Down the Memory Hole

In 1998, real estate belonging to Mario Costeja Lopez, in Spain, was seized by local authorities and auctioned off to pay debts he owed.  Notice of the auction went out in the local newspaper, and later on its web site.

Skip to this past summer, when a lawsuit filed by Lopez came to an end at the European Court of Justice (sort of a Supreme Court for Europe).  Staggeringly, the court partly agreed with Lopez's requests that the newspaper remove the notice from its archive and Google remove links to it from its search results.  The court didn't make the paper take the notice down, but did order Google to kill the links.  This is what's know as the "right to be forgotten."

As you might expect, Lopez's triumph has led to fairly disparate opinions on either side of the Atlantic:

Q: But this ruling goes completely against freedom of information - that anything that's public should be recorded and kept.

A: That's certainly how lots of American commentators have seen it. There's a definite cultural split in peoples' attitudes to this ruling. Journalism professor and commentator Jeff Jarvis (of City University, New York) called it 'a blow against free speech' - but was then chided by Gerd Leonhard, from Basel in Switzerland: ''Everything that happens must be known' - is that what you are proposing? I think EU decision on Google is a suitable first step.'

It's worth noting here that the European conception of what "privacy" means is fundamentally different than it is in the United States.  We tend to think of privacy as dealing with limits on the government and generally enforcing what Louis Brandeis called the "right to be let alone."  Europeans, on the other hand, put much more importance on being able to conceal parts of your own past from others - to emphasize being able to control your own personal narrative (so to speak).

The problem with that, of course, is that you're most likely to want to keep from view the very kind of information you want others not to know.  At the extreme, you probably don't want people to know about a prior conviction for a crime or maybe even a prior marriage.  More mundane worries may include things like poor job performance, embarrassing Facebook status/pictures, or, in cases like Lopez, financial insolvency.  All of that, of course, may be relevant information to others.

Regardless of the merits of either approach, the right to be forgotten is leading to some absurd requests.  Like the one recently received by The Washington Post (via) from a pianist named Dejan Lazic.

Lazic, from Croatia, gave a concert in Washington in 2010 at which the Post's music critic was not particularly impressed.  It referred to a prior work of Lazic's as "attention-getting, large scale and a little empty" and concluded that his recital "was unfortunately more of the same."  It wasn't a pan - Lazic was described as "sensitive" and "profoundly gifted" - but it was, at times, pretty barbed (in Lazic's hands a "scherzo became cartoon-like").

So, it's a less than glowing review.  But that's the price you pay for being an artist, right?  People get to say whether they like your stuff or not, or, more broadly, whether you're "good" and you don't get a lot of say on the matter.  Writers, I know, are encouraged to never engage with critics - it's a battle you just can't win.  Unless the review gets something factually wrong, you shrug it off and move on.

Not Lazic.  Armed with the "right to be forgotten," he has asked the Post to take the review down.  As he explains:

'To wish for such an article to be removed from the internet has absolutely nothing to do with censorship or with closing down our access to information,' Lazic explained in a follow-up e-mail to The Post. Instead, he argued, it has to do with control of one’s personal image — control of, as he puts it, 'the truth.'

The Post is not backing down, partly because even the right recognized in Europe doesn't extend to the actual newspaper stories, only the links.  But it also recognizes that there are broader issues, more meta ones, at stake.  Like which version of the "truth" gets to be in the permanent record:

Whose truth is right: the composer’s or the critic’s? And more critically, who gets to decide?

It’s a question that goes far beyond law or ethics, frankly — it’s also baldly metaphysical, a struggle with the very concept of reality and its determinants. Lazic (and to some extent, the European court) seem to believe that the individual has the power to determine what is true about himself, as mediated by the search engines that process his complaints.

Growing up with the First Amendment, I would say that the decision about where the truth lies belongs to neither the performer or the critic, but to everyone else.  I do think I have a right to know that Lazic is, in the opinion of some, a bombastic player who overperforms.  Heck, I may like such things!  Why should I only have the word of the performer to go on before I lay out cash for a ticket or a CD?  That would reduce us to a world of very special people who are brilliant at what they do.  Even as a writer, I wouldn't want that.

There is a considerable irony in all this.  Were it not for his successful court case, I would have never heard of Mario Costeja Lopez or his financial problems.  The same is true for Dejan Lazic and his penchant for pianistic bombast.  More perfect examples of the Streisand Effect would be hard to find.  Which gives me some hope that the right to be forgotten will, someday, make its own way down the memory hole.

If You're Worried About Rosebud, You're Missing the Point

It's his sled. It was his sled from when he was a kid. There, I just saved you two long boobless hours. 

- Peter Griffin, spoiling Citizen Kane

Saw Gone Girl last weekend.  It's really good, particularly if you like the kind of movie that takes place in an air of dread that's perfectly summoned by David Fincher (with able assists from Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross).  I say that even knowing the big twist of the film going into it.  Not because I had read the book on which it's based, but because my wife blurted it out during a TV commercial. She didn't know I wanted to see it.

Point is, she didn't really "spoil" the movie for me, in the true sense of the word.  That's because the flick is good enough that it doesn't rise or fall on the big "twist" (which, for what it's worth, happens about halfway through - this isn't The Sixth Sense we're talking about).  In my opinion, any movie/book/TV show that rises and falls on that twist isn't really worth watching.

What's more, people seem to enjoy things more once they know how it turns out.  At least that's what some research says.

Back in 2011, as The Atlantic reports, a study was published that sounds pretty neat:

Scientists asked 900 college students from the University of California, San Diego, to read mysteries and other short stories by writers like John Updike, Roald Dahl, Agatha Christie, and Raymond Carver. Each student got three stories, some with "spoiler paragraphs" revealing the twist, and some without any spoilers. Finally, the students rated their stories on a 10-point scale..

The results?  Readers preferred the spoiled stories.  But why would we want to know how it ends ahead of time?

One theory is that our anticipation of surprises actually takes away from our appreciation for the 99 percent of the movie that isn't a monster twist. 'The second viewing is always more satisfying than the first,' Sternbergh said, 'because you notice all the things you missed while you were busy waiting for the twist.' Psychologists have observed that when we consume movies and songs for a second (or third, or hundredth time), the stories become easier to process, and we associate this ease of processing with aesthetic pleasure.

Think about this for a second.  Most of us have some piece of culture that we go back to again and again.  I know that the big escape at the end of Brazil takes place all inside Sam's head, but I still watch it.  I know that Arthur and Ford wind up on a primitive Earth populated by a bunch of idiots expelled from a better planet, but I'll still reconsume Hitchiker's Guide . . . again (in its many forms).  And I know Tommy goes back to being blind, deaf, and dumb at the end, but that doesn't make "Pinball Wizard" kick any less ass.

Of course, there might be other reasons why spoilers really aren't, including the uncomfortable recognition that we really like predictability more than we let on.  But, in this area at least, I'd like to not be completely cynical* and think that, deep down, we realize that works built on the big twist only are, as someone else put it in the Atlantic piece:

like artistic flash paper: It excites for a moment but offers little lasting wonder.

After all, we want to be better than Peter Griffin.  Right?

* I know, you're shocked, right?  How's that for a twist!

We're Fooling Ourselves

3rDegree's 2012 album The Long Division is a political album.  In the sense that it's about our modern political world, not that it was trying get people to vote one way or the other.  The verdict of the album's half dozen related tracks is that the system is undeniably fucked up, partly because we, as a nation, have lost the ability to talk with people on the other side of an issue.  The lead off track lays it out well:

But this isn't just a snarky observation by a bunch of musical types from New Jersey (mostly) - it's backed up by statistics.  In a post over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin (quoting a Cass Sunstein op ed) lays out some numbers about the rise of "partyism" in the United States.  They're kind of chilling:

In 1960, 5 percent of Republicans and 4 percent of Democrats said that they would feel 'displeased' if their son or daughter married outside their political party. By 2010, those numbers had reached 49 percent and 33 percent. Republicans have been found to like Democrats less than they like people on welfare or gays and lesbians. Democrats dislike Republicans more than they dislike big business.

As Somin then points out:

Increasingly, we assume that supporters of the rival political party are not just misguided about political issues, but also untrustworthy or malevolent people in general.

Although it's sometimes hard to admit, democracy (and life, more generally) is about compromise.  To quote another rock lyric, "you can't always get what you want."  You have to be able to give a little to get a little.  But that's damned difficult when the person on the other side of the aisle isn't just wrong, but is (in Somin's words) "evil, selfish, or stupid."  Compromise with evil is immoral and compromise with stupid is impossible.  So we all throw up our hands and go have a press conference while nothing gets done.  It's the modern equivalent of fiddling while Rome burns.

So what to do about it?  Do we chastise talking heads and Internet commenters who jump to the worst possible conclusions about their political rivals?  We should, but I'm not sure that's going to get very far.  What I think it's going to take to back the country down from this precipice is the very thing 49 percent of Republicans and 33 percent of Democrats fear - ideological mixing.

Because, here's the thing.  When it comes to most people who hold opinions different from you, they're actually not monsters or morons, evil or stupid.  They're people, with all the flaws that entails, who, ultimately, probably want the same broad things you do (a good life, safe neighborhoods, educated kids, etc.).  They may be ignorant about a particular issue, but we're all ignorant about something (lots of somethings, more likely).  When we forget that, we slide back into ideological tribalism.

I'm speaking from some experience here.  I'm the outlier among my brothers (and sisters in law, for that matter) in being a liberal atheist.  My older brothers have both become more conservative and religious as they've grown up, had kids, and the like.  When it comes to many matters of politics or theology, I think they're wrong.  But I know, because I've known them all my life, that they're not "evil, selfish, or stupid."  We see the world differently, but that's all right.  It makes it a lot harder to demonize the opposition when you know them as real people, not just soldiers for Team Red or Team Blue.

That's not to say all we need is to get together, sing "Kumbayya," and everything will work out.  Like I said, folks on either side of a political dispute are just people.  As there are (generally) good, thoughtful people out there, so to are there assholes, opportunists, the short sighted, and, yes, the evil.  But they're a smaller proportion of the population than we think in our worst "our side uber alles" flag waving moments.

Through my forty years, it's just been a fact that (at the national level anyway) one side doesn't get what it wants all the time.  Even during all those years the Democrats controlled Congress they had to deal with fierce GOP minorities or a GOP President.  Neither side will ever triumph over the other completely.  None of this is to suggest that partisans on one side or the other should refrain from calling the other folks out for being wrong. But there's a world of difference between calling someone (or, more correctly, his or her idea/proposal/argument) "wrong" and calling them dipshits, evil doers, or (to pull one example I saw today) a "weasel."

If we don't recognize that and try to at least make a good faith attempt to understand, rather than caricaturize, the other side, then we really are fooling ourselves if we think the country is ever going to get better.

Thoughts on the Prog 100

Back in my college days, when I was young (*sigh*), to find discussion about progressive rock you had to dig deep into the Internet.  These were the days before Facebook, before Youtube, and even comprehensive websites like ProgArchives.  The best you could do, usually, was a Usenet newsgroup - all text, all the time!  I remember downloading 15-second samples (over dial up!) of the first Spock's Beard album, for crying out loud!

Which is all a way of saying that I'm still stunned that I can find a regularly published, glossy magazine devoted to prog on newsstands every month.  The appropriately named Prog (from the folks at Classic Rock magazine) is very British and, thus, very a month behind when it arrives in the states.  Still, it's great to be able to pick it up and dive deep into interviews, reviews, and album features every month.  It's a sign of how far things have come in the past twenty years.

 

In honor of its 50th issue, Prog conducted a reader poll to sort out the top 100 prog albums of all time.  The results ran in the August issue and, naturally, prompted discussion in various parts of the prog universe.  Who am I not to chime in?

It's worth keeping in mind that this was a reader poll, although several noted musicians chime in with their top albums as well.  As a result, it reflects the tastes of the readership of a magazine that tends to stick to the more classically "prog" end of the spectrum.  It's pointless to complain that the results look like a popularity contest - it is a popularity contest.  Not that there's anything wrong with that, of course, and I'm hardly one to complain about the collective choices - I own 77.5 of the 100.*

That focus is partly why the list had a lot of choices from prog's modern era, from bands like Porcupine Tree, Opeth, and Spock's Beard.  The mods even cracked the top 10, with Steven Wilson hitting the ninth spot with The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories).  On the one hand, I think that's great - it speaks to the vitality of modern prog.  On the other hand, it's hard to imagine that there aren't a lot of older albums that were overlooked that should have taken those spots.

As for the overlooked - where do we start?  How about with the really avant garde, which is almost completely neglected.  Aside from Can's Tago Mago (#98) and Henry Cow's Legend (which current King Crimson front man Jakko Jakszyk singles out as his number one), there's nothing of the more adventurous and, dare I say, challenging side of prog.  No Magma, no Univers Zero, no Present, no Krautrock (Can aside).  That's a pretty big hole, given that the entire point of prog is to push boundaries.

Another odd gap in proceedings involves the Canterbury scene, which has some of the most interesting and beloved artists in prog.  Caravan and Robert Wyatt each get a mention, but there's no Soft Machine, no Hatfield and the North, and no Steve Hillage or Gong.  At the very least, National Health's Of Queues and Cures should have made an appearance.  It would be in my top ten without doubt, maybe battling for the top spot.

The final blind spot that really sticks out for me is that, for the most part, this is an English (and related nations) list.  There's not a single album on the list with lyrics in a non-English language, which overlooks the fertile prog land of Italy completely.  Any top 100 list that lacks PFM, Banco, Le Orme and others is questionable.  Granted, it's a British magazine, but there's still no reason, in 2014, to not embrace the wide world of prog in all its multinational wonder.

That being said, if you knew nothing about prog and stumbled upon this list, there are worse places to start learning about the genre.  Just remember, that there's much more to the world out there, to the delight of your ears and the distress of your wallet!

* Big Big Train's English Electric was originally released in two parts, but it appears on the list as one volume.  I have the first part, but not the second.

Coming Soon to a Skull Near You!

In the year 3000 . . .

Fry: So you're telling me they broadcast commercials into people's dreams?

Leela: Of course.

* * *

Fry: That's awful. It's like brainwashing.

Leela: Didn't you have ads in the 20th century?

Fry: Well, sure, but not in our dreams. Only on TV and radio. And in magazines and movies and at ball games, on buses and milk cartons and T-shirts and bananas and written on the sky. But not in dreams. No, sir-ee!

Ah, Fry, if only you hadn't frozen yourself through the 21st century, for in this amusing/disturbing post over at the Volokh Conspiracy, I see a whole new avenue of brain manipulation advertising just around the corner.

Consider the case of Mr. B (no relation - he's Dutch), who suffered from anxiety disorders and OCD for more than four decades.  He was treated with something called deep brain stimulation or DBS.  According to Wikipedia, DBS is:

a surgical treatment involving the implantation of a medical device called a brain pacemaker, which sends electrical impulses to specific parts of the brain.

Okay.  While it seems to work, its "underlying principles and mechanisms are still not clear" and it "directly changes brain activity in a controlled manner."  In other words, not something to be undertaken lightly.  It also seems like the kind of thing - changing brain activity - that might have some interesting side effects.

Which is what happened to Mr. B:

Mr. B., had never been a huge music lover. His musical taste was broad, covering Dutch-language songs, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, with a preference for the last named. While music did not occupy an important position in his live, his taste in music had always been very fixed and his preferences stayed the same throughout decades.

On average, a half year after DBS surgery, Mr. B. stated that he was turning into a Johnny Cash fan. He had been listening to the radio, when he coincidentally heard 'Ring of Fire' of the Country and Western singer and experienced that he was deeply affected by the song. Mr. B. started to listen to more songs of Johnny Cash and noticed that he was deeply moved by the raw and low-pitched voice of the singer. Moreover, he experienced that he preferred the performance of the songs in the Seventies and Eighties, due to the fullness of the voice of the older Johnny Cash in that period. His favorite songs, 'Folsom prison blues', 'Ring of fire' and 'Sunday morning coming down' had a certain rhythm with a fast tempo in common that moved him.

It would be hard to oversell just how much Mr. B is fallen under the spell of the Man In Black.  He bought all his albums and videos.  When he listens to the songs Mr. B "feels like he finds himself in a movie in which he plays the hero's part."  Mr. B also claims that "there is a Johnny Cash song for every emotion and every situation."

In other words, he's like a 10-year old girl who just discovered Justin Beiber.  Perhaps the brain zapping went a bit too far?  At least, it appears, the result isn't permanent - if the gizmo starts to malfunction, Mr. B forsakes Johnny and falls back into the arms of those other, lesser musicians.

The good news, of course, is that Mr. B appears to be cured of problems that have plagued him for his entire life and the side effect of a thrilling new cultural obsession seems like a small price to pay.  But let's go further - if we can change a person's musical tastes by zapping a certain area of the brain, then how long before advertisers are trying to do it?

Because you know, like Fry learned, if there's a way to jam an ad inside your brain, marketeers are going to make use of it.

Friday Review: ROSFest 2014

Last weekend I headed off to the rolling hills of eastern Pennsylvania for my fourth trek to the Rites of Spring Festival, aka ROSFest.  Held annually at the lovely Majestic Theater in Gettysburg, the fest was celebrating its tenth anniversary, having developed, arguably, into the premier progressive rock festival in the United States.  All and all, I didn't find this year's fest to be as good as years past, but it was still a great weekend filled with cool music.

Which, for a moment, I thought I was going to be able to hear in my hotel room.  The Gettysburg Hotel, built in 1797, sits across a small alley from the theater.  What I didn't realize until this year is that the hotel actually extends over the alley.  See for yourself:

That's the Majestic marquee jutting out from below my window.

But enough about that - how were the tunes?

First up on Friday was Clepsydra, from Switzerland, who would be the first of three bread-and-butter neo-prog bands for the weekend.  Active in the 1990s, they have only recently reformed and had done a few shows in Europe.  To judge by their Facebook posts during the run up to the fest, they were completely stoked to open ROSFest.  Their main distinction from the rest of the neo crowd this year was vocalist Aluisio Maggini, who is apparently from the Italian speaking part of Switzerland.  His voice and English delivery reminded me of Italian bands like PFM or Banco - not a bad thing!  Overall, Clepsydra were a good, solid way to start off the festival, particularly if you like late Fish-era Marillion.

The Friday headliner was Caravan, one of the great bands of the 1970s and an originator of the Canterbury school of prog.  Since I'd never seen any of the 70s giants live, I was pretty excited, but also a bit worried.  Were they still up to it, after all these years?  Holy hell, were they ever!  They absolutely ripped the roof off the place.  MVP for the band was Geoffrey Richardson, who, in addition to being the main audience conduit, played viola, guitar, flute, penny whistle, and spoons.  Electric spoons!  It is progressive rock, after all.  While I was a little disappointed they didn't do more tracks from a couple of my favorite albums, I appreciated them playing a lot of their new album.  A highlight of the weekend, to be certain.

The weekend split kind of oddly for me this year.  I knew something about nearly all the Saturday bands, but almost nothing about Sunday's.  Would familiarity or surprise work better?

The closest thing to a surprise on Saturday was the opening band, Elephants of Scotland (despite the name, they're from Vermont).  They released their second album earlier this year and I had listened to some YouTube clips, so I had some idea of what to expect.  They didn't disappoint, playing a sometimes heavy, Rush-like kind of symphonic prog.  Good tunes and great playing all around (lots of juicy keyboard bits, always a good thing).  Their downfall, in my opinion, were the vocals.  Lead vocals were shared by the three guys not playing drums, but none of them really have lead vocalist chops.  Their harmonies sounded really good, but I think the band would benefit from a dedicated front man.  Based on some other reviews I've read, I'm not alone in thinking that.  Nonetheless, good stuff and a great kick off to the day.

Thank You Scientist hails from New Jersey and was pulling off a kind of festival double - they emerged onto the scene last year thanks to a spot at ProgDay.  That's why I had their album well in advance of the festival.  I'm glad I did, because it prepped me for their very frenetic, high energy style.  It's a lot of fun, but it's a little wearying over the course of 90 minutes.  The band stands out thanks to some unusual instrumentation - drums, guitar, bass, violin, trumpet, and tenor sax, plus a bearded lead vocalist who prowled around the stage.  They were the closest thing to "weird" at ROSFest this year and the audience embraced them, bringing them back for an honest-to-goodness encore (a riffy version of "I Am the Walrus").  Did I mention that Fantastic Planet played behind them the whole time?  Trippy, man.

Sound of Contact is a project built around drummer/vocalist Simon Collins.  You may know of his father, Phil, of Genesis fame.  Sound of Contact was actually supposed to play ProgDay last year, but their proposed tour fell through.  Now they're out on the road touring their album, Dimensionaut, which they performed in full, front to back, at ROSFest.  I'll be honest, the album hasn't really done anything for me and the live performance didn't do anything, either.  Collins is a decent enough drummer and singer, but the music is too often mush, ballady AOR kind of stuff.  If the album had Phil's name on it, I think the prog community would have panned it, but, for some reason, it's been embraced by lots of folks (including the two women in the front row giving Collins the rock star treatment).  To each his or her own, I guess.

Sweden's Beardfish is another band that broke into the prog consciousness after appearing at ProgDay (albeit several years before Thank You Scientist).  I know that, after reading about that performance, I immediately went out and grabbed The Sane Day, their then-current album.  I also bought their next three albums sound unheard.  Then . . . something happened.  For whatever reason, the furious love I had for this band waned.  Would a headlining set at ROSFest rekindle the fire?  Sort of.  The band, led by the multi-talented Rikard Sjöblom, put on a great show, are great players, and work through some really interesting music.  Nonetheless, I found myself more interested in the old stuff I knew than the new stuff.  It's not much different, but maybe that's the issue?  I can hardly complain, however, as they trotted out "Sleeping In Traffic" in all its 35-minute glory.  A good set and good way to end the day.

So, this being Sunday, I knew next to nothing about these bands coming into the day.  I was hoping one of them might turn out to be a real revelation, along the lines of Sanguine Hum from 2012, but it didn't really turn out that way.

Fright Pig is . . . well, I'm not exactly sure what Fright Pig is, to be honest.  I'm not sure it's a "band," in the traditional sense.  Assembled in Gettysburg for its first ever live performance (a tough assignment, given the Church of Prog time slot), the band itself was composed of two keyboard players from New York (one of whom was the main writer/guru) and a bunch of other players with ties to the Berkley School in Boston, but from all over the globe - Canada, Serbia, Belgium, Mexico, and the United States.  Given the ad hoc quality of the group, their performance (also playing their one album stem to stern) was impressive.  Sadly, I didn't like it all that much.  The music is very riffy and very flashy.  The audience conduit keyboard player (not the same as the guru) praised the Serbian guitar player as playing "as many notes as ants on a Tennessee anthill."  That's not really my thing.  It also didn't help that the group didn't have enough original material to fill their set and ended with lots of not-particularly-proggy covers.  So, a disappointment, but I'll not for the record that I seem to be definitely in the minority on this one.

Red Sand, from Canada (Quebec, if I'm not mistaken), was the second of the neo trio for the fest.  They certainly looked the part.  Bass player arrived with pedals (the only one of the weekend, I think) and a doubleneck, while the vocalist engaged in some patented Gabriel/Fish-inspired theatrics.  It all worked well enough, but of the neo bands for this year I thought they were the weakest.  The longer tracks didn't hang together very well.

I was prepared not to light Subsignal (from Germany).  I had convinced myself that they were a prog metal band and that's not really my thing.  So I was pleasantly surprised by how they actually sounded.  To me, they are a good, heavy, melodic rock band with a keyboard player.  Not overly proggy, but pretty damned good at what they do.  I also thought vocalist Arno Menses won the award for best crowd interactions ("you win a refrigerator!") and had a great voice to boot.  In fact, I'm disappointed that the Subsignal album I picked up afterward (their latest, Paraiso) isn't nearly as good as they were live.  Oh, well.

Collage emerged from Poland in the 1990s, along with previous ROSFest headliners Quidam, as part of the prog revival of that decade.  Unlike Quidam, they split up in 1996.  Guitarist Mirek Gil was at ROSFest last year with his current band, Believe, and the fest organizer asked him about Collage ever reforming.  In spite of initial misgivings, the reunion happened and Collage (with Believe's lead vocalist filling in) came back together specifically for the purpose of being the coda on this year's edition of ROSFest.  It was well worth the effort.  Gil is a fantastic guitarist and the Collage material suits him perfectly.  They were, by far, the best of the neo bunch and an excellent cap on the festival.

Overall, this year's ROSFest had a pair of great headline performances and a bunch of others that ran from really good to just all right.  That's a pretty good batting average, even if I didn't walk out of the theater having been awakened to an exciting new musical obsession.

Hey, there's always next year!

Seeing The Great War

We're on the verge of a sad centennial. Late next month will mark the 100th anniversary of the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand of Austria, heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian empire. That sparked a conflagration that stretched around the globe, killed millions, and earned the hopeful (but false) title of the War to End All Wars.

The In Focus feature of The Atlantic's blog - which should be a regular stop, it's really well done - is digging into the photographic history of World War I. It's begun a 10-part series covering the war, with a new part posting every Sunday.

This past Sunday was the second installment, which focused on the earlier years of the war on the Western Front. The images drive home the utter destruction of the first truly modern war:

That's what was left of a small town in France that changed hands countless times over four years (via the National Library of Scotland).   Go check out the rest and ponder what we, as a species, did to each other for four long years

As a postscript, here's a wonderful IQ song about a soldier who survived the war and returned decades later.  Powerful stuff.

Judas Unrepentant Unmasked?

It took a while for Big Big Train's The Underfall Yard, released in 2009, to grow on me.  It's successor, English Electric Volume One still hasn't*, for whatever reason, with the exception of one track.  It's a song about something that always strikes me as fascinating - art forgery.

"Judas Unrepentant" is about a guy who forges art, but does it in a very clever way.  Rather that churn out reproductions of known classics, he has a different scheme:

Establishing provenance
Acquiring old frames with Christie's numbers
Then Pains a picture in the same style
Specializing in minor works by major artists

It's quite brilliant, actually.  Reminds me of a story I heard Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick tell about their early days - where every other bar band played the radio hits by Zeppelin or The Who, they'd learn the B-sides nobody paid much attention to, so it sounded like original material (although they never passed it off that way).

I always wondered if the song was completely fictional or inspried by a real forger.  Last night, I think got the answer, thanks to a 60 Minutes piece on Wolfgang Beltracchi.  As the setup explains:

Wolfgang Beltracchi is a name you may never have heard before.  Very few people have. But his paintings have brought him millions and millions of dollars in a career that spanned nearly 40 years. They have made their way into museums, galleries, and private collections all over the world.  What makes him a story for us is that all his paintings are fakes. And what makes him an unusual forger is that he didn’t copy the paintings of great artists, but created new works which he imagined the artist might have painted or which might have gotten lost. Connoisseurs and dealers acknowledge that Beltracchi is the most successful art forger of our time -- perhaps of all time. Brilliant not only as a painter, but as a conman of epic proportions.

Now, the song is not Beltracchi's story.  For one thing, the song indicates that its hero wanted to get caught:

His time bombs are in place
And anachronisms
Clues pointing to the truth
If ever they are X-rayed

It's clear from the story that Beltracchi didn't want to get caught, which he did.  He was sentenced to six years in prison and his wife/codefendant to four.  As for how he got caught?

But then in 2010, he got busted by this tube of white paint. 

The Dutch manufacturer didn’t include on the tube that it contained traces of a pigment called titanium white. That form of titanium white wasn’t available when [Max] Ernst would have painted these works and Beltracchi’s high ride was over.

Which is interesting, because in the song, our hero:

Wrote legends in lead white
to trick the experts
And hoodwink the trained eye

Coincidence?  Could be.  But Beltrachhi's story must have been in the news in Europe sometimes before "Judas Unrepentant" was written, so it makes sense that one served as inspiration for the other.

One thing I will say for the song is that is provides something the 60 Minutes piece doesn't, which is answering why go through all trouble?  Beltracchi is a staggeringly talented guy.  Presumably he could have been a successful artist under his own name, so why all the fraud?  "Judas Unrepentant" has an answer:

He's painting revenge
Embittered by lack of success

* * * 

Expressing contempt
For greedy dealers
Getting rich
At the artist's expense

Revenge as the long con.  I like it, although it all comes to a tragic end, sadly.

I think what makes art forgets so interesting is that they tend to poke a finger in the eye of the art world, challenging its aesthetic bona fides and pointing out how, so often, people only care about the name attached to a work, not the work itself.  To that end, I applaud this collector:

This $7 million dollar fake Max Ernst is being shipped back to New York.  Its owner decided to keep it even after it had been exposed as a fake. He said it’s one of the best Max Ernsts he’s ever seen.

Because, in the end, the important thing shouldn't be whether the signature on the bottom makes your friends jealous, but whether the art moves you and makes you think about it.

* The similarly named English Electric by OMD, however, grabbed me right away, for what it's worth.

What's the Point of a Review?

My Friday Reviews are the descendant of one of the features of my original, hand crank operated, web page I had while I was in college and law school.  There I'd do reviews of just about every album I got, as part of a regular process of listening and figuring out what I thought about it.  I stopped doing those, largely because my reviews were winding up in one of two formats - gushing praise or harsh scorn.  If I didn't really "feel" one of those, I didn't even write up.  I'd like to think I do better now, but it's helpful to be able to pick and choose.

I bring all this up because of an interesting two-person article in the upcoming issue of the New York Time Sunday Book Review which asks the question, "do we really need negative book reviews?"

Now, as a struggling writer, I kind of like the idea of doing away with negative reviews. Who wants to see their work torn to shreds, after all?  But I'm not certain that would really be the best thing.

Francine Prose makes the case for not writing negative reviews.  It's pretty simple:

Even so, I stopped [writing negative reviews]. I began returning books I didn’t like to editors. I thought, Life is short, I’d rather spend my time urging people to read things I love. And writing a bad book didn’t seem like a crime deserving the sort of punitive public humiliation (witch-dunking, pillorying) that our Puritan forefathers so spiritedly administered.

From my reading of professional critics, that seems to be the best part of the job - when they find something in need of a champion, a book or film that won't reach a wider audience without some cheerleading.  It must be more rewarding that writing what shit the latest Transformers movie is or whatever.  So I see the point.

On the other hand, however, that seems a bit too touchy-feely, doesn't it?  To be fair, Prose (good name for a writer!) doesn't argue for lying about the quality of books, just not writing reviews of bad things at all.  Which, come to think about it, might be even worse - being ripped apart is one thing, being ignored quite another.

Zoe Heller makes the case for negative reviews and it is, as well, pretty simple:

most writers do not write merely, or even principally, to escape from or console themselves. They write for other people. They write to have an effect, to elicit a reaction. That is why they scrap and struggle, often for years, to have their work published. Being sentient creatures, they are often distressed by what critics have to say about their work. Yet they accept with varying degrees of resignation that they are not kindergartners bringing home their first potato prints for the admiration of their parents, but grown-ups who have chosen to present their work in the public arena. I know of no self-respecting authors who would ask to be given points for 'effort' or for the fact that they are going to die one day.

Part of being an artist, at least one who shares his work with other people, is the need to deal with criticism.  My father is a first rate grammar-Nazi.  I have him read my fiction, even though it's not the kind of thing he normally reads, because he will be precise and vicious with a red pen.  When my mother asked if I really wanted him to do that, I said, "because editors and agents will be kind and not point out those things?"  Being criticized is part and parcel of being a creative person.

Further, as Heller points out, reviews come with bylines and, hopefully, supporting argument as to whether a book is good or bad.  Real criticism goes miles beyond "it sucks" or even "it's great!"  Critics who are savage just for the fun of it won't garner a lot of respect or readers.

After all, as Prose admits, trying not to write a negative review is like trying not to eat too much at Thanksgiving.  You're bound to find something that rubs you the wrong way, doesn' work, and compels you to write about it.  Even if, as she also points out, in the end, nobody will really pay attention to what you have to say.

These days, when I write a review, I try to have something interesting to say about whatever the subject is. That's why there isn't a review posted every Friday.  Something's got to strike my fancy somehow, either by being brilliant or flawed, but I won't think twice about saying I think something sucks.  I just hope I have good enough reasons to make somebody else think, "yeah, all right."  Agreement, of course, is not required.

So I think the answer is yes, we do need negative book reviews.  Whether we need "bad" reviews is, of course, a completely different question.

Top 10 Personally Influential Albums

A few weeks ago on Facebook my friend Robert Pashman (or 3rDegree fame - go buy their music!), put up a list of 10 progressive rock albums that had been particularly influential on him.  I liked the idea of such a list, one that's not "favorites" or "bests," but that had some kind of personal meaning.  Given that I'll always shamefully steal somebody's idea if it's a good one, here's my version of that list, slightly modified.  These are the ten prog albums that have been personally influential to me because of some particular door they opened or some such thing.  Since, as I said, this isn't a list of bests and, frequently, these aren't my favorites albums by these bands, I've added a note about those too, if they're different.

In chronological order of their release, not when I first heard them . . .

Genesis - Nursery Cryme (1971)

Having two older brothers meant I was exposed to a lot of music that was "too old" for me when I was a kid.  Without a doubt, the one that took the most was old Genesis, of which my brother Todd had all the Gabriel/Hackett era albums on LP.  I got into them all at various points, but I think this one was the first one that really hooked me.  Just look at that cover - how could that not lure in an impressionable elementary school kid?  Musically, it was the two story songs on side one - "The Musical Box" and "The Return of the Giant Hogweed" - that roped me in.  I didn't get it all, but I loved it.  Genesis, as a result, is probably my favorite band of all time - at least today.

Favorite album: Selling England by the Pound

PFM - Storia di un Minuto (1972)

Until I got to college I didn't know that prog spilled much beyond the borders of the UK (and Canada and the US, to a certain extent).  I certainly had no idea that there was a thriving prog scene in Italy in the 1970s and that was where some of the British bands (like Genesis) first gained some popularity.  Storia di un Minuto was my first foray into Itlian prog and any music at all that didn't come with English lyrics.  That was an important Rubicon (so to speak) to cross because, while I'd heard and enjoyed a lot of instrumental music, I didn't know if I could get into something with lyrics that I completely couldn't understand.  Turns out, not only can I get into something like that, I'd much rather (in most instances) hear lyrics in a foreign tongue as opposed to stilted, forced English.  It no doubt helped that PFM's style of symphonic prog is beautiful and spiced with just the right amount of jazzy embellishments.

Gentle Giant - Octopus (1972)

When I went to college and got on the Internet, I discovered two things about prog: (1) it was still a living, if much lesser, genre (to quote Zappa on jazz, "it's not dead, it just smells funny") and (2) there were a whole bunch of bands from the 1970s in the genre they I had never heard of before.  I think of these as "second tier" bands, not based on quality but because they never really broke out the way Yes, Pink Floyd, and the like did. Nevertheless, they were on major labels, toured regularly (sometimes even in the US), and generally had a good run.  One of the first of these bands I discovered and loved was Gentle Giant and, particularly, Octopus.  I'd never heard such a diverse collection of tunes before on one album that, nonetheless, sounded like they all belonged together.  Octopus taught me that there were hidden gems out there and that looking for them could be a lot of fun (and expensive!).

Yes - Yessongs (1973)

Being a child of the 1980s and 90s, by the time I was actually buying albums I did it on cassettes (briefly) or CD.  I still managed to get a few LPs, including this triple-LP live monument, complete with the big Roger Dean gatefold sleeve.  I got it on vacation one year when we visited my aunt who lived outside Philly.  I don't know what made it an appropriate souvenir, but hey, you buy stuff on vacation, so what the fuck?  Given what's included - all of Close to the Edge and most of the important bits from Fragile and The Yes Album - an argument could be made that it's the only Yes album anybody needs.  It's a losing argument, of course, but it could be made with a straight face.  You also get solo spots from most of the band, which for Rick Wakeman leads to belting out the Hallelujah Chorus on a Mellotron.  When I was a kid I had no idea how he did it - I knew about samplers, but in 1972? - but thought it was awesome and is part of why I fell in love with that instrument.

Favorite Album: Close to the Edge

King Crimson - USA (1975)

Occassionally I have found myself at odds with the prevailing prog zeitgeist.  One of those situations involved the last of King Crimson's many 1970s variants, the one based around the rhythm section of John Wetton and Bill Bruford.  I leaned more toward the Belew era stuff and didn't quite get all the fuss over Larks Tongues in Aspic or Starless and Bible Black.  That changed with USA, which is drawn from that version of the band's last tour (after which Krim, for neither the first nor last time, broke up).  It's a powerful, blistering set, during which Wetton and Bruford show who were really the bosses in that lineup.  The improv "Asubury Park" is funky and menacing all at the same time.  USA (which, in spite of being a live album, has some aftermarket studio adjustments) may not be the definitive live document for that Krim era, but it's the one that got to me.

Favorite Album: Red

Hatfield and the North - The Rotter's Club (1975)

One of the things I discovered when I found out about those second tier bands was that a whole subgenre of prog arose from one specific spot in England, the Canterbury area.  Though it's hard to pin down just what makes the "Canterbury sound," it's enough to say that most of the bands that came out of that area had a lighter touch than their symphonic cousins, dabbled in the jazzier side of things musically (I often think of Cantu bury prog as "rock guys playing jazz," while fusion is "jazz guys playing rock." Your mileage may vary.), and often had lyrical content of the surreal and absurdest type.  Hatfield and the North definitely had all that in spades and this album opened my ears to this kind of music.  It also introduced me to keyboard player Dave Stewart, an immense talent and wonderful writer (of music and prose).

Rush - Grace Under Pressure (1984)

I was a big Rush fan long before I started buying music for myself - one of those other few LPs I had was 2112 - and for a long time I thought they would be what prog was in the world going forward.  To that extent, Grace Under Pressure is the first Rush album I bought when it was new (on cassette!) and, so far as I can remember, the first new album I really looked forward to.  At a time when the 70s prog giants were in the process of "selling out," Rush still seemed to be in their own world, even if it was one that had been streamlined and polished since, say, Hemispheres.  Still one of my favorites.

Favorite Album:Moving Pictures

Marillion - Misplaced Childhood (1985)
As I said above, one of the things I discovered in college was that prog was not, in fact dead.  It had never really gone away, although it's commercial heyday was over just after I was born.  Nonetheless, I learned about a brief prog renaissance in the early 1980s and, in particular, of Marillion.  I'd actually heard of Marillion before - my brother had Misplaced Childhood on LP - but never actually heard them.  Misplaced, a highly polished concept album about - well, I'm still not quite sure (ask Fish) - was their commercial high water mark, producing a couple of European chart hits.  It is, perhaps, the definitive example of the early 80s phase called neo-prog.  More importantly to me, it was an entrance into the world of "new" prog that showed it had a lot to offer, as well as an introduction to a band that would quickly become a favorite of mine.
Favorite album: Marbles

echolyn - as the world (1995)
Prog didn't die in the 1970s, and even after the quick (commercial) rise and fall of neo-prog, the genre slouched along until the 1990s, when the Internet and easier CD production led to the explosion that continues today.  echolyn was a bit part of it, breaking through to have as the world released on a major label.  Hell, I found it just by browsing my local CD shop in Morgantown - no Internet orders, no Amazon searching, nothing!  Aside from that, this is one of those albums that I can remember listening to the first time, being completely blown away by the tight three-part harmonies and exquisite playing.  echolyn would become one of my favorites and a prime example that modern prog was alive and well.
Favorite Album: Mei

Mandrake Project - A Favor to the Muse (2006)

One of the cornerstones of the modern prog scene are festivals.  Held every year (hopefully), they bring anywhere from a few to a dozen bands together in one place over one weekend.  Not only are they a great place (sometimes the only place) to see favorite bands, they're also great for being blown away by some group you've never even heard before.  My first festival experience was the dearly departed 3RP festival outside Pittsburgh.  It's only fitting, then, that my first completely out of left field unknown find at a festival happened there and involved Pittsburgh's own Mandrake Project.  There's something special about having your mind blown by a band you knew nothing about before they took the stage.  I'm happy to say it's happened a couple other times since and, I suspect, will again in the future.

Finally, an honorable mention.  I left The Who's Tommy (1969) off this list because it's not really "prog," but it nonetheless had a big impact on my prog life.  It was the first album I was aware of that aimed to be something more than a collection of songs.  In other words, it was my first concept album.  That's not something that's only part of prog, but, as a genre, prog's embraced it pretty heavily.  The deaf, dumb, & blind boy helped launch me on this amazing journey.

Friday Review: Broadway the Hard Way

In 1988 Frank Zappa embarked on what would be his last tour.  He put together a big band, complete with a five-piece horn section and drilled it on dozens of songs, both reworked old favorites and new material.  Zappa mainstays like Ike Willis and Ed Mann were joined by newly minted stunt guitarist Mike Keneally.  Musically, the result was one of the best periods of Zappa's career, with argument being split as to whether this band or the mid-70s Roxy & Elsewhere band came out on top.

Sadly, the band fell apart, rather spectacularly, following stops in the eastern United States and Europe.  As a result, the 1998 band has an almost mystical quality to it, both because people wonder just what caused it to implode and the because it was, for many folks, the best band they never heard in their lives.

Thankfully, Zappa saw fit to record every stop on the tour (save one, due to technical difficulties) and, for a band with an aborted lifespan, it's ridiculously well documented.  During Zappa's lifetime he released three albums of material, with additional tracks showing up on some You Can't Do That On Stage Anymore collections.  Even more tracks have been released since Zappa's death.

The first of the three albums to be released was Broadway the Hard Way (also the name of the tour itself).  Originally an LP of almost all new material, it was expanded for its CD release with several reworked older tracks.  The new stuff is almost all political or socially satirical in nature  and will put off some folks.  However, the political stuff is bipartisan (Jesse Jackson gets smacked in "Rhymin' Man," along with the GOP in tracks like "When The Lie's So Big?" and "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk") and some of the other stuff is good fun ("Elvis Has Just Left the Building," for instance).  There's also an appearance from "Mr. Sting" to perform "Murder By Numbers" and a ripping "Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel."  Still, it's the least essential of the three because it's so bogged down in the era.

The two-disc The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life featured more older material, although in radically different forms given the arsenal Zappa had at his disposal.  Good examples would be the run of One Size Fits All tunes on disc one.  It also features the highest quotient of Jimmy Swaggart related songs (he was a regular rhetorical punching bag throughout the tour), including "Swaggart Versions" of "More Trouble Every Day" and "Lonesome Cowboy Burt."  Finally, this release includes some bizarre cover versions, some recorded during sound checks, topped off by a version of "Stairway to Heaven" in which Zappa the guitar god lets the famous Jimmy Page solo be taken by  . . . the horn section.

The final release, also two discs, was Make a Jazz Noise Here, which is the most "serious" and "heavy" of these albums.  It's also the most essential.  It covers a lot of the more extended instrumental tracks, often laden with improvisation and Synclavier madness from various parties.  It's here where the band shines the most, as on the suite of old Mothers tunes stripped (for the most part) of vocals.  Check the uniform attacks from the horns and percussionist Ed Mann on "The Orange County Lumber Truck" and marvel.  Having said that, some of the pieces on disc one wander a bit.  However, disc two is probably my favorite hunk of Zappa ever released (except, maybe, depending on the day of the week and the barometric pressure, Roxy & Elsewhere).  All the songs are strong and they have enough structure to them to let you know where you are.  When things end with Zappa introducing the band at the end of "Strictly Genteel," it sounds like a perfect cap on the whole affair.

Speaking of the whole affair, what the fuck happened to this band, anyway?  The short answer is that a rift quickly developed between bass player Scott Thunes, also the "Clonemeister" (the guy responsible for rehearing in Zappa'a absence) for this tour and most of the rest of the band, particularly drummer Chad Wackerman and the horn section.  The long answer (although, honestly, there isn't much more to it) is laid out in Andrew Greenaway's recent book, Zappa the Hard Way.  Using extensive interviews (new and old) with most of those involved, Greenaway provides an interesting insight into the tour, the personalities involved, and how the whole thing fell apart.  It's not the most integrated work - Greenaway is prone to introducing a person and quoting whole paragraphs of the interview - but it's chock full of interesting anecdotes, not all of them focused on what went wrong (my personal favorite was the story of the night Mats & Morgan got to meet and play with Zappa).

One thing Greenaway gets right - because I agree with him! - is that Zappa was a bit of a hypocrite when it comes to these live albums.  In the liner notes to each, Zappa proudly explains that the music contained therein was all performed live and with no overdubs.  While that was true, it elides the fact that most of the tracks are stitched together from multiple performances, thus presenting performances that never really existed in the wild.  I've got no problem with that - it's a stunning technical achievement in some instances (over 20 in "Jesus Thinks You're a Jerk") - but don't get all holier than thou about it.

At the time the 1988 tour fell apart, nobody knew it was Zappa's last.  He made statement (both after and before) about being done with the rock band thing, but it's hard to say if he could have kept off the stage had he lived past 1993.  As a last hurrah, it's a shame it had to implode the way it did.  But it did leave behind an awful lot of excellent music for posterity.

The Details:
--------------------------
Broadway the Hard Way, by Frank Zappa
Released 1998

Tracks:
1. Elvis Has Just Left the Building (2:24)
2. Planet Of The Baritone Women (2:48)
3. Any Kind Of Pain (5:42)
4. Dickie's Such An Asshole (5:45)
5. When The Lie's So Big (3:38)
6. Rhymin' Man (3:50)
7. Promiscuous (2:02)
8. The Untouchables (2:26)
9. Why Don't You Like Me? (2:57)
10. Bacon Fat (1:29)
11. Stolen Moments (2:57)
12. Murder By Numbers (5:37)
13. Jezebel Boy (2:27)
14. Outside Now (7:49)
15. Hot Plate Heaven at the Green Hotel (6:40)
16. What Kind Of Girl? (3:17)
17. Jesus Thinks You're A Jerk (9:15)

The Best Band You Never Heard In Your Life, by Frank Zappa
Released 1991

Tracks:
Disc one
1. Heavy Duty Judy (6:04)
2. Ring Of Fire (2:00)
3. Cosmik Debris (4:32)
4. Find Her Finer (2:42)
5. Who Needs The Peace Corps? (2:40)
6. I Left My Heart In San Francisco (0:36)
7. Zomby Woof (5:41)
8. Bolero (5:19)
9. Zoot Allures (7:07)
10. Mr. Green Genes (3:40)
11. Florentine Pogen (7:11)
12. Andy (5:51)
13. Inca Roads (8:19)
14. Sofa # 1 (2:49)

Disc two
1. Purple Haze (2:27)
2. Sunshine Of Your Love (2:30)
3. Let's Move To Cleveland (5:51)
4. When Irish Eyes Are Smiling (0:46)
5. "God Father Part II" Theme (0:30)
6. A Few Moments With Brother A.West (4:00)
7. The Torture Never Stops (Part One) (5:19)
8. Theme From "Bonanza" (0:28)
9. Lonesome Cowboy Burt (Swaggart version) (4:54)
10. The Torture Never Stops (Part Two) (10:47)
11. More Trouble Everyday (Swaggart Version) (5:28)
12. Penguin In Bondage (Swaggart Version) (5:05)
13. The Eric Dolphy Memorial Barbecue (9:18)
14. Stairway To Heaven (9:19)

Make A Jazz Noise Here, by Frank Zappa
Released 1991

Tracks:
Disc one
1. Stinkfoot (7:40)
2. When Yuppies Go To Hell (14:36)
3. Fire and Chains (3:57)
4. Let's Make The Water Turn Black (1:36)
5. Harry, You're A Beast (0:47)
6. The Orange County Lumber Truck (0:42)
7. Oh No (4:43)
8. Theme From Lumpy Gravy (1:12)
9. Eat That Question (1:55)
10. Black Napkins (6:56)
11. Big Swifty (11:13)
12. King Kong (13:11)
13. Stars Won't Work (3:33)

Disc two
1. The Black Page (New Age Version) (6:45)
2. T'Mershi Duween (1:42)
3. Dupree's Paradise (8:35)
4. City Of Tiny Lights (8:01)
5. Royal March From L'Histoire Du Soldat (1:00)
6. Theme From The Bartok Piano Concerto #3 (3:43)
7. Sinister Footwear 2nd Mov. (6:19)
8. Stevie's Spanking (4:26)
9. Alien Orifice (4:15)
10. Cruisin' For Burgers (8:28)
11. Advance Romance (7:43)
12. Strictly Genteel (5:37)

Players for all:
Frank Zappa (lead guitar, synth, vocal)
Ike Willis (rhythm guitar, synth, vocals)
Mike Keneally (rhythm guitar, synth, vocals)
Bobby Martin (keyboards, vocal)
Ed Mann (vibes, marimba, electronic percussion)
Walt Fowler (trumpet, flugel horn, synth)
Bruce Fowler (trombone)
Paul Carman (alto saxophone, soprano saxophone, baritone saxophone)
Albert Wing (tenor saxophone)
Kurt McGettrick (baritone saxophone, contrabass clarinet)
Scott Thunes (electric bass, MiniMoog)
Chad Wackerman (drums, electronic percussion)

Zappa the Hard Way, by Andrew Greenaway
Published 2011

New Year, New Tune

In spite of the title of this post, this song has actually been percolating since April of last year, but I just got around to finishing it.  It originally had a different (more macabre) title and was going to wind up going a completely different direction.  Such is the life of music.

If "Wombats In Estrus (Parts 1, 2, and 3)" sounds awfully silly, that's because it is.  One of the great benefits of writing songs without words is that song titles can be just about anything (see, Zappa, Frank and National Health, among others, for some wonderful examples).  I jotted down the title sometime last year becsuse it reminded me of King Crimson's "Larks Tongues in Aspic."  Given the history of that tune (4 parts spread over three records), it seemed to fit what this piece became.

"Wombats . . ." is based around two notes that spawn the bass lines, chords, and the melodic bits.  It wasn't planned that way, but it turned out pretty well.  Part 1 (heavilly indebted to OMD's "New Stone Age") is more synth-poppy, while Part 2 is more ambient and spooky.  Part 2 includes samples from Freesound  (193818__geoneo0__four-voices-whispering-6-wecho by geoneo0) and a Sony collection called Rabbit Asylum (The Stuttered 00's), which is as weird as the name suggests.  Part 3 was originally it's own separate bit, but I thought it tied things together nicely (the drum pattern is indebted to "Astonomic Club" from Air's soundtrack for Le voyage dans la lune).

Equipment wise, this tune relies heavily on two of my older bits of kit, the Korg M50 workstation and the Alesis Micron virtual analog synth.  There's also some (virtual) Yamaha CS80 in the midsection and, of course, some (virtual) Mellotron in Part 3.  The final melodic bit in Part 3 is from the Nord Lead 2X.  None of that matters to most of you, but somebody might find it interesting.

So, enjoy "Wombats In Estrus (Parts 1, 2, and 3)"!

Friday Review Year In Review

2013 wasn't the most productive year here at Feeding the Silence, but if there was one thing I returned to time and again, even in fairly fallow periods, it was the Friday Review.  Partly, I'm sure, that's because if I have something to say about a movie, album, or book this is the best place to do it.  It's also due to the fact that, based on page views at least (meager though they be), this feature is fairly popular.  So, here's what you might have missed in the past 12 months:

Music:

• Dare
• Harbor Lights
• The Raven That Refused to Sing (and Other Stories)
• ROSFest 2013
• Selling England By the Pound
• Yessongs/Tales From Topographic Oceans
• The Weight of the World

Books:

• Dies the Fire
• Earth Abides
• The End of Eternity
• State of Jones
• Under the Dome

Movies:

• Compliance
• The Exorcist
• Mellodrama: The Mellotron Movie
• 9012Live
• Zero Dark Thirty

More to come in 2014!

Friday Review: The Weight of the World

In spite of what Foreigner says, it never really feels like the first time.  There's just something about the spark of discovery that can't be replicated.  That's true of music as much as it is of, well, other things.

When Sanguine Hum took the stage at ROSFest 2012 I hadn't heard note one from them.  They only had one album out and I was perfectly willing to wait and see what they were all about in a live setting.  That worked out well, as they completely blew me away.  I went out and got a hold everything related to the band I could, from their album Diving Bell to a pair of EPs by a prior incarnation of the band called Antique Seeking Nuns.  I even tracked down an electronic side project called Nunbient. I was musically smitten.

Then, this year, along came The Weight of the World.  A new album!  Oh, joy!  Oh, rapture!  Oh . . . hey, wait a minute.  This isn't quite the same, is it?  No, this time I've got some idea what to expect going in.  The result, as it happened, was that the new album landed in my mind with a kind of depressing thunk.  It wasn't bad, certainly, but wasn't brain rattlingly brilliant.

That was months ago.

Now, I'm pretty convinced that The Weight of the World is, in fact, brain rattlingly brilliant.  It takes the style of Diving Bell, refines it even further and adds some neat extras (some imported from Nunbient, to my pleasant surprise).

Take "From the Ground Up," which opens the album with just a synthy beat and vocals, unlike anything from Diving Bell.  Things get more "organic" once the whole band joins in (Matt Barber favors a lot of Rhodes piano, which is far from a bad thing) and the long, lilting vocal lines sit atop winding guitar and synth lines.  Similar touches of electronica infuse "Cognoscenti" and the exponential spiraling of "Day of Release," as well.  A couple other tracks, including the instrumental "In Code," conjure a Zappa-esque feel with some finely crafted tuned percussion work.  All this leads to the epic title track, which wraps up everything in neat, if sprawling, package.

In the end, it's hard to pin down just what it is about Sanguine Hum that hits my musical sweet spot.  Their music is dense, layered, and complex but doesn't come off as "complicated" just for the sake of it.  In other words, the band doesn't scream "progressive rock," it's just as proggy as it wants to be.  On the other hand, it's generally melodic and tuneful, but with a dark edge to it that doesn't exactly leave you walking down the street whistling. Antinque Seeking Nuns had a Canterbury-ish sense of humor that's lacking, or at least tempered by serious melancholy, in Sanguine Hum.  Maybe that's it - that combination, leavened with a heavy dose of genuine Englishness, curdles into something I just can't resist.  It doesn't sound like anything else out there, that's for certain.

Regardless, The Weight of the World lives up to its ambitions and is, if not the very best album of the year, certainly one of them. So, no, it's not like the first time.  It's even better.

Details
-------------------
The Weight of the World, by Sanguine Hum
Released 2013

Tracks:
1. From The Ground Up (5:35)
2. System For Solution (8:02)
3. In Code (4:35)
4. Cognoscenti (3:57)
5. Day Of Release (5:51)
6. Phosphor (3:04)
7. The Weight Of The World, Parts 1 to 3 (14:51)

Players:
Matt Baber (keyboards, drum programming)
Joff Winks (guitar, vocals)
Brad Waissman (bass)
Andrew Booker (drums)

What I've Been Up To

Hello again, gentle reader(s). In case anybody's wondering where I've been and what I've been up to the past couple of months, here's the info.

Largely, things have been quiet here at FTS because I haven't had a lot to say about what's going on in the world. There's only so many times you can look at political bullshit going on in the world and say, "is't that some political bullshit?" The powers that be provide us with lots of said excrement, but its not really worth talking about.

For the past month I've largely directed my creative energies toward National Novel Writing Month, as usual. This year was different because my project for Nano was a sequel. The Endless Hills is book two of the trilogy that began with The Water Road back in 2009. That tome, along with last year's project, Moore Hollow, are both to the point where I'm ready to do something with them, but I'm not sure what that something should be.

When I started writing fiction in earnest several years ago I never really gave any thought to what would happen when I had a "finished" product.  I didn't do it to find a new career or seek stardom, although it would be nice for people (aside from my lovely, supportive, and insightful wife) to read the stuff.  To the extent that I started with short stories the process there is pretty straightforward - finish story, polish 'til it gleams, submit it directly to magazine/website/anthology. No muss, no fuss, but plenty of rejection.

Speaking of short stories, I've joined an online critique group, Critters, that caters to writers of sci-fi, fantasy, and horror.  The deal is that in return for reading and critiquing the work of others, they do the same for you.  I've found it extremely helpful, particularly reading what other people are writing.  It forces you to think critically about a story, what its trying to do, how it might do it, etc.  That really carries over to your own writing.  The feedback I've gotten on a couple of short stories has been very helpful.

I also got a chance to take in my first West Virginia Writers conference up in Elkins. It was a good chance to hang out with like minded folks and learn some good stuff.  It certainly won't be my last.

But back to publishing novels, which is a whole different story from shorts. If you want to publish with one of the big houses, you need to get an agent first. That means sending queries and manuscripts out all over the place and hoping they connect. If you are interested in working with a smaller press you can submit directly to them, but the query/manuscript process is largely the same (frustratingly, just about everybody does it a little bit differently). Either route will give you what most people think of as "real" publishing - an editor, cover designer, layout specialists, and all that. It's the gold standard.

On the other hand there's the increasingly respectable avenue of self publishing, particularly in electronic (Kindle, etc.) format and particularly in the sci-fin/fantasy ghetto in which I live. The author retains completely control (and a bigger cut of sales), but you have to either contract out all the work a publisher normally does or do it yourself, which opens up all kinds of potential problems. In addition, marketing primarily electronic books seems like a real effort. All in all, I'm not sure I'm up for it.

Regardless, any decision on which way to go (or to go one way with one book and another with the other) is put off until the first draft of The Endless Hills is done. It's a bit more complex than The Water Road. That book only had two main characters with stories that paralleled each other. This one's got about eight "main" characters, many of which converge at one point, but many others don't. Lots of plates to keep spinning!

Musically, I've got a song in the can that needs mixed and given a new name. The working title is too stupid, even for me. It starts out heavily indebted to OMD's "The New Stone Age," but then goes in a different direction. I've also embarked on a cover of "Kashmir," so we'll see how that goes.

That's it. Regular service (or semi-regular, at least), resumes next week.

Stick Your High Art Where the Sun Don’t Shine!

OK, not really. I’ve got nothing against what most people think of as “high” art – I enjoy quite a bit of it – I just object to the classification. Regardless of how well-meaning or merely taxonomic it strives to be, it carries an implied judgment of “low” art as being, somehow, not worth as much. By further implication, it suggests that those who enjoy or make “low” art are somehow lesser than those who deal with “high” art.

I bring this up because of a recent essay over at the New York Times philosophy blog by Gary Gutting (with an assist from Virginia Woolf) about the divergence. Along the way, he appears to argue that musical worth, at least (it’s unclear if his metrics would apply to literature, film, or visual arts) can actually be quantified and judged objectively.

Along the way, he lays down this assertion:

Centuries of unresolved philosophical debate show that there is, in fact, little hope of refuting someone who insists on a thoroughly relativist view of art. We should not expect, for example, to provide a definition of beauty (or some other criterion of artistic excellence) that we can use to prove to all doubters that, say, Mozart’s 40th Symphony is objectively superior as art to ‘I Want to Hold Your Hand.’ But in practice there is no need for such a proof, since hardly anyone really holds the relativist view.

* raises hand *

I’m not sure how many of us there are, but I for one will proudly admit to being a relativist on the quality of art. Someone’s interaction with art is so personal, so bound up in the quirks of our own experiences, that it’s impossible to convert that interaction to some kind of objective measurement. For the record, I’m not ignoring the objective fact of consensus – that I like something a majority of the world can’t stand doesn’t make them right and me wrong, but it does mean I’m swimming against the current.

Anyway, back to the philosopher, who continues:

We may say, ‘You can’t argue about taste,’ but when it comes to art we care about, we almost always do.

Well, yeah, people will argue about things that matter to them, be it art, politics, or sports. Just because we do doesn’t mean the arguments can be won on some kind of objective scale. Humans will argue about anything!

He goes on:

You may, for example, maintain that the Stones were superior to the Beatles (or vice versa) because their music is more complex, less derivative, and has greater emotional range and deeper intellectual content. Here you are putting forward objective standards from which you argue for a band’s superiority. Arguing from such criteria implicitly rejects the view that artistic evaluations are simply matters of personal taste. You are giving reasons for your view that you think others ought to accept

Several things strike me as wrong about this.

The most important one, I think, is that Gutting is conflating the manner in which someone defends a preference with the actual basis upon which that preference rests. I’ve listened to an awful lot of music in my four decades on the planet, from the most popular radio hits to the most obscure wind band compositions. A lot of those I’ve listened to because of “hey, if you liked X, you’ll like Y, too” recommendations. I’m not sure they’re worth any more than a coin flip when it comes to predicting whether I’ll like it or not. Some things move me, some things don’t. The same is true for everybody, isn’t it?

More likely, these “objective” standards upon which Gutting relies are not the considerations we have when we decides something moves us, but post-hoc rationalizations to try and explain why that thing moved us. At the end of the day, I can’t really say why I prefer Marillion to Magma.* I suppose I could dig into the construction of the various songs and come up with some reasons for it, but they’d be meaningless. Most of the time, I’d rather listen to Brave than Udu Wudu. But sometimes not, you know? I can’t really tell you why.

Gutting’s reference to “objective” standards make me think of people who argue about whether one athlete is better than another when they’re separated by decades. Yes, statistics will be trotted out to support argue that Pele is better than Lionel Messi (or vice versa), but they don’t prove anything. Too many years have passed, the game has changed, etc. Ultimately, we have our favorite in mind before the argument begins and scramble to find some justification for it. If it was as simple as “consult these objective measurements” there’d be nothing to argue about.

Another flaw in Gutter’s presentation is assuming that those things he lists are “objective” to begin with. I’ll give him a pass on complexity for now (although more of that later), but the others have not just some, but large amounts of, subjectivity inherent in them. Whether something is “derivative” is a value judgment, in the end. Any musician is influenced by other music she’s heard and is, to some point, derivative of what’s come before. What’s the dividing line for being too derivative? What if it’s a parody, pastiche, or homage, anyway? Even more untethered from objective measurement are a piece’s “emotional range” and “intellectual content.”

As for complexity, how to measure it and what it means isn’t readily apparent. “Complex” generally implies some amount of difficulty, but any musician will tell you that sometimes playing something “simple” precisely and with musicality is more difficult than playing something that’s a tangled flurry of notes. Furthermore, that something is more complex doesn’t make it inherently more likely to connect with the listener. Quite the opposite, in fact. Returning to the Marillion/Magma example, few would argue if you called Magma’s more complex, but that wouldn’t lead inexorably to a conclusion that it was superior. For some folks it would be, for some folks it wouldn’t. For some people, there is a point where there are simply too many notes.

For another thing, using complexity as some sort of taxonomic tool fails to conflate like with like. Of course a three-minute song recorded in the early days of multitrack recording by four guys is less “complex” than a half-hour long symphony written to be performed by a full orchestra made up of dozens of people. So what? How does that help us judge either piece? It’s like saying desert is less nutritious than the main course – it utterly misses the point.

Someone in the comments to Gutter’s piece trotted out Duke Ellington’s aphorism:

There are simply two kinds of music, good music and the other kind

But even that’s not quite right – there’s what you like and what you don’t; what moves you and what doesn’t; what you want to hear and what you don’t. That a lot of people agree with you, or a consensus develops down through history that a particular work is a masterpiece doesn’t change that.

At the end of the day, as I said, art is personal. To label some of it “high” and some of it “low” throws up class barriers where none really exist. People like what they like. Sometimes, they like the same stuff you do. Sometimes they don’t. Deal with it.

* Before I get any angry letters in Kobaïan, I dig Vander’s bunch when I’m in the mood. Don’t take it personally.