perfidy

Buckethead,

It's because you're in your mid-Thirties, and had your hip ticket torn up years ago. Let me cite an example of what you're complaining about, from Johnny Cash. In fact, I'll cite two.

1) On his live collaboration with Willie Nelson for VH-1's "Storytellers", Cash mentions that he stole the tune for "Don't Take Your Guns To Town" from an old Irish ballad, "Clancy Lowered The Boom," and later jokes that Kris Kristofferson always wanted to write a song called "Let's Get Together and Steal Each Other's Songs."

2) The Johnny Cash hit "Ballad of Barbara" steals its tune, whole, from the English Ballad "Barbara Allen." The words are totally different, but it's the same EXACT version of the tune, down to the tempo, that I have heard most often from Appalachian musicians.

Regrettable as it might be sometimes (I'm talking to YOU, Sean "P.Diddy Puffy Daddy" Combs), theft is the one constant in pop music through the ages.

The difference, I think, is that the recombinant tendencies of pop music are much more in the forefront than they used to be, since the radio drives the market. For about six months there, about half the hip-hop on the radio had Pakistani or Indian music samples (NYC taxi-driver music), because one hit had it, and so everybody else did. A parallel example from the golden age would be the time in the 1930s that a troop of Danish yodelers toured the American backcountry for months on end. They were a sensation. The net effect? The early second generation of country music was full of yodels. Still is, if you know where to look.

Also, don't confuse your distaste for excrescent pop music with the decline of music as a whole. You remember the '80s well because the market has worked its Darwinian magic, ensuring that most of what survived from the era was pretty good. You don't remember Calloway, Rick Astley, The First Coming Of Kylie Minogue, or Tiffany because they sucked at the outset, and once they disappeared from the radio, they were gone forever. Ditto the '90s. You don't hear Candlebox that much any more.

But you're getting the current stuff unfiltered, and it hurts, a lot. At the same time, there are a lot of high points in the mediocrity. In twenty years I will welcome Outkast, Ludacris, Nelly (Hot in Herre!!!!!), 50 Cent, Mary J. Blige, Christina Aguilera, and even Ashanti's stuff as produced by Irv Gotti back to my ears with great pleasure, as long as we can forget about Britney Spears, Limp Bizkit, and Staind.

I would recommend trying not to listen to Top 40 or Adult Contemporary formats. They will rot your brain. In fact the narrowing of radio formats is a symptom of the problem you describe, and I long for the day when you could hear two different-sounding songs back to back on the same station. Like so many other things, the marketing of radio has become so refined and the models so revenue-driven that there is no such thing as music for music's sake, with a few noble exceptions like WFUV in New York, WXPN in Philadelphia, KPIG in San Fran, and their ilk.

[moreover] But you're SO right about sex in the lyrics. It's the audial equivalent of Penthouse (which is RATHER more than I want to see). Insinuation, innuendo, and misdirection are sexy. Talking about fucking is crass. But I would recommend you revisit your old blues records and see if they are all as subtle as you think.

The Buckethead clan was at Taco Bell the other day, thanks to the lack of power at casa de Buckethead. After several days of blessed silence, we were subjected to some stupendously banal pop music. My dear wife asked, "will they publish anything?" Johno's point that the emphasis is on industry rather than music makes it clear that the answer is "yes."

I've been thinking, in my charmingly non-musical way, about music. Especially the pop music that causes me so much pain. Take sampling, for instance. A recent Janet Jackson song doesn't just sample America's Ventura Highway, it hijacks the entire thing. It's one thing to take a small bit of something, and combine it with other small bits from something else, and create something new. A lot of electronica does this without seeming completely derivative and lacking of originality. But the bits have to be small, I think. Rule of thumb - sampling should not consist of ripping off an entire song.

And the lyrics, dear Jeebus help us. Certainly, popular songs are about sex. They always have been. But as far as I can hear, innuendo is dead. Sex is no longer mentioned obliquely, let alone subtly. It's embarrassing to listen to. Granted the innuendo in the early days of rock, let alone blues, was thin. But at least it was there. Many people complain about the misogyny of rap music, but in a way, this is worse. Love is dead, we now sing about sex. And Brittney Spears' singing style sounds as weird to me as old songs from the twenties, nasal and grating.

The fallen state of modern music might be a sign of the apocalypse, or merely a sign that I am in my mid-thirties. But every time I hear this pabulum, I creep closer and closer to Plato's condemnation of music in the Republic. I remember music being terrible in the 80s. But it was awful in a completely different and better way. It was awkward, and used primitive synth too much. It was mawkish and saccharine. But they were trying, it seemed. Then as now there were gems, and you hoarded them. But the vast sea of mediocrity was merely mediocre, not offensively coarse and unoriginal.

There is good new music, and I listen to it. But you don't hear it on the big stations, and you don't see it at the top of the charts. Perhaps if the forces of light defeat the RIAA and a new era is born, the internet will allow a thousand flowers to bloom. But the bastards and beancounters in alliance are a powerful enemy. And one that, sadly, the musicians must collaborate with. 

Bill Hobbs links to a sordid little story from the music industry's past, in which a young country singer was shot before he could reveal to the world that the industry-rag "Cashbox" was a corrupt piece of shit.

See folks, those are the cats that presided over the "golden age" of rock and country. Old-school song pluggers, gangsters, and used-car salesmen with a little extra capital who would think nothing of dangling you off a building, breaking your legs, signing you to a contract so crooked that your corpse is scheduled to do live appearances, or in the case of George Jones, kidnapping your family every time you try to kick cocaine, because your management are also your dealers. What they did NOT do was scrutinize quarterly balance sheets, worry about balanced budgets and projections, manipulate share prices, or employ teams of lawyers analysts to defend "their" intellectual property from Benelux to Boise. That all happened when the neighborhood gentrifed and the beancounters took over.

So ask yourself: who's better-- the bastards or the beancounters?

(Extended parenthetical statement: I've worked in the music industry, and I know this for a fact: the beancounters are firmly in charge almost everywhere. Leaving aside the legions of noble-minded smaller labels whose numbers are tiny compared to the whole, the music industry has shifted emphasis far away from "music" and placed the emphasis squarely on "industry."

Granted, A&R guys are still allowed to be hairy and weird, and artists are still coddled while being bled white, but the focus is almost totally on the health of the parent company's bottom line. Accounting & control run the joint, while Legal Affairs runs interference. While this means that people don't get dangled out of windows anymore-- except in the rap world-- the music is now subjected to microscopic scrutiny and its sales potential projected out for years to come. Ears are secondary now, and demographics and marketing are king.

All this is by way of saying that the music industry has always been a filth-pit, and even though the means may change, the criminals remain the same. )

(Second parenthetical note: I'm not pleading for sympathy for the RIAA. Buncha vampires.)

(Third parenthetical note: Read "Hit Men" for the story of how the bastards and
beancounters came to work together.)

(also posted to blogcritics.)

The eeeevil landlords at New York University might be shutting down the Bottom Line, one of THE most hallowed stages in the history of rock, folk, blues, and American music of all stripes. In the wake of September 2001, business fell way off and the Bottom Line got behind on their rent with NYU, the owners of that property as well as most of the rest of lower Manhattan. Here's the statement from the Bottom Line:

The problem is as follows: Even before the terrorist attacks on the World Trader Center, the nation was already feeling the downturn in the economy. Our business, along with so many other small businesses, has not been able to recover since the tragedy of September 11th. Attendance to shows has declined. In addition, our customers are feeling economic stress, our bills have been multiplying, and we have found ourselves substantially behind in our rent. Our landlord, New York University, has started eviction proceedings. During our negotiations with New York University to resolve this situation, the Bottom Line has presented several different proposals to pay our past due rent, while at the same time keeping current with a new, higher rent proposed by NYU. Unfortunately, NYU has not been open to negotiating a long-term solution to our mutual problem. We want to pay off our debt to NYU, but to do so we need to remain in business. To stay in business, we need a promise from NYU that, if we pay off the rental arrears, they won't evict the Bottom Line.

This is awful. I don't know the whole story, because I no longer have business with the Bottom Line's owners, but regardless of the details it would be an enormous tragedy if this venue were to close. There are few enough good places to see music in New York while actually sitting down without the Bottom Line going the way of the dodo. Co-owner Allan Pepper might be an abrasive curmudgeon, but he's a lovable, ethical, and hard-working abrasive curmudgeon who has spent the last thirty years dedicating his life to the betterment of humanity through transcendentally great music. That should count for something, but of course it won't.

<CelebrityAppeal value="Suzanne Somers">

The Bottom Line's website (linked above) has details on how you can help, or at least show support for, this pillar of American popular music. West 4th Street used to be the center of the universe, as far as folk music goes, and the Bottom Line is one of the last vestiges of that world.

Just last night I was in a conversation about Boston, and how much less interesting Kenmore Square looks now that they gentrified the Rathskellar out of existence and moved the Disney Store in. Change in and of itself is not bad, but it sure does hurt if you care.

</CelebrityAppeal>

[moreover] The way the Bowery's looking these days (that is, less full of homeless people, syringes, and gunk-- all charming), I wouldn't be surprised if CBGB gets the boot someday soon in favor of a Starbucks or a Body Shop.

Johnny Cash died of complications due to Diabetes today. He was 71.

I will regret forever that I never saw him play live. He will be missed.

Astronomers have discovered that a giant black hole located in a cluster of galaxies in the Perseid Cluster has been vibrating on B-flat for about 2.5 billion years. The tone is 57 octaves below Middle C, and is the lowest, sexiest bass note ever recorded. The Pleiades are expected to give up the booty within another .5 billion years.

Geeky doggerel follows. Consider yourselves duly warned. 

Bass! How low can you go?
Big Bang, what a brother knows.
Once again back is the incredible
the inexorable
the gravimetrical B- Galactic Enemy Number One
Chandra said "Freeze!" and I got numb
Can I tell 'em 30K is the wavelength of my spin?
Theorized by many, hey Hawkins try again
Now I'm in Science and newsweeklies cuz my attractors attract weakly
And a black hole like me will not go meekly
Einstein was a prophet and I think you ought to listen to
what he can say to you, what you ought to do is
Follow for now, the power of the gravity
"Make a miracle, B, pump the lyrical"
Black is back, you'll all be sucked in
Check it out, yeah y'all, here we go again
Turn it up! Bring the noise!
Turn it up! Bring the noise!

Instapundit links to this this Yahoo! News story via this blog:

Universal Music Group, the world's largest record company, on Wednesday said it will cut list prices on compact discs by as much as 30 percent in an effort to boost sales that have been stymied by free online music-sharing services such as Kazaa.

Starting in October, Universal, the home to such artists as Mary J. Blige (news), U2 and Elton John (news), will trim its prices on most of its CDs to $12.98 from its current $16.98-$18.98 range of prices.

"Our research shows that the sweet spot is to sell our records below $12.98,' said Universal Music president Zach Horowitz. "We're confident that when we implement this we will get a dramatic and sustained increase."

However, Glennie then notes

"Research?" I'll bet some marketing consultant charged them a lot more than it costs to read Fritz's blog. . . .

Wrong, wrong, wrong. I've sat in hundreds of 'marketing' meetings and I know exactly what happened. All the chiefs and their main sidekick indians were sitting around a long-ass conference table like they have every week for years, kvetching about declining revenues. Then, during the open discussion, some incredibly senior sales rep from Minneapolis puts out his Marlboro, streches his legs, and pulls out a spreadsheet showing the bigwigs what he's been telling them for five years: Electric Fetus has been selling shitloads-- shitloads of the U2 back catalog at $9.99, whereas they couldn't give them away when the sticker said $16.99. One of the biggest bigwigs, who's at the end of his emotional rope, not to mention his contract, says, "Fuck it. Let's reduce 'em all. Best idea I ever had."

$13 is the magic number for new releases, and you can sell ANYTHING for $9.99, especially if it's a catalog reissue with hastily chosen and poorly mastered "bonus tracks". Once you see this in action, as I have, it becomes a matter of elementary psychology and pure god-given revelation. I cannot believe that it's taken the industry as a whole this long to figure this out. Unless I'm smarter than most people in the music industry. After all, I was smart enough to get out, right?

Rap music is rotting society! So sayeth that guy!

Excuse my while I go prepare a righteous fisking. In the meanwhile, enjoy the article.

The doughty and redoubtable Ken Layne weighs in on the Great Modulation Flapdoodle of 2003,writing:

Anyway, on the modulation thing I have a few complaints about the charges. . . . [T]he real sin can be heard in whatever drippy synth-laden love ballad currently playing at the mall. It's when the producers kick the last chorus or two up a key so the gal can get busy with her own throat. Worse, you can just do this with Pro Tools and not actually have to commit the modulation in reality.

Pro Tools: We Make Shitty Music Sound Great!

Does anybody else miss the pre-Pro Tools harmonizers? You know, the ones where you sing a line and then key in the harmony you want? More than a third up and you sound like a Chipmunk, more than a third below and you're Darth Vader.

I record in a noisy room in my home with one cheap microphone into a Tascam 4-track. My percussion choices are tambourine, The Rhythm Egg, cardboard box, or skillet. My only amp is a bass amp. I choose to see these so-called limitations as assets-- since I can't just walk over to the kit and lay down a fatback beat, I have to make fatback out of an oatmeal carton, a shipping box, a saute pan, and all the implied 32nd note rhythms my fingers can manage on the bass. Fun!

Steven den Beste invokes the Great Litmus Test of Rock Appreciation, and writes of the Rolling Stones that

[t]hey didn't really succeed based on their alleged musical talent; rather, it was the sassiness, the irreverence which helped make them popular. Their music as music was never remotely as good or creative as the stuff that Lennon and McCartney turned out, but that didn't matter.

I can't totally disagree with the first part of that statement. Their sass and sleazy reputation counted for a lot. But the Stones did just as much as the Beatles to advance the state of the art of rock songwriting. Moreover, the Beatles always had a little stench of the studio about them-- you could hear the craftwork and care that went into the recordings. The Stones on the other hand adapted Chuck Berry and a thousand half-misremembered blues songs and from it constructed the entire dirrty vocabulary of Rock music. The Beatles always seemed to be trying. The Stones were cooler-- they didn't have to try. The Beatles were Pop incarnate, John's bitterness notwithstanding; the Stones were Rock incarnate, Charlie's awful drumming notwithstanding.

It's a matter of taste, yeah, but... The Stones... never remotely as good or creative...?!? *sputter*.. . . .. . *gasp*...

There's no accounting for taste is all I can say. 

Jeez... Steve den Beste could take lessons from me... especially since I actually know what I'm talking about *snark*. 

Anyway, it occurs to me that there are equivalents to the Truck Driver Gear Change in other genres: 

"Electronica": basically uses two beats for everything: the sound of the Roland 808 or 909, and the "Amen break." Need to spice up a boring track? Pull out the 808! Woo! Bo-RING.

Jazz: If I read ONE MORE DAMN CHART with ii-V-I all over it, I'm gonna go on a rampage. It's the laziest resolution in all of music and it makes me crazy. Even great songs like Take the A Train suffer-- at the end of the first 16 there's a damn DOUBLE ii-V-I! What I wouldn't give for people to begin reharmonizing these old charts in the parallel minor, with a plagal cadence at the end for added flavor.

Hip Hop/Rap: the i-VI-i movement, made popular by Irv Gotti & Murder Inc, the Neptunes, and about a million wannabe R&B divas. Seriously guys, there's other chords out there. Even Biz Markie did better than this. Biz Markie!

Hip Hop/Rap II: whenever some lazy baked-off-his-ass producer needs to kick it old-skool for some added flava, he reaches for the Funky Drummer break as played by Clyde "Funky Drummer" Stubblefield in the James Brown hit of the same name. It's EVERYWHERE. It's the one that goes "BOOM boom CHICK(adick)BOOM boomboom CHICK(adicka)" and repeats ad nauseum.

Hip Hop/Rap III: The Old Skool Heist: P-Diddy's specialty: Boosting the hook from Kool & The Gang's "Hollywood Swinging" for Mase's only hit; using the Police for that farewell song to Biggie. Also used by En Vogue, who turned James Brown's "The Payback" into not one, but TWO top ten hits. Homage is one thing. Imitation is another.

Hip Hop/Rap IIIa: The Old Skool Breakdown. A subset of the above. This happens when a track cuts out and an Old-Skool hit makes a five-second guest appearance. Recently heard used well in Missy Elliott's "Work It" and Nelly's video cut of "Hot In Herre." When not used well, it just underscores how out of ideas a producer is.

Kids these days! The music is noise! Television is crap! The cars are scaring the horses! Where's my back pills!

In response to my defense from yesterday of the Truck Driver Gear Change, Tom of Crooked Timber has let me know that he is unpersuaded by my counter-examples of the Gear Change's quality, writing

I suppose my rather hifallutin worry is to do with what I take to be a pretty obvious fall in the musical sophistication of pop. Clearly it's unfair to take the Beatles as representative, but it really does seem to my ears that popular music was a lot more adventurous, harmonically and melodically, in the 'sixties than it ever has been in my lifetime. Never mind going back to the era of the Great American Songbook, which was in another league entirely... And yes, you're quite right about the importance of being able to accept moderately trashy music for what it is and enjoying it none the less. But I guess I fear that one day there will be almost nothing but Truck Driver changes, and because the musical atmosphere will have become so thin, that hardly anyone will notice.

Now, there is definitely something to this. Pop music always goes through its fallow periods. Worse yet, it's often hard to see the good bits until well afterward because the crap drowns it out.

There are two arguments at work here: first that pop music is on a maybe perpetual decline into permanent mediocrity; and that pop music is cyclical, with periods of good music punctuated by stretches of bad. While I agree with aspects of both, and share Tom's fears, his thoughts have triggered a sort of, erm, ok, rant on the subject that has been gestating for some time. In short: I say "not so!" 

The arguments advanced by Tom are more or less permanent features of the landscape of music criticism. Classical composers dismissed romanticism as crap. Baroque composers dismissed music in the rococo style as crap, with some justification. Although not exactly pop music, Stravinsky was famously booed. French critics dismissed the "pounding of the Jazz machine," presumably preferring the elevated pleasures of the Moulin Rouge. Elvis, the Beatles, the Sex Pistols, Madonna (three times!), Marilyn Manson, rap, bebob, jazz fusion, and techno have all been heralded as harbingers of the end of civilization, or at least of worthwhile music.

And it's never been true. What IS true is that pop music is on a decades-long journey from emphasis on tune and harmony to an emphasis on rhythm. The "Great American Song Book" so justly referred to by Tom as beyond reproach contains tunes of fantastic elegance and beauty, but with the rhythmic complexity of nursery rhymes. Conversely, Eminem's biggest hit of last year contained the chorus "na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-na-na, na-na-na-nyaaaaaaaaaagh," and was still one of the most melodically complex rap songs to hit the charts. Yet Eminem's song contained some incredible displays of rhythmic complexity.

Of course, there are outliers. Dizzy Gillespie had an insane way with rhythm and melody. Certain modern pop singers, for example Mary J. Blige and En Vogue, marry hip-hop rhythms to relatively complex harmonic structures, at least as passing chords.

Pop music has always been mediocre-- the Great American Song Book is now almost three quarters of a century old, so that the wheat has been separated from the chaff. Of the great era of the early jazz age songwriter, this stuff is the best. You never hear the insipid ballads and hackneyed jump-blues, because they did not withstand the test of time. There's now a canon.

The same thing has also happened with early rock and roll, though it must be measured by different standards. Rock and roll, though it boasts some excellent songwriting, is generally more harmonically simple than the golden age songs that came before. This places more stress on performance, which is why we venerate Elvis Presley and not, say, Gamble & Huff. In an earlier age, the parallel would be to remember a pianist for his way with an Ellington chart, rather than to remember Ellington himself.

A side note about the Sixties: The Beatles are a special case entirely. They managed to re-introduce harmony and melody into rock song forms, and hence we remember Lennon/McCartney. Others did the same thing-- Motown, Brian Wilson, even Queen-- but the Beatles were the FIRST band to understand how to combine the songwriting conventions of the 1930s with the rhythmic conventions of rock, and still maintain a sense of adventure. It's true that the Sixties can boast some very fine songwriters, but this statistic is skewed by the dominance of the Baby Boomers in popular culture keeping alive the music of their youth. But don't forget: the Sixties were also the era of the Dave Clark Five.

The trend in pop music has always been not so much a cycle of quality, but rather a cycle of markets. This has two effects: to bring to light a previously unheralded subgenre, giving the illusion that everything has changed overnight; and to actually drive innovation by drawing attention to said subgenre. So although the quality of music itself is not so cyclical, the market cycle effect caused by the spotlight makes it appear that it is.

A good example is Nirvana in 1991. The hair-metal trend which gripped the US in 1987 had totally played itself out by 1991, and rap, apart from Run-DMC and MC Hammer, had not yet taken over the Top 40. When Nirvana came along, the market realigned itself to find more things like that, making it seem that music had emerged from The Long Dark Night Of Poodle Hair. The great music was there all along-- it just took a hit to make finding it and putting it on the radio worthwhile. Remember: Soul Asylum had their first hit in 1992, on their EIGHTH album thanks to Nirvana turning the attention to the kind of music they made. (History is filled with such examples: Bix Biederbecke became better known after his death; Robert Johnson was totally unknown in life.)

Moreover, for every bit of good, there's a legion of bad. For every Bach there were ten thousand talentless hacks knocking off a mass a week at a penny per line. For every Mozart, there is a Salieri. For every Frank Sinatra there is a Jim Nabors. For every Nirvana there is a Candlebox. For every Christina Aguilera (or, if you like, Kylie Minogue), there is a Britney Spears and an estrogen army of fifteen thousand clones.

So what's cyclical is not quality, but collective tastes. What's pleasing one year might be horrid ten year s later. For example, jazz-heads can quite justifiably look at the music of Poison and, hearing nothing but a 4/4 beat with the bass holding a pedal tone and the guitar soloing completely inside the simple changes, conclude that such a song is lamentably simple. Conversely, Poison fans can listen to John Scofield play through some crazy post-bop changes and conclude that jazz is incomprehensible garbage.

But I digress. I'm starting to sermonize, and that's not particularly courteous. I actually agree with Tom's worries that the Truck Driver Change and its ilk will become the norm and that nobody will notice or care. It's one reason I loathe the piping in of house music into every store in the world-- every song is EXACTLY the same. EXACTLY.

Via Crooked Timber and Doktor Frank comes this website dedicated to the celebration and eradication of the Truck Drivers Gear Change, otherwise known as a final half- or whole- step modulation. The Gear Change is so called as it allegedly gives a tired song one last kick into a higher gear before the fadeout, like a weary trucker kicking it up to high so he doesn't pass out before the next Travel America plaza.

For you music theorists, there are four common Truck Driver changes, I-II, I-bII, i-ii, and i-bii. The good folks at gearchange.org have been collecting egregious examples of this musical offense, complete with a musicological essay explaining the mechanics of the thing and why the Beatles get a free pass for using it. Very nice site indeed!

But their animus is misplaced.

As the owners of the site point out, the the truck driver's change is frequently deployed by the fantastically lazy and obvious (say, Michael Jackson, Whitney Houston), But I believe the good it does outweighs a ton of bad. The entire point of the Truck Drivers change is to inject energy into a song without transforming the song's structure or melody. This can either be a hallmark of laziness or an admission that there's a good thing going here that oughtn't be screwed with.

Exhibit A: Cheap Trick, "Surrender." Right before the third verse, the song shifts without passing chords from B to C, and ends there [see update below]. The verses and chorus are all sung the same way in the new key, as required by the Truck Driver Gear Change Code of Conduct. But far from being a cop-out ploy designed to prop up a boring song, the boys in Cheap Trick looked at their creation, saw it was good, and improved it the ONLY POSSIBLE way they could have. When you have a perfect song, you can't do more than this without ruining it.

Exhibit B: Bon Jovi, "Living on a Prayer." The final chorus is a whole step above the rest of the song, elevating what's already a timeless, sugary hair-anthem into celestial territory. Who knew any man not named Dio could sing that high?? Again, it's a perfect song. Perfect production, perfect playing, perfect lyrics and mise-en-scene. But it needs a kick on the final chorus. What better way, what less intrusive way, to close the song on a bang than to do the simple and obvious? Finally, can you honestly expect anything more than the simple and obvious of Bon Jovi?

Exhibit C: Ramones, "The KKK Took My Baby Away." A TDGC from C# to D, right before the last verse. The Ramones can do no wrong. None. Not even Brain Drain was wrong, just unfortunate. This song is perfect.

Mind you, I'm not arguing that every use of the TDGC is warranted. No, I suspect rather that songwriters too often get stuck in Cheap Trick's trap and believe their song is perfect, and choose to resort to the TDGC instead of try more creative measures that could ostensibly undermine the song's effectiveness. Unfortunately, since every song can't be "Surrender," and songwriters can be unbelieveably biased toward their own material, they usually end up with dreck festooned with poo.

My question to the gentlemen who run www.gearchange.org is this: what else would you want? Say a song is kicking along nicely in a standard I-IV-V progression with a bridge in vi. The outro chorus is a little boring, and you need something to punch it up a little. The obvious thing would be to kick it up a half step. But since that is now illegal, what do you do? Maybe try a little double coda with a false ending that cycles through the circle of V's via flat-ii's, all the while trying to keep things nice and singable? Please. Maybe if you're Yngwie Malmsteen.

If you're gonna attack a musical trend, at least go after one that's totally inexcusable in every case, like the propensity for hip-hop and R&B to use i-VI-V in every damn track (Irv Gotti, you've got a lot to answer for), or the use of the tritone in nu-metal, or the use of I-bII movement in every cheap house, techno, and flavor of the month dance track.

Leave the Truck Drivers and their modulation alone. Evil does not live here.

[update] It occurs to me: "Surrender" modulates twice-- once from B-flat to B after the 8-bar intro, and then again to C before the third verse. That's a DOUBLE Gear Change!

It also occurs to me that there are successful ways to kick a song up without the Truck Driver Gear Change: 

Exhibit A: Alice in Chains, "Would." The entire song is built on two chords, with different melodies on verse and chorus, but at the end of the last chorus the song switches into an entirely different change, with different rhythms. This is great songwriting-- it took me probably hundreds of listens through the song for me even to notice the unconventionality of the structure. As long as you have a good enough closer, this is a fine way to go.

Exhibit B: The Knack, "My Sharona." When I play the song, I fade it after the amazing, kickass, totally non sequitur guitar solo rather than sit through the rest of it, making the solo the outro. It's a terrible song, but the solo is so awesome that it transcends the fact of the song's suckage and achieves the same propulsion that the Truck Driver Gear Change tries for.

Exhibit C: The False Outro Fade. Recipe: Start hot ending jam. Fade out slowly. Song fades to nothing. But wait! Here it comes again. More hot jam. Soulful, ohhhh so soulful! Fade out again. Goodnight, Cleveland! Most often heard (by me) in the single mix of Parliament's "Flash Light," but with a long and storied history otherwise. Alternative method: the differently mixed ending, as in Pink Floyd's "Have A Cigar." The solo plays but....WOOSH...now it's coming through an AM radio. Even more than the TDGC, this is truly a solution of last resort.

[further update] More on this controversy here, here, here, and my commentary here, here, and here. Ohhhhh yeah.

In response to my comments of yesterday about how David Bowie kind of sucks, NDR writes:

"I cannot argue with the fact that most Bowie albums were filler. However, Rock was still producing LPs that were not completely distinct from 45s. Certainly the days had passed when bands created throw-aways, but singles still represented a strong market, and bands could still records two albums in one year (how many ABBA albums were there?). Only a few bands created complete albums that ignore singles, but their production was more limited.

To counter my point I would note that at the same time Bowie produced Low and Heroes, two great albums, and the disappointing Lodger, Costello produced My aim is true, This year's model, and Armed forces."

That's true enough. Despite the also overrated Sgt. Pepper's, it's true that rock as a whole had not come around to the idea of album as complete piece by the time Bowie became famous. There are some outstanding earlier examples-- I'm thinking of Marvin Gaye's and Stevie Wonder's early-70's work, and also the work of high-profile auteurs like Neil Young and the Beach Boys-- but for the most part NDR is correct. Bowie is definitely a singles artist with higher aspirations, as was Elvis Presley. "Release three singles and slap them on an album with some hastily chosen covers and random filler" was the rule. Hell, despite pretensions to the contrary, the single has ALWAYS been king for most artists, even if that's not been recognized.

It's interesting, too, that the era of the album as art form is currently waning. It will never die -- musical forms never die*. But downloading and the structure of the current radio and retail market tends to promote the single over the album, and albums are trending back toward the three-single-plus-filler or singles compilation format.

The album as we know it was made possible by LP technology and the limitations of that format. People over a certain age grew up with two-sided releases totaling no more than about 45 minutes to an hour at most. The aforementioned auteurs became adept at using the two-side, time-limited format to their advantage, setting up albums as two mini-dramas complete with tension and release cycles. Since the CD is the absolute now, this classic album format is no longer relevant. CDs have no sides, reducing the emphasis on programming order, and the 80-minute playing time has expanded the amount of music you can cram onto one release. This is a bad thing, as a rule. The major exception to this rule is the lavish re-issue such as Rykodisc pioneered in the early 90's. In that case, the classic album remains intact but is supplemented with extras that exist conceptually separate from the album as a whole.

But those days are over now. The single is back on top, thanks to downloading, tight budgets at the labels, and the grinding wheel of commercial radio. Ironically, the major labels stopped producing commercial singles in 1999, citing an unfavorable cost-benefit ratio, just before downloading re-aligned music listening young people to seek out singles. More ironically, had the majors not eliminated the single they may have been able to move more readily to a pay-for-download format for those marquee songs since the infrastructure and mindset for such a thing would already have been in place. It's amazing how hard it is to change the minds of music executives, especially when it's a good idea.

------------

* This is true. That stupid "two-step garage" fad that swept England and the hip clubs of the USA three years ago was nothing more than classical dance rhythms of the eighteenth century warmed over for a new era. Disco mined cha-cha-cha, salsa, samba, and mambo rhythms for most of its big hits (listen to the cymbals and percussion on the upbeats!!). For all that rock and roll and modern hip hop try to destroy classical harmonic rules, the hookiest songs still play by those very rules. Modal composition, which is almost the standard in today's R&B and hip hop, dates back to the golden age of liturgical chant. Old music never dies, it just changes its name.

David Bowie is incredibly, and inexplicably, overrated. I find most of his music turgid, boring, pretentious, fumbling, and less than half as exciting as an intimate massage from Janet Reno.

Notable exceptions: Low, Station To Station, many very excellent singles including "Heroes," "China Girl," "Young American," and "A Space Oddity." But song for song, pound for pound, and column inch for column inch, David Bowie is the best-loved nonstarter since Dwight Eisenhower.

[postscript] What brings this on? Today I have been listening to "Young Americans" and "The Man Who Sold The World." Hardly a half dozen great songs between them, and a load of incoherent dreck.

Obviously, others might make the same case about Elvis Costello, the Beatles, Elvis Presley, Aerosmith, and a host of other ostensibly immortal talents. Yes-- EC had Goodbye Cruel World, the Beatles had most of Magical Mystery Tour, Aerosmith seem hellbent on self-parody, and Elvis had Hawaii and little red pills. But to those who may quibble with my assessment of the Thin White Duke, pointing to other more egregious examples of reputation outstripping actual worth, I say this: taste is subjective, quality is eternal, and you're wrong.

A day late and a dollar short, I want to remark on the passing of one of the greats. June Carter Cash died last Friday after complications from heart surgery. I always though that Johnny would go first, what with his Parkinson's and related infirmities, not to mention that pills-and-booze phase he had back in the 50's and 60's. I always think the good ones will last forever. Guess I was wrong. We'll all miss you, June. 

I need a minute. *choking up* 

I swear to God, I don't know what I'll do when Johnny Cash and George Jones pass on. I'll be a wreck. I loved those two before I even knew how to talk, and their music has been a constant companion in my life. Some of my first memories involve a Fisher-Price record player, an LP that contained "There Ain't No Good Chain Gang" and "I Would Like To See You Again" by JC, and another one that had the Chet Atkins track, "Cloudy And Cool." I listened to those songs for hours. My dad's favorite song in those days was "He Stopped Loving Her Today" so that would place me at about four years old. The themes and lessons of country music were present during my formative years, and every so often something happens to remind me of that fact. It's no mistake that, on the worst day of the worst year of my life (thank you, New York City!), I got drunk on bourbon and listened to Johnny Cash. 

More than religion, more than community, more than anything else days besides my family, those songs were the bedrock pleasures and signposts of my four-year-old life, and they retain power over me. The United Methodist church could fall into a hole and I wouldn't care. The great state of Ohio could disappear, leaving Lake Erie the largest of the Great Lakes and making Wheeling a port city, and I wouldn't care, except to be happy for the citizens of Wheeling. But every time George Jones wraps his car around a tree, and every time Johnny Cash goes back in the hospital because his traitor body is wasting away, my heart sinks as I fear the worst. It's like fearing for an infinitely wise yet mortally flawed twin brother. 

In the sleeve of the "Love" disc from his box set "Murder/God/Love" is a picture of June in Johnny's arms. It's a beautiful photo which captures utterly the deep love they had. But what the picture can only show, the music proved. Johnny Cash has written thousands of beautiful words, and a score of beautiful songs, about his wife. June wrote "Ring of Fire" about him. Not even Shakespeare has been so eloquent about the daily pleasures and hurts of love. I and millions of others grieve with him today. We'll miss you, June. 
 

...A: They both want a piece of your children! 

Haw! I thought of that one myself. I kill me, really. 

Please excuse me, I'm a little punchy. Here I am, knocking on the door of thirty years old, and Michael Jackson jokes, Weird Al Yankovic and Adam Sandler crack me up. My wife has a theory that my social development stopped very soon after my potty-training, and while I'm not one to argue with someone as smart and insightful as she, I would insist that I merely appreciate all kinds of humor. I mean, look at the Germans! Two hundred years and more of dour Prussian, Fascist, and European Collectivist rule, and their favorite humor is poopie jokes. Poopie! 

Really folks, mine is a dry wit. 

But enough of that. This morning, my pre-commute fatigue-haze was rudely interrupted by an item on the crawlbar of the New England Cable Network, enough that I flew without transition into a screeching hate-fit the likes of which I haven't had since I left my black rotten heart in New York and moved up here two years ago. 

I may not be a lawyer, or even know anything concrete about American law beyond that which I studied back in my halcyon graduate school days, but I do know a little about the music industry. The little item which so rudely interrupted the vague buzz of war news and Red Sox footage was this: 

RIAA arrest 4 college students for illegal file trading 

I don't know much about anything, but I know firsthand that the business of making music is about three things: money; big money; and covering your ass. The first two are self-evident. The industry is a high-risk business in which ninety-nine out of a hundred projects lose money and only that 1 percent succeed. But those wild successes ("hits" to you mortals) are enough to wipe out the failures and keep everyone's bright green eyes fixed on the shiny brass ring. The "covering your ass" is also pretty obvious. It comes down to the two major classes of music industry managers-- mercenaries, and accountants. The mercenaries are out to gain power and prestige, and also to get their hip ticket punched. The accountants are out to ensure that the quarterly balance sheets, which normally look like some horrifying EKG, smooth out into the reassuring always-ascending undulations that mean fat times and happy investors. Neither of these types give a tinker's cuss about the music or about the long-term health of the industry. The rare exceptions, like his majesty Clive Davis or that lovable bastid Jimmy Iovine, have merely managed to combine these two traits with a survivor instinct and an ear for hits. Others, like the heads of smaller independent labels, share these traits in greater or lesser measure, but sometimes they are even in it for the music! Nevertheless, the rarity of Clive Davises and the smallness of small labels make them the exceptions that prove the rule. 

Both industry types have in common an innate conservatism. The mercenaries are afraid to be the first ones to try anything new, as failure would spell both shame and the dimming of their careers. The accountants refuse to let anyone be the first to try anything new, because an unproven investment could spell financial disaster in the short-term. Therefore, as is well-documented, they try to kill or bury new things-- home taping, the walkman, DAT, cd's, DVD, cd burners, singer-songwriter music, and now file sharing. Predictably, this mindset also makes it very difficult for the industry as a whole to grasp the possibilities inherent in new technology. 

By now, it's clear to everyone that file-trading has utterly changed the way consumers value music. Unfortunately for the industry, apart from some desultory gestures such as BMG's purchasing Napster in order to kill it, the industry has thus far refused to adapt to this new reality The way they see it, file trading is the sole factor responsible for the dip in sales of recorded music (I disagree, but won't bore you with that here). There is no question that among the teenybopper and nu-metal teenage set, file sharing and cd burning has resulted in some loss of revenue for the major record labels. But, on the other side of the coin, there is a population of music fans who use file sharing and burning as ways to find new artists to support, by buying their records. I happen to be one of those. Is it worth alienating both groups, which between them comprise the entire avid music-buying public, just to crush the first? Um.....no. That's idiotic. 

Nevertheless, it seems the die has been cast. The RIAA is going to use lawsuits to stem the tide of illegal files. This follows attempts over the last year by the RIAA to: reserve the right to hack anyone's computer with impunity to search for purportedly illegal sound files; gain unfettered access to the IP logs of ISP's; and argue that cd sales operate on a license basis like software, meaning that one does not own the cd one buys. This lawsuit gambit is a brand new low and a possibly fatal . 

Since I can see the future with perfect clarity, I predict that prosecuting college students, even those deserving penii who trade thousands of songs they don't own on cd, will have four consequences.

• It will lead to a widespread backlash against the music industry, which could further erode sales. Since the major labels are already in trouble, and no longer the happy cash cows their parent companies want them to be, this could lead to either further consolidation among the majors, or to a general crash of the system.
• If the lawsuits are carried through to trial or settlement, it will create a precedent by which even traditionally protected uses of recorded music may be further attacked.
• It will create an effect similar to the encryption community, where the bleeding edge of decryption is always just one step behind the bleeding edge of encryption. This will cost lots of money that the industry doesn't have, and could have fallout legislative effects that could also erode fair-use rights.
• It will seal the major labels' doom. Thus far they have totally failed to find a way to generate revenue out of the new realities of file trading. By attempting to hold back the tide, they will render themselves less and less relevant to consumers. Public opinion is foursquare against the industry, and major-label music isn't exactly the very staff of life.

Granted, some of these predictions are fever-dreams. But I think I'm right. Already, some of the biggest stars in music came up through alternative means of distribution and scouting that the labels had nothing to do with. Take 50 Cent, for example. He built his name via self-produced cd's before making the jump to a major label. The label simply provided a bankroll, a volume discount with a pressing plant, and a better rolodex. These services that are available in some form to anyone with the money to pay for them, and are becoming more available as companies that cater to this population are founded. Many local artists have chosen to forego the label system entirely, and let their success be limited only by how much time they can devote to administrating their own careers. Because of the ill-will I believe will be generated toward the RIAA by these lawsuits and similar efforts, I expect this route to become more common regardless of how the lawsuits turn out. 

By choosing to stand firm behind old-media ideas of copyright and music marketing, the RIAA and the labels it speaks for have chosen to go down with the ship. 

Hey... where the hell are my pants??

From The Morning News, this beautiful creed:

I believe in Iggy, Jimi, Chryssie, and Joe Strummer, the Parents Almighty, Creator of heaven on earth; I believe in Malcolm McClaren and Sid Vicious, His only Son. I believe in punk, lo-fi and gangsta, indie, post-punk, indie-pop, rock, singer-songwriter, and insurgent country, conceived by Uncle Tupelo, born of Jeff Tweedy who suffers, as does Lou Barlow. I believe in Squirrelbait and Johnny Cash. I believe in the Motor City. I will respectfully love and fear Tad. I believe in Superchunk and PJ Harvey. I believe in new bands and will never pretend to know music I have never heard, so my mind may stay open and I will sitteth at the right hand of Mission of Burma so I may one day ascend to heaven, where I will be greeted by Sonic Youth, Eazy-E, and Mike Watt. I will not listen to rock critics, but trust my own ears. I believe in DIY, zines, Yo La Tengo, the communion of Saints, the forgiveness of sins, the resurrection of Cobain, and rock everlasting. Amen.

-May the Rock be with you. 

-And also with you. 
 

Please accept this link to Motorhead's official site as a fitting counterbalance to the posts about...um...You Know Who.

Amen to this post at Chicagoboyz. The Eyeliners are the saviours of Rock, now that the Donnas have gone major label (not that there's anything wrong with that!). And now I'm gonna do the thing I hate. Aaaaas I commented over there at Chicagoboyz,

[The Eyeliners] are responsible for the only true, pure rock moment I've witnessed on stage in the last few years. It was at the Paradise, in Boston, about five songs into a blistering set opening for the Donnas. The skinny one who plays guitar (names, schnames), right in the middle of ripping off a solo, leaned back, back....back...until she was on her knees in the approved Nuge position... cocked her head, grinned at the crowd, and blew a big, perfect bubblegum bubble. It was awesome.

I mean, it was awesome.