Janet Jackson Gets Her “Due”

According to the New York Times, Janet Jackson has been unjustly deprived of accolades and esteem because of the scandalous event known as “nipplegate” in which a piece of her wardrobe fell away from her breast while Justin Timberlake was trying to put it back during a performance at the Superbowl in 2004.

No– the act was Justin Timberlake pulling the wardrobe away from her breast.  But what was supposed to happen– after the audience got their titillation out of the way– was that the pulled away fabric would just reveal more fabric.

The Superbowl is already a triviality, a monument to nothingness, a mammoth orgy of absurdly boring sport and vulgarity.   The half-time performances are already obscene: most artists lip-sync and gyrate to inane pop inanities while tanned boobie commentators ravish them with praise.

The song Janet Jackson and Justin Timberlake was performing was about getting somebody naked.  Why was that acceptable but the real thing was not?  Because there is nothing in the world more appealing to hypocrites than titillation– literally!  The enjoyment of things they believe to be taboo without the actual thing.  Janet Jackson’s sin was that for a brief moment she dispelled the illusion that millions of viewers thinking deeply about tits would be exposed as actually thinking deeply about tits.  The secret about “nipplegate” is that the real offense was exposing just how dirty America’s minds really are.  Someone will have to be crucified in order to expunge this dirty secret and restore middle-America’s sense of respect and decency!  I will not tolerate a naked breast on tv!  I am a moral person!  But, go ahead and dance and wiggle your clothed hips and sing about getting naked– I love it– but I am a decent, moral person who will only vote for non-outed political candidates.

Was there “blame”?  What are you talking about?  They were doing exactly what the audience wanted.  The costumes, the lyrics, the gyrations, the rhythm– all were aimed at creating the largest sense of arousal possible while pretending to be enjoying the music and the artistry– and the sport– instead.

Shunned because of “nipplegate”?  I am astonished that anyone really cares about the wardrobe malfunction, for many reasons:

  • it was trivial– there is nothing horrifying about the human body, to children or adults;
  • Janet Jackson is trivial: there is not, among her products, not a single performance of anything, that matters in any sense: she is merely a pop artist of no particular originality or insight;
  • attributing indifference to an artist who is a woman and black can’t always be blamed on the fact that she is a woman and black: for heaven’s sake, she never was or is anything other than a pop artist of mediocre achievements;
  • how did she get to be an artist in the first place?  Did someone in the music industry notice this very talented singer somewhere and decide she should be a star?  Or, could she have had some privileged connections?  Do you need to ask?
  • Even Janet Jackson, or mediocre artistic achievement, deserves better than to be treated like that for a trivial indiscretion, even if it was intentional or her fault.

The Bush Administration tried to punish CBS for not preventing the mishap.  Last I heard, the courts had thrown out the case.

Scary Songs: Galway to Graceland

This Song by Richard Thompson.

These lines:

They came in the thousands
From the whole human race
To pay their respects at his last resting place

I have always had a bit of contempt for Elvis.  I grew up in the 1960’s (born in 1956) and Elvis, to me, was a mere pop artist, a performer of other peoples’ songs, a teen idol, and a ridiculously bad actor.  By the time I was 12, I was listening to Bob Dylan, Simon & Garfunkel, and had just been introduced to Leonard Cohen’s brooding debut album, “Songs of Leonard Cohen”.  I loved poetry, and songwriters.  I loved the lyrics of “Like a Rolling Stone”, “Homeward Bound”, “Suzanne”.   Elvis, in comparison, seemed trite.  Elvis, in comparison, was trite.

The Beatles began to earn my respect with “Rubber Soul”;  clearly influenced by Dylan, songs like “Girl” and “Norwegian Wood” showed a growing artistic maturity that Elvis never evidenced.  Elvis, by this time, was playing Las Vegas, a monument to crass consumerism and treacly kitsch.  He was singing “My Way”, the consummate boring establishment hymn to self-sufficiency and arrogance.

That hasn’t changed a lot.  His body of work still seems trite to me.  And the massive public adoration, to me, is a testimony to his insignificance: the majority of people are superficial and easily led and manipulated.  Elvis was the product of the “star-maker machinery” and never transcended that existence.  He became rich– though his managers and agents siphoned off most of his fortune– and built a mansion and drove a Cadillac and surrounded himself with parasites and embraced all the worst symbols of capitalist privilege.  Some biographers find it tragic that he continued to perform long after his health began to fail.  He continued to perform because he was stupid and greedy.

He died, appropriately enough, on the toilet, exerting himself against massive constipation, tanked to the gills with prescription drugs, which one doctor said he prescribed to him in order to keep him away from illicit drugs.  On the toilet, he had a heart attack and fell forward.  He weighed 158 kilograms (350 pounds).  Even more ridiculous than Elvis himself, is the weird regard in which fans consider his last fatal moments.

His only Grammy awards were, weirdly, in the category of gospel.  The man famous for arousing the sexual desire of millions of young women, only received awards for hymns to the almighty.  I thought that was trivial too.  And ridiculous– what does a man like that really believe about God and religion?  What does it say about God and religion that it meant so much to a man like Elvis, who bought more than 100 Cadillacs in his lifetime and wore religious jewelry because he thought it might, in a pinch, ensure his salvation?

I’m not sure what Richard Thompson thinks of Elvis.  (I just found– to my shock– that Nick Cave, for example, is a fan of “Superstar” by the Carpenters, and “To Love Somebody” by the BeeGees, two of the most anemic pop hits ever recorded).    I’m not even sure– given this song– what he thinks of Elvis’ fanatical followers: he’s too good of a songwriter to lay it on thick.  If anything, he seems sympathetic, if you ignore the subtleties.  But she puts on a pink dress as if she was young again (which makes her seem ridiculous in the imagination) and she is clearly delusional (she thinks she’s married to Elvis)  and, finally, they have to drag her away.

All right– maybe that’s not so subtle.

In 2019, we are confronted with large numbers of peoples denying that global warming is real, embracing Donald Trump and Brexit and neo-fascism and every idiocy imaginable– the thousands from the whole human race.  They are frightening.  They adore Elvis and their massive pick-up trucks and their guns and ATVs and lottery tickets and beer.  “Deplorable” is not the right word for them: it suggests we expect better of them.   But Trump and Fox News have convinced them that their ill-formed conceptions of the world are true and right and deserve to prevail in the political sphere, and that complex information that confuses them is fake.  They are convinced that those intellectual elites who used to be deferred to because they were intellectual elites are only out to trick them out of their pick-up trucks and guns and Elvis and even their genders.

 

 

Autotune Your Brain

David Draiman is a classically trained singer and has an amazing sound and range. Disturbed is a phenomenal metal band. Really enjoyed your take on his performance. David was actually under the weather for this performance and yes the producers added autotune without him wanting it. He never uses it. He was irked.

The above comment appears below a lovely Youtube video of vocal coach Tara Simon analyzing Disturb’s performance of “The Sound of Silence” on Conan.

I naturally suspect Draiman’s comments a little– who wants it to be known that they asked for Autotune– but it’s believable, and his performance is extraordinary.  And Tara Simon’s skill is extraordinary: she spotted the Autotune immediately.

Why would anyone enjoy listening to a performer who cheats?

Well, why do San Francisco Giant fans still lionize Barry Bonds?  Because humans have an endless capacity for self-delusion.  We love what we see and hear and we want to believe it is real and we really don’t want to know if it’s not.

That why we would not enjoy a race between a motorcyclist and a bicyclist.  Not because we’re smart enough to realize that it isn’t a real race: but because it is obvious that it is not.  We can’t pretend the motorcyclist won because he was more fit, or more beautiful, or more virtuous: we cannot pretend that he didn’t cheat.

But if we saw a race between two bicyclists and one of them crushed the other, we wouldn’t want to know that he had an electronic motor and batteries hidden in the bike’s frame.

Did Dolores O’Riordan know about Autotune?  Her live performances with the Cranberries are among the worst I’ve ever seen of a well-known band.  That said, I would still rather watch her blunder her way through “Linger” honestly than hear a pristine, perfect fake version with Autotune.

Do you listen to CBC radio in the afternoon on your way home from work?  Virtually everything they play now is what I call factory-pop.  Fake beat, fake tone, fake instruments, and fake (Autotuned) voice.   It is shit.

 

Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury was a very talented singer and performer.  He is ranked 18th on Rolling Stone’s roster of great rock singers.

Seriously: 18th.  Behind Bob Dylan.  Behind John Lennon.  Robert Plant?

(Ahead of Van Morrison???  Way ahead of Art Garfunkel and Tom Waits???  It’s a strange list.  I love Bob Dylan, but number 7 on this list?  And if Dylan is 7th, why is Bono 32nd and  Neil Young 37th?  What really is the criteria here?   It appears to be a mix-up and random blend of “greatest vocalist” and “greatest artist”.  Is Mick Jagger really a better singer than Janis Joplin or Nina Simone?)

All right– he did have a good voice.

A research team undertook a study in 2016 to understand the appeal behind Mercury’s voice.[39] Led by Professor Christian Herbst, the team identified his notably faster vibrato and use of subharmonics as unique characteristics of Mercury’s voice, particularly in comparison to opera singers, and confirmed a vocal range from F#2 to G5 (just over 3 octaves) but were unable to confirm claims of a 4-octave range.  (Wikipedia)

So it must be conceded that technically he had a terrific voice, a terrific instrument at his command.  What did he do with it?

So, quick, name one of his songs that really mattered.

Me neither.

Let’s be clear here: people who regard Queen as a great band will cite “We Are the Champions” as one of the greatest rock recordings of all time.  If you are in that camp, I am talking a foreign language to you.  How can “Bohemian Rhapsody” not be one of the great songs of all time?  It’s epic.  No, it’s not even a great song.  It’s not even in the same league as “Anchorage” by Michelle Shocked, or “Homeward Bound” or “The Boxer” or “Like a Rolling Stone” or “Tangled up in Blue” or “Thunder Road”.

Gosh, Elizabeth Taylor and Liza Minnelli both attended his 20th April 1992 tribute concert.  Both of them!

What he did do was kill several people by refusing to accept the diagnoses of AIDS, and refusing to disclose to his numerous sexual partners that he probably had it.

When asked whether he altered his behavior, Freddie responds, “Darling, fuck it, I’m doing everything with everybody.”  Poz

He also refused to “come out”.  Not that anyone has a duty of any sort to “come out”, but it would have been honorable for him to do it at the time of the AIDS epidemic, to do what he could to increase public awareness of the issue and help those lobbying for more funding for research and treatment.  Unfortunately, he appears to have been more concerned about selling records and tv appearances and not offending his family than about the lives of other gay men.

Was that his worst sin?  Or was inflicting “we will, we will, rock you” upon millions of sports fans even worse.  Or “we are the champions”.  Or– please– “Another One Bites the Dust”.  And another one.  And another one.  And another one.  Seriously, folks, it’s a insecticide commercial gone bad.  Really bad.

Or, worst of all, “Bohemian Rhapsody”, an absolute marvel of inane kitch which they never could perform live, because that would have really required musical gifts beyond Freddie Mercury’s grasp (they cheated with tapes of the choral and other parts).   I mean, obviously it could have been performed live, but it would have required a choir and more musicians and– here is the crucial part– that would have diluted the attention paid to Freddie.

NME rightly called it “a masterful, if ludicrous, six-minute suite of operatic cock-rock about a lad who’s killed someone, sold his soul to Beelzebub and wants to know if Scaramouche can do the Fandango”.  Well, I’m not sure about “masterful”.  It was really produced by a bunch of engineers in a studio.  It’s not hard, apparently, to convince people that there is something brilliant about that but surely a lot of those people were disappointed when they saw Queen live and they couldn’t do their most famous opera.

The Allure of Nostalgia

From a viewer of this video.

Seems like yesterday I was in my 20’s listening to this Goddess on the radio for the first time, driving around in my Toyota pick up to meet a date. The 90’s… it… life, was so simple. Life was just easier, I had the world at my fingertips, I could have done anything I set my mind to. I had it made, I just didn’t realize it then. What happened? College, career, marriage, loved ones passing on, kids… Divorce. Hair turned white, joints ache when it rains… LOL! Now, I’m looking at retirement in the next few years and relocating South, single again. Where the hell did the time go?? I wish I could start over, go back in time, go back in my old truck, hearing her on the radio for the first time. Sometimes we don’t appreciate the simple things in life or realize how good we have it. Life goes so fast. Appreciate the good moments and people in your life… as nothing lasts forever.

I thought it was a moving post.  Not especially eloquent but heart-felt, by someone who was obviously moved by this old video of Hope Sandoval performing this simmering, heated, intimate ballad, offering, in a sense, to “fade into you”, to commit everything she has to a man or woman who absorbs her.

It’s a fantasy, of course.  Here’s it’s evil twin, and a song that is truly one of the greatest pop songs of all time: Leslie Gore singing the scariest love song ever: “You Don’t Own Me”.  Listen to that thundering piano at the beginning: the sound of impending doom (to the boy she is singing to).  I don’t need you.  I am completely self-sufficient and autonomous.  If I hang out with you, it will be purely by my choice, and when I choose otherwise, I will walk away without a second thought.

You Don’t Have to Put out the Red Light

No matter how desperately you try to imbue the form with substance and meaning and importance, a musical is still just a musical: a ridiculously implausible, trivial, trite, and boring art form.

So with all the raves “Hamilton” received, I think I kind of thought Lin Manuel Miranda was different.  That, like the creators of “Cabaret”, he had found a way to integrate the form into a serious drama with real art to it.  Sadly, I now know that Miranda’s models, his ideals, include “The Little Mermaid”, and “Chicago” and “Moulin Rouge” and “The Bandwagon” and– god help us– Jim Henson’s “Labyrinth”, which I believe is one of the worst movies ever made.  Let me emphasize: it is extremely difficult to reconcile the acclaim given to “Hamilton” with it’s creator’s fondness for one of the worst fantasies, with the worst script, and the most inept direction, ever perpetrated on the screen.

I grew up ridiculing musicals, for obvious reasons: people sing to each other, accompanied by invisible orchestras and choirs, in the middle of what otherwise appears to be a realistic drama.  (The “Wizard of Oz” is different: it is a fantasy set in a fantasy world– it makes “sense” to establish ridiculousness as part of the fantasy landscape.)  But there is more to it than that: most musicals had plot lines that made situation comedies like “My Mother the Car” seem plausible and richly developed.  It seemed to me that the art form itself, the musical, was hospitable to the most heavy-handed, clumsy, contrived expression imaginable.

Just to confirm my views, both “Mary Poppins” and “West Side Story” dubbed the voices of the stars.  I mean, all musicals are dubbed anyway (the songs are recorded in the studio and then lip-synched in front of the cameras).  What kind of artist would use the body of one actress and the voice of another?  The same kind of artistic imagination that would use a drum machine (and today, believe me, they do and they are).

I do not anticipate great things from Miranda.  I think his current projects reveal that “Hamilton” was a bit of a fluke.

 

Your Perfect Body

“Suzanne” by Leonard Cohen.

I was brought up in a pretty traditional Christian environment that regarded all sexual desire outside of marriage as pernicious. You could be a good Christian or you could be a slave to earthly desires, but you couldn’t be both.

Then one of my older brothers brought “Songs of Leonard Cohen”, Leonard Cohen’s first album, into the house.   I have no idea why I put it on ever but I did.  And I was mesmerized by the entire album but especially “Suzanne”. The first verse is about desire: Suzanne takes you down to her place by the river and feeds you tea and oranges and gets you on her wavelength and so on. I got it. Then the second verse: Jesus was a sailor when he walked upon the water… and when he knew for certain only drowning men could see him, he said all men shall be sailors then until the sea shall free them. Cohen linked the two, the fact that only “drowning” men could really grasp the spiritual significance of his “lonely wooden tower”, and that this drowning was linked to being immersed in Suzanne’s seductive “tea and oranges”, in her “wavelength”.  That blew my mind.  This was a Jesus I had never heard of at church or Saturday morning bible school.  What was he doing in a song about “Suzanne”, a strange woman who lived near the harbour and obviously offered more to you than just tea and oranges.

You are drawn to both Suzanne and Jesus because they “touched your perfect body” with their minds. Your body was not corrupted by either Suzanne or Jesus, but made perfect by both.  It was the most mysterious and allusive image in the song: your perfect body.  It suggested to me a state of transcendence, of moving beyond the shabby physical reality of sweat and moles and smell and hair into a kind of ecstatic sensual encounter that made everything beautiful.

I began to believe that the two forces were not in opposition but were intimate companions on the quest to realize yourself as fully human, as a complete person, to become perfectly aware of beauty and spiritual truth. I began to believe that conventional Christian morality was, in comparison, petty and legalistic, a culture of sad equations and inhibitions, and that sexual intimacy can and should be a sacred experience.

A few years later, I saw a film, “Ladies and Gentleman, Mr. Leonard Cohen”, a short biographical piece by the National Film Board of Canada.  At one point, Cohen was going to read some of his poetry.  And off-camera director or technician said, “now remember, Mr. Cohen; no dirty words.”   Cohen showed umbrage and said, “there are no dirty words. Ever.”

No, there aren’t.

I think that towards the end of his life, Cohen began to believe his own press, and began to cater to his audience of worshipful wannabes.  I think he began to believe that there really were “dirty words”.  Pity.

As for myself, I’m not compromising.  There are no dirty words.  Ever.

[whohit]Suzanne[/whohit]

Spurned Intelligence

Like most pop, they lead with attitude: often, as in hits like “You Oughta Know” and “All I Really Want,” the furious sarcasm of a smart, spurned woman who recognizes her superiority but takes little comfort in it.

Wow.  I had no idea that it was so difficult for women to enjoy their superiority.   I suppose the discomfort comes from having a difficult time persuading men to recognize their superiority.  We need more men to acknowledge that they are inferior to women, and to recognize that they really ought to learn to comply with womens’ wishes.  Women–like Donald Trump and his acolytes– look at the world and think to themselves, “they think they’re so smart”.  They really believe that the spectrum of complicated nuance and depth that smart people allude to doesn’t exist.  It’s all a charade, the purpose of which is to make people like them feel stupid.

The leading quote is from a review of a musical based on the songs of Alanis Morrisette, which were written with the “assistance” of producer Glenn Ballard.  (I suspect that the producer, as many producers do, conned Ms. Morrisette into sharing credit because of a few alterations and some development and arrangement of the recordings.   I’ll bet she’s even grateful.)

I’ll be sure to catch it if it comes to my town.

[whohit]Spurned Intelligence[/whohit]

 

 

 

They Love Each Other So…

NYTimes has a wedding profile for a couple that consists of a transgender man with three children from previous marriages as a female and a transgender woman.  It’s a milestone for me– I’m sure it’s happened before, but that’s first official announcement of it I’ve seen.

This is what I would have played as they walked down the aisle:  Why not?

[whohit]They Love Each Other So[/whohit]

Dead Elvis

I’m fascinated by the posts below this video of one of Elvis’ last public performances in Market Square, Indianapolis, June 26, 1977.  He died 60 days later.

The gist of the comments is this: look at how broken down, drugged, fat, and incoherent he is.  Then he sits down at the piano and is the greatest singer that ever lived.  I love you Elvis!  You died for me.

Full disclosure: I was always generally disgusted with Elvis because, given all of the remarkable gifts and opportunities he had, he bought into a cheap illusion of wealth and success and secluded himself in his mansion popping Dexamil, Dexedrine, Placidyl, Valium, Percodan, Seconal, Tuinal, Nembutal and Demerol, while watching teen-aged girls undress through a two-way mirror.  He allowed himself to be completely controlled by a domineering agent, Col. Tom Parker.

Natalie Wood, who dated him for a time, said Elvis could sing but couldn’t do much else.

For help understanding the Elvis phenomenon, I prefer Richard Thompson’s magnificent “Galway to Graceland“.  (Very nice alternative version.)   Especially, this verse:

But blindly she knelt there
And she told him her dreams
And she thought that he answered
Or that’s how it seemed

Then they dragged her away,
It was handcuffs this time
She said, “my good man, are you out of your mind?”
Don’t you know that we’re married?
See I’m wearing his ring.
I come from Galway to Graceland
To be with the King.

I liked a few Elvis songs: “Suspicion”, “Suspicious Minds”.  No one unchains a melody like Elvis– great voice, without a doubt.  But I am first and foremost interested in great songs– great singers are dime a dozen.  I am not kidding–  you may think there are very few Elvis’s or Roy Orbison’s or Judy Collins’s , but there are far more than you think.  The ones you know became famous because they found a great song and a great band and a great producer to project them into prominence.  A lot of great singers never have that good fortune.  The sad truth is, if you had a great voice and you auditioned tomorrow for some impresario, he would tell you that until you acquired a good band and good material, you will not be a success.

And today, of course, with Autotune, you don’t even have to be an accurate singer.

And my encounters with Elvis are filtered through the distasteful reverence of his fans.  Thompson’s dissection of the subject in “Galway to Graceland” is fascinating.  Firstly, the blind adoration: Elvis overwhelms her.  But you can only be overwhelmed by a personality like Elvis if you really don’t have a strong personality of your own.  He fills the hole.  He is person-hood, dominance, brightness, and beauty.  You allow yourself to be embraced by this amazing entity that absorbs you in making you part of his essence, his glory.

In short, you allow the media to convince you that you have an actual relationship with a celebrity.  You refer to them by first name.  You offer knowing asides to friends, implying that you have privileged inside information.    “He never really loved Priscilla”.

Secondly, she is delusional.  She really believes that she has a meaningful relationship with a television image, a recording, a sound.  She really believes that the television image, the recording, the sound, has a relationship with her, other than to take her money.  When Elvis asks, “are you lonely, tonight?” he means her.

I don’t think Dylan fans think that Bob is telling them that they are rolling stones, or a blue-eyed son, or Baby Blue.  Bob is telling his fans about rolling stones and blue-eyed sons and Baby Blues.  Leonard Cohen is conniving to take Manhattan, and if he’s your man, he’s going to be a beast.  John Prine knows exactly what you are but you will never want to know that truth.

Thirdly, she is pathetic.  She has surrendered her entire being to the delusion.  She craves Elvis’ attention and projects it on herself when it is not forthcoming, and accepts it, and revels in it.

Do any of those adoring Elvis fans also adore the Beatles?  Maybe not, but here’s and interesting piece of trivia:  ‘According to an FBI report, Presley believed the Beatles had led young people astray “by their filthy unkempt appearances and suggestive music”’.  The Guardian

[whohit]Dead Elvis[/whohit]