the better entries, largely taken from Twitter and Facebook, all reprinted verbatim from public accounts:

“It's a weird world we live in where someone called Arcade Fire can win a Grammy n Justin Beiber doesn't!”

“The Grammy's are fixed, like straight up; how are all these nobody's winning? And why is everyone from Arcade Fire hideously ugly? #appalled”

“THE 80'S ARE OVER PPL ROCK IS NOT COOL ANYMORE!!!!!!! Eminem so shuda won! None of this band's songs even got on the top 100 and eminem was #1 for like two months! I wudda been happy with lady gaga or Katy Perry cuz they DESERVE IT!”

These entries go on and on, with many containing a simple misunderstanding among Justin Beiber, Lady Gaga, and Eminem fans that I'd like to clear up here: Arcade Fire is not a hipster band.

They used to be. I mean their hipsterdom used to be off the charts.

For the recording of their second album, “Neon Bible,” they took an abandoned church that was being used as a café and turned it into a studio. They were that level of hipster.

But then they had the number two album in the country, and other people started to listen to them, and they played live with David Bowie, and they used their best song to promote “Where the Wild Things Are”—just a string of events that made them completely not hip.

I haven't even heard their new album yet, “The Suburbs.” That's how unhip they are right now. I considered reviewing it for the column this week, but then I remembered that it went number one in seven different countries and won a Grammy for Album of the Year, so...ew, no.

The term “indie rock” implies that they are signed to an independent label, which is a big no-no right there. If you aren't recording your music through a cheap laptop or your dad's old beat-up eight-track, you're not a hipster band.

No one actually produces their music officially anymore. If it's not on CD-R or cassette without the band name on the front, I don't even bother listening to it. These guys actually have covers on their albums—how retro!

All the good hipster acts these days are nothing but drugged-up surf punk rock played way too loud with tons of feedback. If you can actually hear the individual instruments in your recordings—not to mention if you use instruments that aren't drums, guitars or synths—you don't stand a chance.

So for everybody claiming that this is a “hipster band,” or that “Pitchfork followers needs to find a new idol now,” don't worry: we've had our replacement for Arcade Fire for years. You'll probably hear about them when the public catches up in a few years and starts giving them awards too, but for now...it's probably too deep for you to really get, so don't bother.

- 2/15/11

the 2011 super bowl halftime show

Super Bowl halftime shows have traditionally been studies in mediocrity. Washed up musicians, poor choreography, and lame effects, all packed together into a remarkably unentertaining fifteen minutes of entertainment. It's like a car crash you can't turn away from, only someone paid millions of dollars to make it happen.

This year, we were blessed with the presence of the Black Eyed Peas, a group that has managed to go from a pretty well-respected '90s hip hop group to one of the biggest jokes in music over the course of their thirteen year career. They're an unholy mess of generic hooks, autotuned vocals, and soulless performances that has sold upwards of 27 million albums in the last ten years.

It was a safe choice for the NFL, one that surprised absolutely no one when it was announced, yet their appearance did mark one important halftime show milestone: it was the first time since 2004 that someone with breasts performed on the main stage.

It's remarkable how sterile the NFL has managed to make the Super Bowl halftime show over the last decade.

In the wake of the “wardrobe malfunction” that exposed a minute fraction of the female body to the world in 2004, rocking American values to their very core in the process, headliners were limited to washed up male musicians with a low probability of getting naked in the course of their show. The biggest performance venue in the history of mankind was reduced to a vessel for aging rock stars looking to reclaim their old glories.

So when the Black Eyed Peas took the stage on Sunday, lowered from the rafters clad in some kind of futuristic space outfits, they were downright edgy.

There was a woman singing, they played songs written in the 21^st century, there were people in spandex covered in neon lights—it was like someone had transported the Super Bowl forty years into the future, a refreshing change from the stale shows of the past.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not defending the Black Eyed Peas. Far from it. I just believe that the Super Bowl halftime show should be a snapshot of music from the time, not a sexless attempt to appease conservative Americans with stars from their childhood.

The halftime shows we remember are ones that showcased popular acts of the time: New Kids on the Block in 1991, Michael Jackson in 1993, N*Sync in 2001, and yes, Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake in 2004. As terrible as New Kids on the Block were, their performance is infinitely more memorable than anything some classic rock band can pull off thirty years past their prime.

Even though the Black Eyed Peas are staggeringly terrible musicians who continue to destroy the face of pop music with reckless abandon, I'm glad they were picked in place of another throwaway act.

Twenty years from now, I'll still remember the neon dancers, the terrible high school talent show choreography, and the fact that will.i.am's monotone chanting in “I Gotta Feeling” was somehow autotuned, because that all sadly reflects the state of pop music today. And I'd still take that any day over listening to Roger Daltrey try to sing again.

- 2/8/11

the art of going to concerts alone

There's nothing more unnatural than going to a concert by yourself.

Concerts by their very nature are social events, a mass gathering of people coming together for the sole purpose of watching an artist perform their art. Every good concert has a way of bringing the crowd together as a whole, so that random strangers within the crowd become best friends for a short few hours, yet there is no feeling better than sharing that experience with someone you already know.

Sadly, this is an experience I've become more and more unaccustomed to as I get older.

It's not that I want to go to concerts alone. Quite the opposite, really. If I could talk every friend I have into going to every concert I went to, I would. My problem is that I can't even talk one person into going with me these days.

I'm a weird guy, but it's not like I don't have friends. They all just hate my music.

It's hard to blame them, really. Just listen to some descriptions of the last few bands I saw alone:

“Deerhunter is an experimental noise rock band from Atlanta, fronted by the compellingly odd singer Bradford Cox. Cox is a striking on-stage presence: the exceedingly skinny 6'4" lead singer has Marfan syndrome, a genetic disorder of the connective tissue that gives him abnormally long and spindly limbs.”

“The Japanese musical group Boris are as prolific as they are experimental. They are known to regularly switch musical genres between albums, drawing from a wildly diverse variety of musical styles including psychedelic rock, punk, sludge, doom metal, drone, pop, noise, shoegaze, ambient, and more.”

“By turns cuddly and chaotic, San Francisco's Deerhoof mix noise, sugary melodies, and an experimental spirit into sweetly challenging and utterly distinctive music.”

Aside from the odd “deer” element found in two of the band names, these bands have little in common.

The first two bands put on incredible shows, some of the best I've seen in a long time, yet I saw them by myself. For some reason people are freaked out by terms like “experimental noise rock” and “Japanese doom metal,” yet I bought tickets to these shows immediately.

The last band I haven't seen yet, because they aren't performing until Monday, February 7^th. At 7 pm. At the 9:30 Club. For $15.

(Spoiler alert: this column is a thinly veiled attempt to get someone to go to this concert with me.)

Even if I do end up going to this show alone too, it won't be that bad, because I won't really be alone. The 9:30 Club will be filled with kids that night who went by themselves. We're not loners, we just have better taste in music than you all do.

Just kidding. Well, sort of.

It's a testament to the incredible power of live music that people like me are willing to stand by themselves in a crowd of people, silently swaying or screaming at the top of their lungs or running around in a circle randomly hitting strangers. You know, whatever the situation calls for.

The next time you go to a concert (which could be this Monday, wink-wink), take a moment and look around. You'll see us—the people there for the music, and only the music. Come and over and say hi, we'll appreciate it.

- 2/1/11

Note: A review of the concert I was alluding to can be found here.

Double note: The picture up top is of me talking to Beth from Times New Viking in Dublin. It's not really appropriate for this story. I just wanted to brag.

justin timberlake - justified

I tend to hold some strange opinions when it comes to music. I think ABBA is awesome. I think the Rolling Stones made better music than the Beatles (though the Beatles were clearly the better band). I own and cherish hour-long bootleg recordings of a single Japanese man throwing planes of glass at audience members in a small Tokyo club in the 80's.

I also think Justin Timberlake recorded one of the best pop albums of all-time back in 2002.

Let me just start by saying that this is not another joke column, like the Taylor Swift review from a few months back. I really think Justified is a fantastic album.

Somewhere, deep down inside my cold musical heart, I've always known this to be true. But I was reminded of this fact over winter break, when JT's Saturday Night Live appearance from 2003 showed up on my family's TiVo back home.

I was struck by two things from that episode. First, Justin Timberlake is really funny. Most SNL guests are just unbearably awkward within the live sketch format, but Timberlake fits seamlessly into the whole show, getting some serious laughs in nearly every sketch he's in.

Second, Justin Timberlake actually made some really, really good music back in the day.

Watching his performances, it reminded me just how musical his songs really are. I know that sounds really stupid, but hear me out.

Take a song like “Cry Me a River.” You know it and love it, no matter what you try to say. The complexity of that song, from beat to melody to vocals to effects, is unheard of in modern pop music. The chorus is instantly memorable, and, coupled with the tabloid drama that shaped it, is a surprisingly emotional piece of music.

“Señorita,” “Rock Your Body,” “Like I Love You”—every single off of Justified has those same levels of catchiness, depth, and musicality that adds up to some of the finest pop made in a long, long time. Place any of those songs next to the latest Ke$ha or Lady Gaga hit, and I'm sorry, there's just no comparison.

The thing people seem to forget, however, is that Justin Timberlake has nothing to do with how good his songs are. Just like Britney Spears probably heard “Hold It Against Me” for the first time when she went in the studio to record the vocals.

Justified is a classic example of a stellar performance artist being buoyed wholly by the music of people much more talented than he is. It's a time-tested tradition that has unequivocally resulted in some of the greatest music of the 20^th century.

Justified represents one of the last great studio efforts in this classic tradition. This album is purely the work of the Neptunes and Timbaland. Justin is just the pretty face on the front of it all.

But thanks to Lady Gaga, Ke$ha, Katy Perry, and every other trashy post-crunk pop star, we'll probably never experience another album like Justified.

All you need to make a hit song anymore is a tight melody and a random hook. “California Girls,” “Tik-Tok,” “Hold It Against Me,” “Dynamite,” and every other popular song that came out in the last few years were all produced by the same two people: Dr. Luke and Benny Blanco. You've probably never heard of them, but they've made obscene amounts of money by producing the same exact song, over and over and over, each one one becoming inexplicably popular with absolutely no one noticing what they're doing. And it's killing pop music in the process.

We're at a point where real instrumentation sounds out of place on pop radio. It's all synths and auto-tunes mashed together to make something loud that you can dance to, with some talentless figurehead put in front of it. Most of the tracks on Justified sound downright revolutionary compared to every Ke$ha song I've ever heard.

When someone like me is actually getting nostalgic for Justin Timberlake, something is clearly wrong with the world.

- 1/24/11