September 2006 Archives

Here are some of the reasons why.

I used to think it was more noble and important to stay here and try to change it, but now it seems like the best way to go is refuse to participate in it. To, simply, get out. Leave the dismantling warmongers to destroy themselves without my taxes or my brain power.

(i am trying to find the democrats who voted yes on S 3930, as well -- anyone got a link?)

i know, i know. Urge.com, currently seen only on Windows Media, is unavailable to all New Yorkers because nobody in New York uses PCs, so the myth goes -- as the New Yorker put it this week, "if you have a Windows PC instead of an Apple you have to make up an excuse to your friends -- for example, that your school requires it." *

Non windows-having dance fans will be pained to know that today my employer, Urge, has resumed seriously killing the game by posting an EXCLUSIVE! EXCLUSIVE! Basement Jaxx DJ set for "our new Digital Decks exclusive DJ series," as Brian Beck put it, Brian being my dance-music-nerd friend and the guy who arranges for such things to happen because he is like BFF with everyone who ever touched an 808 or a 909 or some shit. He also sez "The mix is honestly one of the best mixes we've heard from them -- a blend of their signature house-pop sound along with underground hits of the moment." NERD TOWNE

In other Nerd Towne news:

Piotr: "Did you really like that Georgia Anne Muldrow album? I wasn't feeling it."

Me: "Yeah, but I also have an affinity for late-'60s/early-'70s psychedelic Brazilian jazz."

Chris, disdainfully: "That's the kind of thing that, if you went to apt and said aloud, you'd get involuntarily wifed."

*CORRECTION: The quote is not, in fact, something the New Yorker said in the formal definition of "said." In fact, a New Yorker writer, Patricia Marx, was quoting a high school student named Alex Traub. Marx and Traub were shopping at the Apple store for Marx's piece on socially acceptable school supplies. It was not the New Yorker but the subject, Alex Traub, who thinks PCs are embarrassing. Cowboyz 'n' Poodles regrets the error. (See comment section.)

I GOT PLAID

The Northumberland Tartan, variously known as the Border or Shepherd Plaid, is also closely linked to the Percy family, forming the official dress of the Duke of Northumberland's piper. Originally worn by shepherds tending their flocks in the Border area, the check is now the Shepherd family tartan and worn throughout the world.

The history of the Shepherd check is most interesting. Textile historians have been able to date a fragment of the pattern, discovered in a bottle near Falkirk, to the 3rd century A.D. thus leading to the belief that the pattern was known as far back as Roman times.

EVERYTIME YOU ROCK A HOUNDSTOOTH YOU REP MY CLAN

Today's cultural breaths:

Joan Didion knows more about Dick Cheney than he probably does, having read 18 books on the matter for her NY Review of Books essay. Still, she cannot shed light into his motivation, which stumps me and everyone else too, maybe: what truly drives him? Is he, simply, a harbinger of evil? A chasm where hope goes to die? I'm not sure he believes anything uttered from his own mouth, barring its fundamental rightness. (Recall: his vice-presidential debate with Edwards in the 2004 election. Topic: Iraq. Playing omniscient patriarch -- the Dark Father, if you will -- he cited EL SALVADOR as an example of a successful mission / occupation abroad. His statement:

"Twenty years ago we had a similar situation in El Salvador," Cheney said. "We had a guerilla insurgency controlled roughly a third of the country, 75,000 people dead. And we held free elections. I was there as an observer on behalf of the Congress... And as the terrorists would come in and shoot up polling places as soon as they left, the voters would come back and get in line and would not be denied their right to vote. And today El Salvador is a [whole] of a lot better because we held free elections... And [that concept] will apply in Afghanistan. And it will apply as well in Iraq."

Did he believe that?

And yet, as we learn in Didion's piece, Cheney advised against invading Iraq during the Bush I reign because of its potential instability – Sunnis vs. Shiites, attacks on US soldiers, etc. He said it aloud. And everything that he predicted would happen, did.

SECONDLY:
The only song I love this morning is Soffy O's "Come With Me," where everything is illuminated in a swathe of piano. "If you could see the beauty of it. If you could see the beauty of it. If you could only see there's so much more. What is it that you fear? Could it be the stormy weather? Why don't you come with me, if only that you will know what it looks like."

FOURTHLY:
Go see my friend Miss Meghan, noted NYC shoe maven, at Bloomingdales Uptown from 5-7 pm tomorrow, please. She will be intro'ing the new Frye boot collection, serving champagne, being witty on a mike and administering your footwear horoscope.

by Julianne Shepherd y Piotr Orlov
c. 2006 the above, and Urge.com

It took only one release for the DFA to redefine the sound of young New York: The Rapture's 2002 dance-punk era kick-starter, "House of Jealous Lovers." By gluing together skuzzy distorted beats, electronic-funk propulsion and healthy dollops of jaded youth attitude, producers/remixers/label impresarios Tim Goldsworthy and James Murphy didn't just bring the mojo back to the Big Apple, they gave the dance underground a new groove and a label to call home. An acronym for Death From Above (retired after 9/11), DFA has expertly captured the new millennium's "We're all gonna die, so let's dance" post-traumatic stress-disorder free-for-all. This is partially a testament to the omnivorous musical natures of Goldsworth and Murphy -- the former's a hip-hop-loving Brit expat who'd previously worked with trip-hop supremos UNKLE, the latter's a former indie-punk drummer-turned-engineer from Jersey -- and how they've meshed. In five years, the two have become in-demand remixers (reworking tracks for everyone from Nine Inch Nails to NERD, to the Chemical Brothers), while the record company they founded is home to a diverse stable of artists experimenting with electronics in rock/pop/noise contexts. URGE sat down with Murphy to discuss the music that formed and informed his and Goldsworthy's signature sound, and made them the kings of "hipster jackasses" the world over.

URGE: How do you and your DFA partner, Tim Goldsworthy, connect on music?

James Murphy: Well, I'm American and Tim's English; [it was about] finding things to talk about that weren't really obvious. We talk about the things that we actually liked about music. The word "actually" comes up a lot -- what things are actually about, what actually makes them good -- because when most people listen to music, I think they hear very large, round gestures. [For instance], when people hear disco and hear that high-hat, they just see bell bottoms. You can't understand the little details. But with each other, we both knew a lot about music and loved it in a very similar way, but we had a very different language and very different reference points. It's like speaking a foreign language and being able to say 'hi, taxi, hotel, check please,' but also [having the ability to discuss] physics. We can talk about something very specific in a different language.

URGE: Can you explain what you mean by "different language"?

Murphy: We started using records that had very specific gestures to design the hieroglyphics of music that we wanted to use. T. Rex is a really good example. There are a couple of tracks where I'm convinced the drums were recorded fast, and then slowed down because if you speed them up, the patterns are kind of macho. But no one would play that way at the tempo that they're at. It's not so much that it sounds slow, but they're a little underwater and a little bit gentler.

So we use [touchstones] like that to describe making things sound underwater. Or there are vocals on Sly Stone records, like "Just Like a Baby" from There's a Riot Goin' On, that sound really "close," with a bit too much low end, and they stick out a little bit. We refer to that as "claustrophobic." So I know when I'm [telling Tim], 'Oh, the vocals need to be a little more claustrophobic; they can't be so shiny,' we know what that means. It means, like, Mark E. Smith or Sly Stone, where the mic is not invisible, the mic is your ear, like having someone talk into your head. Everything off There's a Riot Goin' On is really overly close, and with T. Rex, it's really "Cosmic Dancer" and "The Slider." Those are the two songs that just the bass and the drums and everything seems to slow down. Really beautiful. And the vocals on the T. Rex stuff that work like strings. There's a Tyrannosaurus Rex song, "Scenes of Dynasty," off of Prophets, Seers and Sages, I think that's just a great one. There's just clapping and singing and that's it, and little bits of vocal bits in the background. There's nothing else in there. It's one of my favorite things ever.

URGE: You used the words "hieroglyphics" and "claustrophobic" to describe music. Do you have other words that represent a sound?

Murphy: Yeah. "Dumb" and "retarded" get used a lot as really positive [words]. Drummers now are really smart, and I don't like smart drumming. [Drummers today] play either super-technical or like, "I'm a kid in a garage!" [all laugh] There's this whole middle ground of drums, like if you watch Stevie Wonder do "Superstition" on "Sesame Street," they close in on the drummer -- he's just a teenager. He weighs like 100 pounds. Like a stick with an Afro. It's just the dumbest drumming. And it's genius. I defy drummers now to play like these guys. Everything's just ... I don't know how else to say it but "dumb." All the drumming on Al Green records is monumentally dumb. It's so dumb, and so good. Keith Richards is a dumb guitar player. I'm not a big Rolling Stones guy, but I've always felt I like how dumb his playing is. Coldplay is much cleverer with the little things, a little less embarrassing, in how the guitars are placed, and the bass and the drums. They're not a bad band or anything, but when you compare that to the ridiculous -- is it Rick Wakeman who plays piano on [David Bowie's] Hunky Dory? It's just absurd. But it's all kinds of bar-roomy, played by this really dexterous jackass. Everything's kind of lumpy.

URGE: Back to some of the initial touchstones between you and Tim. A lot of your DFA work sounds slightly acided out, but with natural drums underneath it.

Murphy: A lot of it is natural drums, but again, a lot of old dance music is breaks. We talk about disco and acid house a lot. Things just have to have some form of wiggle. If they don't have a wiggle, they just sound like they're yelling at you. The acid house really came from Tim. What we decided when we met was that we were both massive Smiths fans. Both of us saw the same first show: the Ramones. I listened to the Pixies and Sonic Youth and Mudhoney, and we both liked Sonic Youth and My Bloody Valentine and Spacemen 3. I like a lot of the Chicago stuff, like Trax Records, "Your Love" by Frankie Knuckles, things like that. I'm always reaching towards "Lowrider" by War, "White Horse" by Laid Back, "Higher State of Consciousness" by Josh Wink. Tracks that become references for us.

URGE: What other disco records were you listening to?

Murphy: That could go on forever. When we started DFA, I had determined for me that Donna Summer's "I Feel Love" was the best dance song of all time. I just saw it as the most translating song.

URGE: Translating, meaning one single song affects 12 different groups?

Murphy: It's just dance music. It's disco, it's techno, it's soul, it's electro, but more American, more soul-y, more of the genre that turned into the abomination that is soulful house.

When I first heard dance music, period, all I could hear was C&C Music Factory. You could play me anything. You could put on Carl Craig, and I'd be like [sings intro synth to "Gonna Make You Sweat."] ... Everything had "good vibrations," everything wanted to make me sweat. I just felt like I was going to be some guy in a really sleek jacket. Like safe-sex-making music.

URGE: Did Tim come to DFA with one song that he thought defined dance music as completely as you thought "I Feel Love" did?

Murphy: He came with a lot of different stuff that he loved. A lot of it was American; a lot of it was hip-hop, because that was the "other." So he came in knowing that the Bomb Squad were incredible -- they were the other. We had a lot of talks about that -- the relationship of a white dude in New Jersey to hip-hop versus a relationship to a white dude in Yeovil [a small town in southern England] to hip-hop. It's a very different relationship. I loved Public Enemy -- they were one of my favorite things in the world, but I would never consider making music that had anything to do with it. No matter how much I loved it, I just wouldn't conceive of it. Whereas for him, he loved it -- and it was the music he wanted to make. That didn't seem weird, anymore like it didn't seem weird for me to try to make music like The Cure. He was into twee, like Pastels, Dentists. We were both humongous Smiths fans. I think that can't be understated, or that can't be overstated.

URGE: Did you ever do hip-hop in the '80s, growing up?

Murphy: I liked hip-hop, but not as dance music. I liked Public Enemy. I liked Native Tongues. But I never thought of it as dancing, never really thought about dancing at all until '99. It was good music for my car.

URGE: What happened in '99?

Murphy: I took ecstasy, like everybody else.

"You looked so cool DJing last night," Mo told me the next morning, sitting in the director's chair in the kitchen. "You kept sticking out your butt and doing this" [makes hoochie-coochie motion with hands and shoulders]

Mo missed the Portland vinyl years, when my signature move was cleaning the dust off a record by rubbing it in a circular motion on my ass -- the mp3 has really minimalized the choreography of playing albums. I learned this Saturday night at Matt's birthday dinner, which eventually ballooned into a full-blown rager. At some point between the two, I began fiddling with the iTunes, and suddenly I was "DJing" or rather, selecting songs and trying to approximate a fader by fussing with its volume. Many of the party'sattendees were past and present Cooper Union students, well versed in the ways of MOP, Shawnna and Beyonce, though who would have thought that Whitetown's "I Could Never be Your Woman" was such an indubitable Cooper party jam. But very few partygoers responded to "Chicken Noodle Soup." In fact, the only fellows who openly enjoyed it were the 17-year-old boys who showed up from around the way, and were begging me all night to play Jim Jones before they "had to leave" (read: curfew). "Does this party get any wilder?" one of them asked me and I said, I don't know, what do you mean by wild and the kid said, "You know, like girls getting naked."

No, I told him, that was not going to happen.

What did happen was the inevitable "boy intimidated by my music knowledge and hovering over me telling me how to do my job." He came up on me, feathers cocked, and started informing me I should play something "really hard." He said this during my Clipse "Zen" /Dre "Chevy Ridin High" fucking gangster music rock block, two of the hardest, hardest rap insta-classics to be released in the past two years. I mean, the fuck? I was too nice to tell him to go away and, wondering exactly what qualified as hard to his apparently refined ears, stupidly, I was like, "Something hard? What did you have in mind?"

Mike Jones, "Flossin."

Ha, ha. I queued it so he would go away, which he did, and I began talking to his roommate, an aspiring producer slash film editor and much nicer "friend of Ayres" who assuaged the pain. "Don't worry," the roommate told me. "We argue about music all the time."

Hard Dude returned when I did not play "Flossin" after a time. "Where is 'Flossin'?" he asked, and I responded, "It has the wrong tempo for this group of songs, and anyway, Mike Jones sucks my ass so I'm not playing it." And the chorus of fucking "Flossin'" is "MY ALBUM! MY ALBUM!" Get real, player.

This, of course, began the pissing contest.

"What the fuck? Mike Jones doesn't suck. Who do you think is the best rapper right now?"

Oh honey, you do not even want to get into it with me. "Right now? Pusha T. Lil Wayne."

"No. No way. The best rapper is Vik Vaughn."

"Who?" I pretended like I was Mike Jones. MF Doom, dickweed.

"Vik Vaughn. Look it up on the internet when you get home," he leveled, satisfied with himself, and pleased that he was indeed more knowledgable about music than I am.

Dear boys of the world who are feeling yourselves yet feel intimidated by smart women even when they are fake-DJing on iTUNES and try to make us feel stupid in kind, do not worry: we really cannot tell your wiener size just by examining your hands, and we weren't looking anyway.

One troubling aspect of taking semi-professional dance classes five-six times a week is the small faction of students whose apparent aspiration is toward the "fantasy" of the hip-hop dancer, as discerned by the gestural booty rubs that accompany a fixed gaze upon the self, a come-hither flick of the hair as if Ludacris were on the other side of the mirror and, most tellingly, a dance ensemble which is topped with a $350 pair of Bape tennis shoes, patent leather and getting thoroughly sweated in like it's nothing. What the.

Having as-yet-unfulfilled dance-ensemble dreams myself, I would like to make note that I did not judge until I reached the part about the exceedingly expensive kicks -- which, when worn by even the most frivolous of sneaker freaks, generally come equipped with a Q-Tip and a satchel of baby oil for gentle, spot-specific bathing. And yet, there it is, glossy kicks, half my rent, all creased and perspired until the final five-&-six-&-seven-&-eight-& of the cool-down stretch. What the.

Adventures in navigating the foreign terms of the bourgeousie,
JES

for re-winning her seat on the Bellingham, WA Court of Appeals, on her merits. ""I'm just pleased as punch," Becker said Tuesday night after hearing the results. "I really am grateful of (the) level of support and I will do my best to deserve peoples' respect that they gave me in this race."

Chan Marshall of Cat Power on how Mary J Blige and Oprah got her through rehab. "I never really noticed [my audiences] liked me before," she notes, stamping out her cig. "I was so enwounded with self-hatred and self-denial and just, uhhhh. I never knew people were coming to see me, play, before."

Adventurous, wealthy Sugarcubes fan to finance our trip to Iceland this November. I cook you enchiladas, teach you Bjorklike choreography, and invigorate your mind with my deeply awesome mind spiral of the mind. Interested parties, dial J for fire ASAP.

The band, not a running count of the time they spend wishing they were Neu!: May God grant us the serenity to accept the things we cannot change, the courage to change the things we can, and the wisdom to know the difference. This album, self-titled, "swirls."

Le Petit Lieutenant is playing at the Angelika: it is a film about a woman head-detective in Paris whose struggle with alcoholism reaches a head when she befriends a young lieutenant new to her unit (major crimes) and they investigate a series of stabbing/drownings across la Seine -- star Nathalie Baye reminds me of Helen Mirren in the wonderful Brit series Prime Suspect, in that it adds another dimension to the police-beat drama by tackling the gender bias women face working the clink. Also, le petit lieutenant sheds light on France's institutional race bias in a realistic, not-heavy-handed way -- there is one scene where a Moroccan detective from the baniuele discusses his struggle in becoming police, and the vagaries of immigration politics are very subtly incorporated throughout the film. It's long, 110 minutes long, and the director has a small but not untenable affinity for long shots of people walking (it's more for realism than for dramatic effect a la my fave Bela Tarr's indulgent 12-minute silent-stroll scenes). But I recommend it if you already have an interest in policing, working-class socio-racial strata, powerful yet realistically flawed women characters depicted respectfully in film, and French people.

to ponder what, exactly, is accomplished when dudes smooch at you on the street, especially before nine am? When I crossed the street this morning, the sun barely peeking out, this man driving a truck found the energy to not only make kiss noises -- a wolf-call so commonplace on my block it blends in with the soundfabric of car engines and busta's beats and i no longer notice it -- but also to holler, "yeah, lookin good! baby!" for the approximate duration of the stoplight, as I crossed six lanes of traffic. I thought my outfit was pretty good today, too, but never dreamed a baggy thrifted sweater-poncho and rainboots would bleed sex. And still, I, jaded to the "whatever" point at this kind of thing, I must ask: what does that guy accomplish? Does he really think i'm gonna be all "yeah baby thanks here's my number?" or perhaps that I might lift up my sweater and flash him on my way to work? Honestly, I am wondering if there is an endgame to this, or whether, when street-harrassers street-harrass, it's just that their testosterone and sexual fortitude is so unbridled they cannot control it, even if they have probably only been awake for 15 minutes? Or do they want me to think as much? I really want to know, cause i'm flattered and all, but i don't get it.

Julito McCullum rocks Michel'le and James Blunt, Maestro and EJ: bases covered

Someday I shall post something that is not related to The Wire.

Which reminds me, Jacob Weisberg has your back.

Democracy fritters.

I'm being flip but not fully mendacious when I say they're the only rock band I care-about care about in 2006. Let them collect accolades.

Alternately, D. Letterman is a class-a weirdo.

Late last night at the Irish sports bar round the way, Mo, wise beyond her years, gestured into her scotch. "The problem with criticism is that it's all florid adjectives. No one uses verbs anymore. No one," she groused, "but Anthony Lane."

I left after the buggy Michiganian transplant from up the street moved in on Nina with the pick-up line, "Is this corduroy?" I left after remembering I hate bars in general, but especially that bar, which we were prompted to visit with the dashed promise of trivia night, and the fact that last weekend, at 2 am, we wandered in to find they had roasted a whole pig on a spit on a whim, and I watched the boy I met tear off its left ear from its disembodied head and gnaw on it, like a teething ring. (Needless to say, I did not take him home with me.)

This morning I saw Mo in the kitchen. How late did you stay, I asked her. "Not much longer," she answered. "I left after the bartender started spraying soda water on the girls dancing atop the bar."

From her website, The Songbird gets really real:

"In his unfinished authorized memoir of the President, Mickey Herskowitz touched upon the psycho-social reasons relating to Bush’s decision to invade Iraq: a long-standing father and son competition based on feelings of jealousy and inadequacy. Herskowitz stated that Bush felt his father wasted all of his political capital he acquired during the Gulf War. George W. Bush was quoted saying "If I have a chance to invade, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I am going to have a successful presidency." In invading Iraq, Bush saw the opportunity to emerge from his father's shadow and no longer be seen as the perpetual underachiever who consistently failed under the watchful eye of his accomplished father. He had the chance to finish what he feels his father was unable to finish. And he could finally have the opportunity to achieve something his father was unsuccessful in achieving...a two-term presidency."

I love The Wire so much I'm almost afraid to write about it, for fear I'll fuck it up: it's so good -- and so tragic -- it feels sacred, like Tonantzin and dancing. Jon Caramanica, braver than I, and the first person I ever heard refer to the show in reverent hushed tones, has been working on this for months, and it paid off.

He writes, In the final scene of the final episode of this season, one of the show’s young characters drives down a quiet street, Mullyman’s song “The Life, the Hood, the Streetz” blasting from the window of his stolen car. From Mullyman’s “Still H.I.M.” mixtape, it was one of the bigger Baltimore rap records of the past year, but in this new context portends a whole new life and meaning for the song and its author.

“In Baltimore your hood is your whole world,” Mullyman said. “ ‘The Wire’ inspired me, let me know we had a voice I didn’t know we had. It showed me I might be sitting on oil.”

CARCETTI FOR MAYOR!

Four is the best season yet.

After extensive nutritional analysis Real Age sez I am physically five years younger than my actual age, and if I start popping a daily multi-V and sleeping longer than five hours a night, I COULD BE, as J-Shin says on his new album, "lookin 19 but goin on 22"!!!!!! YEAH, REGRESSIVE AGING!

Beyonce's B'Day is, as I have noted more extensively over in my Urge blog, a John Waters/Charles Busch-worthy sexual awakening-slash-transformation of a woman into a drag queen, which other people might term "diva." But the real (not real) question is as follows. In the rap on "Kitty Kat," which is growing on me despite producer Pharrell faxing it in, Beyonce shouts our friend SMITTY and his amazing, still-my-party-jam drunk-sober-or-sleeping "Diamonds on My Neck." (Fits nice with "Hustlin" but he's loads better than Rick "Emphysema" Ross at articulating a hook: WHERE MY WHERE MY Gs AT? Also, in case you are a denizen of Coma Towne, Swizz Beats has *owned* the last two or so years. ) So will his next mixtape track bring the metatude full circle and reference Beyonce's reference of his single? FILM AT FUCKING ELEVEN!!!

"David Simon is a stickler for details," Peranio says. "We don't mess with that."

I bought a purple raincoat lined in hearts at the thriftstore when I was in Wyoming and when I put my hand in the pocket, I found a bulletin from a Catholic Church in Torrington, Wyoming, there from 1991. The lyrics to "On Eagle's Wings" were printed inside. I have not been inside a cathedral since before the millennium – my Catholicism not lapsed so much as sloughed -- so I do not know if this is still the case, but for the decade of the '90s, "On Eagle's Wings" was the single most Catholic-identified song in my parish, even more than "Ave Maria" or that haunting Gregorian minor-keyed rendition of the "Agnus Dei" that I love, so soft and quiet, that I can sing for you but cannot identify its composer. (I might have to call St. Mary's to find out.)

And lo, I was right about "On Eagle's Wings." Like "Buttons" or "Beautiful Day," we all have it involuntarily memorized.

as you know, bruce ratner is planning to gut a major part of bklyn and condo it up, forcing out many longtime area residents, bringing that manhattan bourgie shit, driving up rents, building butt-ugly condos and further transforming new york into a city for rich people. et cetera, et cetera

today the times reported he'll chop down the size of the development. Not good enough, but proof that his critics are getting to him.

so here's a good blog on the topic

"This season is to take argument with those who feel that if you're born without privilege, but make the right set of choices, that you will be spared. To do away with that bit of national mythology."

Is it tragic or is it inspiring that David Simon and Ed Burns, having spent decades seeing several sides of the drug war, seem to understand public policy and its rammifications better than any Congressperson? The Wire is the truest American folk tale we've got. Heard it advertised on Hot 97 this morning, lots of billboards around New York, that Stephen King column in Entertainment Weekly (which you shouldn't read if you haven't seen the fourth season cause he spoils key plot points)... Perhaps finally it will get its due.