Bass for Freedom

I stumbled upon this video last week and had to post about it. Produced by XLR8R TV (the Youtube brand of XLR8R music magazine), it features the legendary Mary Anne Hobbs talking about Cali Beats, the scene, and the phenomena thereabouts. 

Mary Anne Hobbs is a fundamental figure in the explosion of bass music and widely known as the woman who brought dubstep to the masses. She is most well known as a DJ for the BBC's Radio 1, perhaps the most influential radio station in the world when it comes to electronic music. Hobbs began DJing Radio 1's rock show, but she is famous for hosting their "Experimental" show in which she championed Dubstep and Grime music. One of the esteemed authors of Hobbs's Wikipedia says:

"Her 2 hour special 'Dubstep Warz' on BBC Radio 1 in January 2006 is considered the global tipping point for the dubstep sound."

The masses listened to Radio 1, and she had the balls to play this crazy music on Radio 1. She became not just a figurehead, but an authority on all things bass.

So the fact alone that Mary Anne fucking Hobbs (!!!) flew from London to California to "check out the scene" and make this video gives the LA Beats scene a lot of credibility. But she doesn't just check it out, she raves about it.  At 2:00:

"I got this incredible sense of momentum building out here in Los Angeles and San Francisco, this incredible sense of spirit and energy, and this community of producers coming together...to create a scene and move a scene forward...I feel like there is a flashpoint about to happen on the West Coast, and I wanted to be here."
Oh, also...this video is from March, 2009! That's three and a half years ago! Three and a half years ago, Hobbs said the "momentum was building." I think this point, more than anything else, hits home for me. Living in LA, the Beats scene still feels like a subculture, even a few years after this video was made. My friends who aren't music freaks still haven't heard of Flying Lotus (who Hobbs calls the Godfather of beats, "the type of artist that you only come across once in a generation", and "the Hendrix of his time" - strong words), much less any of the other producers Hobbs mentions. Even I, being the beatnik that I am, haven't heard of some of them. And yet, these producers are having such a global impact, as this video proves. AND this was filmed three years ago.

It says a lot about the state of modern music. It's paradoxically global yet 'inside.' It's global because some dude in a shack in Botswana is listening to Gaslamp Killer beats that I'm hearing live in LA. And yet, the beats scene is such an insulated world, as 99% of people in LA and America and Botswana have no idea it exists. 99% of people have never heard of the Hendrix of our generation. And maybe that's what modern music, modern culture has come to. You're either in the scene or you're not. An internet connection allows anyone to be in the scene from any place in the world. But if you're not in the scene, you don't know about the scene and don't care about the scene. Because the internet allows you to surround yourself only with the scenes you care about, the scenes you have deemed worthy of your time and attention.

But what IS the scene? Does seeing the scene live, in person, in LA make a difference? Can the scene, given this "state of modern culture," be propelled into the mainstream? What is the mainstream? Is the mainstream the only scene that matters? Does the mainstream exist anymore? What are hipsters?

I wrote this post largely as an attempt to get this blog back to its focus: the beats scene. The video gives a great sense of what the beat scene is, and these questions it's raised gives me a lot to think about and write about. So don't worry, fellow Beatniks, this blog isn't straying too far...

Stay tuned this week for A Thanksgiving Special: Beats I'm Thankful For. Until then, I'll leave you with this quote from Hobbs at 6:25, talking about the exchange between British and American producers:

"You feel that exchange. It's bass for freedom for bass for freedom for bass for freedom, I guess..."

Oh, and Bob Marley.

"All I ever had...redemption songs...these songs of freedom...songs of freedom."

Trifecta

Reeeeeeemix.

I'm reposting two of my earlier entries with some content updates and new links/embeds, and an entirely new blogger profile - check them out to relive the glory you basked in when you read them the first time. Working on fixing formatting issues like hyperlinks being invisible - will update ASAP!

Blog Envy II

Why is it so weird to hear a recording of your own voice? Because we express our thoughts through speech, so our individual voice is the personification of our thoughts (and our thoughts are our being), so hearing a recording of your own voice is like being yourself while being outside yourself. Did I just blow your mind? 

A couple weeks ago I wrote about Mark Richardson’s tumblr as a source of inspiration for this fine blog you’re now reading. After continuing to read Mark’s blog, I’ve decided to dig a little deeper: in this post I’m going to talk specifically about Mark’s voice and how it contributes to the success of his blog.

My first post about Mark focused on the style that is portrayed through his blog, specifically as a result of his content choice. What I have come to realize, though, is that Mark’s nuanced voice is the main vehicle for this style, allowing it to emanate off the page through the subtext of his writing. But this mention of subtext illustrates exactly why Mark’s voice is indeed so nuanced: it truly manifests itself as a lack of voice. 

Conventionally, voice is perceived like extra credit – it’s the extra jokes, the personal opinions, the parenthetical digressions that a writer adds to his piece to show personality and make it less boring. Mark doesn’t really do that, at least in his personal blog.  He writes in a succinct, to the point manner, stating things as fact. A good example of a typical short post is this link to an album review he did for Pitchfork. His comments are limited to the dry:

 “I reviewed this fine album for Pitchfork.”

Another example:

 "This was a revelation the first time I heard it. I own this 10”.”

  




He is linking to this song by Kid Koala, calling it a “revelation,” and not expanding upon that comment at all? You’d think it would be a big deal for such a seasoned music critic to call a song a “revelation,” and you would expect him to at least give some explanation, some insight - he’s a critic for christ’s sake! Those guys live to see their prose in print. And yet, Mark is self-restrained. Even his longer story-oriented posts sometimes read like a police report, a mere collection of facts. And at first, he comes across as cold, even boring.


 In my first Envy post I said “he makes a point without making a point,” and allows the reader to make his own conclusions. In a very similar way, it is in his reserved, no-frills manner of writing that Mark’s personality comes across – he allows the reader to infer his personality, and if the reader dedicates himself to consistent reading of his blog the collection of personality-inferences come together to form a picture of a man who is far from cold and boring.

Take this, for example:

 “When I worked as an apprentice butcher my mentor was Mr. Wu.” That’s it. No back story, just a fact stated as such, with no context except this photo.

But LOOK AT THAT PHOTO! A young Richardson in butcher’s attire, dwarfing the tiny man who we can only assume is Mr. Wu. It’s a fucking awesome photo, and every aspect, from the men’s smiles to the “Genuine Fresh American Lamb” sign in the background exudes an interesting story and palpable personality. Mark’s genius, then, is recognizing that the photo doesn't need any context or back story, that the photo is in fact more effective when accompanied by a boring old sentence like “When I worked as an apprentice butcher my mentor was Mr.Wu.” That sentence leads to questions. This photo answers all of the questions that Richardson cares to, and leaves the rest for the reader to fill in.

Another:

“Personally, I like the older, more obscure stuff.” Then he links to this 12 second audio of “the first sound ever recorded.”

What would seem to be a cryptic, nonsensical comment about an even less sensible video becomes (to a smart reader) a hilarious comment on the modern cultural phenomenon of defining one’s coolness by the obscurity or “originality” of the art he references and enjoys.

Mark’s use of written voice gives his reader credit. It’s effective, and his writing never comes across as forced. He’s not trying to entertain the reader with standard “LOOK HOW FUNNY AND CULTURALLY AWARE I AM” shtick that so many bloggers (including myself) fall prey to.

Mark is a professional writer with a professional blog where he publishes his professional opinions. His personal blog is not that space. It’s just a space for music, art, and thoughts he finds interesting, about which he can simply say “this is interesting.” In its straightforwardness it feels organic and distinctly personal and he comes across as a very genuine person.

Do I think I’ll take this approach? Nope. It’s effective for Mark, but it doesn't fit my personality. Though I do think I can learn a lot from the concept of “voice from lack of voice,” maybe not try so hard to force my personality into my writing and let it occur more organically.

Blog Envy - REDUX!!

 A wise man once said, “Those who can’t do, teach.” But a lot of wise men have said a lot of stupid shit over the years.

So I’ve forsaken this hogwash phrase and decided to try to learn from those who can do, and do do, what I’m doing – writing a blog. In this post I’m going to be profiling Nate Patrin, music critic and contributor to music blogs like Pitchfork, emusic, and citypages. But it’s not his critical work that I’m going to talk about (depending on how you define ‘critical work’); rather, it’s his personal blog, which can be found at: http://natepatrin.wordpress.com/ 

In early 2010, Nate abandoned this blog in favor of his Tumblr ‘Problem World’. But his use of Tumblr, as one would expect, is comprised primarily of links to music/photos/videos and contains much less long-form writing. So, for the sake of this post, I’m going to ignore these calendarical issues and write about his good old wordpress, especially since it’s much more similar to my blogging style than this newfangled Tumblr ‘micro-blogging’ – I think that’s what the kids are calling it these days. While Patrin posted on his wordpress relatively infrequently (only 12 posts from Sep. 2008 to Oct. 2009), his posts are rich and discussion-worthy.

Nate’s blog seems to serve mostly as an extension of his professional work. That is, many of his posts are in reference to or about work he is doing for other outlets, like the blogs mentioned above. Take this post, ‘Don’t Blame Me, I Voted For…,’ for example: he comments on Pitchfork’s staff listof the top 200 albums of the 2000’s, to which he contributed, and offers his full ballot for the list. What at first seems like an attempt to disassociate himself from Pitchfork’s published list (partly due to the post’s title, which clearly turns out to be sarcastic) ends up being a comment on the very nature of these year-end or decade-end lists that are so prevalent in the internet age of music criticism. He says:

I’m neither overjoyed nor underwhelmed with the final results...but it is a pretty clear indicator of what happens when you get an aggregate of a couple dozen critics with somewhat divergent tastes: the mid-ranking consensus picks outrank the high-ranking individual favorites....at the end of the day it’s not really a granite-etched validation/invalidation of my taste or anyone else’s — at its core it’s really just a staff poll with some interesting blurbs. (Which, in my opinion, are worth more attention than the rankings themselves.)

I find it particularly effective how he seamlessly links his personal opinion to a larger  conclusion about an industry-wide phenomenon. This conclusion is presented with an air of objectivity, which strengthens and validates his opinions, which he comes back to at the end (“which, in my opinion…”). Thus, the blog runs a fine line between critical/professional and personal, which is underscored by his self-categorization of each post as “criticism,” “music,” or “uncategorized/miscellaneous.” This filing system is vague, however, as posts like ‘Alerts and Whatnot’ are filed under “criticism” but come across as much more miscellaneous than critical, as the post’s title suggests. (Although this post did bring Laser Daft Punk to my attention, calling for an immediate flight-booking to Seattle. I still don’t quite understand what Laser Daft Punk is, but put the words ‘laser,’ ‘daft,’ and ‘punk’ together in any order and I’m there.)

Many other posts stand alone from any specific professional work of Nate’s and instead talk about the online-music-critic-world in general. One of my favorite posts is ‘Adventures in the Hype Cycle,’ which discusses the concept of indie music “hype,” an individual’s acceptance or rejection of hype, and the process of music appreciation. The process Nate describes is a very specific and detailed one, one that is only relatable for people who are obsessive about music, music criticism, and the “buzz” in the “scene” as he calls it. This post reveals the blog to be an “insiders’ blog” à Patrin’s main audience is insiders who, if they are not critics themselves, are as deeply entrenched in the world of music criticism.

That is ultimately what the blog amounts to: comments on music criticism, its nuances, its ticks and tocks.  Given this limited scope though, I think Nate’s writing here is most interesting for its self-awareness – he is a critic who goes out of his way to explicitly discuss the intricacies of being a critic. This self-awareness is on display in the aptly titled ‘Reaffirmation of Existence, Part Argh,’ in which he confronts his blog’s purpose head-on:

“So what’s it like to come to the conclusion, even if it’s potentially inaccurate, that you don’t have a hell of a lot to say on your blog?…The less enthused I am about the idea of being some kind of Internet Personality, the less interested I am in the whole blog-as-public-blather-venue deal, and the more I value the circle of friends I already have and, fortunately, continue to expand via more traditional face-time venues.

However: I think that, even if this is more or less just an occasional outlet for notions that don’t fit on a messageboard or a Facebook status update, I’m going to find some way to maintain this thing and make it worth visiting for some reason or another…I don’t actually have any real big idea notion for it yet. And maybe I don’t need one. We’ll see where this goes.”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. I started my blog with the same “we’ll see were this goes” mentality, and I hope I end up with a blog as poignant as Nate’s. At the same time, since starting to blog and “seeing where it’s gone,” I don’t think my blog will become as focused as Nate’s – while I’d love to craft posts with his level of detail and depth, I want to give myself creative freedom to post about a wide range of topics that may not explicitly relate to the LA Beats Scene, per se. Still, I hope to be as self-aware as Nate and end up with a blog that accurately represents my position in the music world: fan more than critic, curious observer more than activist.

Whether you are a fan, critic, dinosaur or octopus  comment and let me know what you think of my coverage of Nate's blog.

The LA Beatnik

When I stepped through the doors of the Echoplex, a dark, low-ceilinged venue that feels like a  huge WWII bunker, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. As always, the room was shaking with bass that could be heard from blocks away. But what stood out was not the music’s volume or even the music itself; it was the packed crowed of twenty-somethings going ape-shit as Salva played his remix of Kayne West’s Mercy.

The show’s headliner was the LA-native beat producer Shlohmo, but it was hard to imagine how he would follow the set by Salva, which relentlessly brought the house down for a solid hour, who is also an Angelino. Still, Shlohmo held his own, offering his spin on the hip-hop and dubstep influenced genre that is known simply as “beats.” This was easily the best of the three beats shows I had been to that week, and a standout show of the entire summer; moreover, it was a show that defined the “L.A. Beats” scene in many ways, from the crowd, the intensity, and, of course, the music; and ironically, it was while waiting in line for this show that my brother and I were comparing the L.A. Beats scene to Seattle’s 90’s grunge scene…

As a lifelong music aficionado (aka music snob teenager who checked Pitchfork daily and thus knew about ALL the hip bands…), I was excited to get a taste of LA’s music scene when I moved here for college in 2009. With nightly shows for less than ten dollars, I instantly fell in love and began to dedicate much of my free time to seeing live music. I quickly found, however, that the styles of music I was most interested in and knowledgeable about, indie and alternative rock, were becoming less and less prevalent, quickly being replaced by electronic music which was rapidly gaining mainstream popularity. This pretty much sums up my initial feelings towards laptop-DJs:

I was skeptical to adopt techno, dubstep, and house music into my musical lexicon but I didn’t have much of a choice: not only were DJ shows taking over the best local venues, they stood out as much more energetic and fun shows. At a rock show, I would be one of the few crowd members head-bopping and dancing to the music. At an electronic show, most of the crowd was there to dance, or at least down to shake a leg or two even if it wasn’t their express raison d’etre. Thus, slowly but surely, electronic music shows became, if not the norm, a more than viable alternative to rock shows.

When I first heard dubstep, I made a prediction: the way to make this grimy, disorienting style of music popular for the mainstream audience, I hypothesized, was to put the ridiculously bass-heavy beats under rap verses. I am proud to consider myself prophetic, as this is the basic concept behind the “beats” style of music which has burgeoned in popularity over the past two years, with weekly beats clubs and nightly shows springing up all over LA. What’s more, the scene is getting international attention, reputation, and praise. When I made my prediction, though, I had no idea that producers at clubs like Low End Theory, the most famous of the LA beats clubs, had been throwing rap verses on top of dubstep beats for years.

And now, with the Beats scene blowing up, I’m in the heat of it, going to shows nonstop, always more and more intrigued by the artists and fans of this growing genre. The LA Beatnik is my attempt to convey my experience of LA music culture. I’ll talk about beats, about beat producers, and about beat clubs. But I’ll also talk about rock music and how it intersects with the Beats movement. I’ll talk about hipster culture and beat culture (Kerouac & Ginsberg beat culture, that is) and how they relate. I’ll talk about whatever I feel like talking about when I feel like talking about it. And I hope you’re willing to talk (or at least comment) too.

“In 10 years,” my brother said, “we’ll look back on this and think LA was to Beats what Seattle was to Grunge.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we’re on the brink of something big. So put on your seatbelts…it’s going to be a wild ride.

Blog Envy II

That’s right – Blog Envy is back! And this time…it’s out for revenge! …if by revenge you mean pleasing readers with an interesting and thought provoking discussion of written voice!

A couple weeks ago I wrote about Mark Richardson’s tumblr as a source of inspiration for this fine blog you’re now reading. After continuing to read Mark’s blog, I’ve decided to dig a little deeper: in this post I’m going to talk specifically about Mark’s voice and how it contributes to the success of his blog.

My first post about Mark focused on the style that is portrayed through his blog, specifically as a result of his content choice. What I have come to realize, though, is that Mark’s nuanced voice is the main vehicle for this style, allowing it to emanate off the page through the subtext of his writing. But this mention of subtext illustrates exactly why Mark’s voice is indeed so nuanced: it truly manifests itself as a lack of voice. 

Conventionally, voice is perceived like extra credit – it’s the extra jokes, the personal opinions, the parenthetical digressions that a writer adds to his piece to show personality and make it less boring. Mark doesn’t really do that, at least in his personal blog.  He writes in a succinct, to the point manner, stating things as fact. A good example of a typical short post is this link to an album review he did for Pitchfork. His comments are limited to the dry:

 “I reviewed this fine album for Pitchfork.”

Another example:

 "This was a revelation the first time I heard it. I own this 10”.”

  

He is linking to this song by Kid Koala, calling it a “revelation,” and not expanding upon that comment at all? You’d think it would be a big deal for such a seasoned music critic to call a song a “revelation,” and you would expect him to at least give some explanation, some insight - he’s a critic for christ’s sake! Those guys live to see their prose in print. And yet, Mark is self-restrained. Even his longer story-oriented posts sometimes read like a police report, a mere collection of facts. And at first, he comes across as cold, even boring.


 In my first Envy post I said “he makes a point without making a point,” and allows the reader to make his own conclusions. In a very similar way, it is in his reserved, no-frills manner of writing that Mark’s personality comes across – he allows the reader to infer his personality, and if the reader dedicates himself to consistent reading of his blog the collection of personality-inferences come together to form a picture of a man who is far from cold and boring.

Take this, for example:

 “When I worked as an apprentice butcher my mentor was Mr. Wu.” That’s it. No back story, just a fact stated as such, with no context except this photo.

But LOOK AT THAT PHOTO! A young Richardson in butcher’s attire, dwarfing the tiny man who we can only assume is Mr. Wu. It’s a fucking awesome photo, and every aspect, from the men’s smiles to the “Genuine Fresh American Lamb” sign in the background exudes an interesting story and palpable personality. Mark’s genius, then, is recognizing that the photo doesn't need any context or back story, that the photo is in fact more effective when accompanied by a boring old sentence like “When I worked as an apprentice butcher my mentor was Mr.Wu.” That sentence leads to questions. This photo answers all of the questions that Richardson cares to, and leaves the rest for the reader to fill in.

Another:

“Personally, I like the older, more obscure stuff.” Then he links to this 12 second audio of “the first sound ever recorded.”

  What would seem to be a cryptic, nonsensical comment about an even less sensible video becomes (to a smart reader) a hilarious comment on the modern cultural phenomenon of defining one’s coolness by the obscurity or “originality” of the art he references and enjoys.

Mark’s use of written voice gives his reader credit. It’s effective, and his writing never comes across as forced. He’s not trying to entertain the reader with standard “LOOK HOW FUNNY AND CULTURALLY AWARE I AM” shtick that so many bloggers (including myself) fall prey to.

Mark is a professional writer with a professional blog where he publishes his professional opinions. His personal blog is not that space. It’s just a space for music, art, and thoughts he finds interesting, about which he can simply say “this is interesting.” In its straightforwardness it feels organic and distinctly personal and he comes across as a very genuine person.

Do I think I’ll take this approach? Nope. It’s effective for Mark, but it doesn't fit my personality. Though I do think I can learn a lot from the concept of “voice from lack of voice,” maybe not try so hard to force my personality into my writing and let it occur more organically.

Merrill oh Merrill

Writing papers sucks. That is, writing papers about topics that you're forced to write about sucks. But writing a paper about things you're interested, I have found, can actually be interesting, stimulating, if not a little bit fun.

I recently wrote a paper about the internet’s effect on rock music for my senior writing course. I argued that the internet has made it easier for women to succeed in rock music (even if the definition of “success” in rock music has changed), and I used Annie Clark (St. Vincent) and Merrill Garbus (tUnE-yArDs) as my main examples.

tUnE-yArDs was a big part of my 2011. I first came across the band after reading this Pitchfork review of their album w h o k I l l. So I listened to the album. I distinctly remember the first time I listened to it. I was at work. I normally waste a lot of time while I’m at work. This time, though, I was actually working. I don’t like to listen to music for the first time while I’m working – because I have to focus on my work, I  can’t pay enough attention to the music. But I needed something to listen to so I said, “what the hell,” pressed play on the album-stream on the NPR website, and minimized the browser to continue my work.

My Country, the first song on the album, began with a straightforward drum beat but a rhythmic one at that, and I was down, bouncing along in my seat. Then Merrill, in her ever-so-innocent voice, sings the opening line:

“My country tis of the. Sweet land of liberty. How come I canot see my future within your arms?”

Woah. With the albums first lyrics, Garbus asks what the fuck is going on in America. Bold. And the song built on it, all leading to the climactic lyrics:

“When they have nothing why do you have something? When they have nothing - the worst thing about living a lie is just wondering when they’ll find out.”

Woah again. I was really struck by it – most bands’ lyrics are indistinguishable upon first listen, and hers were not only clear but poignant. She was saying things that seemed important, and saying them aggressively, explicitly. It reminded me of how I felt when I first began to understand Bob Dylan’s lyrics, like I could learn something from her songs and lyrics.

W h o k I l l became my favorite album of the year and dominated my playlists for months. In each song, I found a particular message, sometimes multiple messages, that really hit home. Garbus expresses her ideas and feelings in forceful yet simultaneously subtle ways with effervescent eloquence, and she is one of my all-time favorite lyricists.  

For my paper, I wrote 3 pages of lyrical analysis demonstrating how Garbus addresses issues of gender and sexuality in her music. It was a cathartic experience, finally expressing my thoughts about Garbus’s lyrics on paper, and I liked my analysis very much. It’s very sad, then, that my paper was 12 pages long with an 8 page limit; I had to cut the lyrical analysis out.

=) ----->  =(

But wait, I have a blog! Copied and pasted directly from my rough draft paper, here’s my analysis of the songs Es-so and Powa, which you can listen to below and find the lyrics here and here, respectively. As with any lyrical interpretation, this is based on my personal opinion and reading of the lyrics – comment and let me know if you totally agree with my analysis or think I’m a total shithead!

<iframe width="420" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/4zj_o3xRRqU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/NLb8jWYvYmU" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

For example, the song “Es-so” explores the pressure surrounding female body image and potential eating disorders or depression it can cause. From the perspective of a female character, she sings, “A piece of cake / walk a mile along the lake…I’ve got to do right if my body’s tight right?...Bathe it all in a wave of disgust / ‘I can’t believe I ate the whole thing’…It is true, Daddy / I ran over my own body with my own car.” Through the character’s navigation of conflicting emotions, from justification to depression, about her body image, Garbus examines the effects of the pressure on women to maintain an arbitrary “ideal” appearance.

Another song, “Powa,” shows Garbus exploring sexual dominance of men in society. It begins with a female character who seems to be begging her male counterpart to have sex with her: “I will never get to sleep / Rebel, rebel, no … Baby, bring me home to bed / I need you to press me down before my body flies away from me … Your power inside / It rocks me like a lullaby.”  With these lyrics, the character at first seems to be treating sex as nothing more than an act necessary to fall asleep. But she explicitly relates sex to power, as if this her experience speaks to a larger point about the sexual power men have in society. The song come to a climax, however, and reveals the character’s true feelings with the lines, “Mirror, mirror on the wall / Can you see my face at all? / My man likes me from behind / Tell the truth I never mind / Cause you bomb me with life's humiliations everyday / You bomb me so many times I never find my way / Come on and bomb me / Why won't you bomb me?” Here, the character reveals that she feels humiliated by her partner’s sexual domination of her, comparing their sex to being bombed. Still, however, she ultimately asks to be bombed, exploring a conflict in which a woman chooses to pursue sexual endeavors that are destined to degrade her, as if the female sexual experience is a masochistic one. Interestingly, she addresses her partner as “rebel,” the same word Reynolds and Press used to describe the archetype male rock musician; perhaps the song’s message also applies to the male domination of rock. Regardless, this song clearly demonstrates Garbus’s willingness to address gender issues in her music.

Blog Envy

A wise man once said, “Those who can’t do, teach.” But a lot of wise men have said a lot of stupid shit over the years.

So I’ve abandoned this hogwash phrase and decided to try to learn from those who can do, and do do, what I’m doing – writing a blog. In this post I’m going to be profiling Mark Richardson, Editor-in-Chief of the prominent music blog Pitchfork, and prolific blogger on his personal blog http://www.markrichardson.org/. For a quick summary of his professional work (and “hardware usage”), check out this short interview with The Setup. As the editor-in-chief of one of the biggest and most influential music blogs, Richardson is clearly an expert in music and writing. But it’s not his work at Pitchfork that I’m going to talk about; rather, it’s his personal blog, which has become a true inspiration for me since I started following it a mere week ago. He blogs pretty much every day, usually posting a few small things and a larger post each day.

What I like most about Mark’s blog is its style. But “style,” in an of itself, is a meaningless term, and in this case manifests itself in many ways. The point, though, is that after reading Mark’s blog for a little while, I feel a distinct style, whatever that word may mean, emanating from it that, I hope, represents Mark’s personality and interests – his real-life person style if you will. 

So how is this style portrayed? I think the choice of content plays a big part. Obviously, Mark is a music-junkie – you don’t become the editor-in-chief of Pitchfork listening to a record “here and there.” And, in stride, most of Mark’s posts are music related. But he doesn't let that limit his blog. He sprinkles in muses about culture in general and comments and links to anything he reads and finds interesting. It is in these posts that his personality, perspective, and feelings come out, and they give the blog balance. By widening his scope, Richardson redefines his target audience: it’s not just music junkies like himself who are checking in to see what tunes are on his mind, which he already expresses through his Pitchfork pieces. Instead, his personal blog is like an expansion pack for his more formal Pitchfork writing – it’s more personal, covers more topics, and is much less structured. It’s succinct, no-frills posts linking to songs. But it’s also longer musings addressing whatever is on Mark’s mind at the time. It’s both at the same time. And by ditching the structure and the limitations that his professional writing requires, he is able to appeal to audiences just interested in things – music, art, technology…culture! – the things everyone does, or at least should, care about. And he makes these things interesting with his unique perspective and thoughts, and in doing so he establishes this ineffable concept of style that strikes me.

My favorite of his recent posts, and one that demonstrates this style I’m talking about, is innocently titled  At the Laundromat. What starts as a description of Richardson’s launderly and literary tendencies turns into an amazing story of his interactions with a mentally ill woman at his Laundromat and a commentary on the way we interact with the homeless and the disabled. He so effortlessly uses straight-forward storytelling to get his point across by giving details into his personal thoughts (about the story) along the way. And he doesn’t make any attempt – actually, none at all – to convince you that his point is “true” or “right.” He doesn’t even explicitly say what his point is. He just tells a story, from his perspective, and lets it be, lets the reader take from it what he will. This is what I like most about Mark’s blog – he makes a point without making a point.

Another post that stands out for me is this, in which he comments on a quote from the afterword of You Are Not A Gadget. I think this is a great example of extremely effective use of third party material. The way he presents the post, with the quote (third party material) in much larger font, makes that outside material the focus, with his comments serving merely as condiments for the proverbial hamburger. Again, he lets you take the quote for what it is, not overemphasizing his position or forcing his perspective on the reader.

Ultimately, I strive to take my blog in this type of direction: I don’t want to limit myself to long posts on specific subjects. Rather, I want to make my blog a more accurate expression of my thoughts and feelings and will start posting more random, stream-of-consciousness type items that reflect my own style and personality. 

Brocial Bookmarking Soulmate

Social Bookmarking. Can enough be said about social bookmarking? Before the advent of social bookmarking, bookmarking web pages was so…antisocial. And think back even further…when I was just a curious young boy reading book like Harry Potter and Eragon for their mystical whimsy, I longed for nothing but a friend with whom to bookmark pages. But alas, it wasn’t until I signed up for the social bookmarking sites del.icio.us and diigo.com that this lifelong dream was achieved. Luckily, with these tools I have found a fellow bookmarker, a “bookmarking soul mate” if you will, who has scoured the depths of the internet to find and bookmark anything and everything related music.

Primus Luta is a bookmarking monster. Since joining Diigo in 2008, he has 1284 public bookmarks and almost 2,800 total! While he has tagged and bookmarked articles of all kinds, he focuses on music and music performance technology – his top tags include “album,” “Beatmaker,” “music,” and “live-performance.” When I first saw these top tags, I got excited…then I said them out loud and they were music to my ears. Yes, I did just waste a sentence to set up that crappy pun, and I’m wasting another one confirming your suspicion.

Despite the abundance of his bookmarks and tags, however, they are not very thorough – while I haven’t looked through ALL of his bookmarks, the ones I’ve seen have tags but no comments, highlighting, or any other organization. Obviously, social bookmarking tools carry a “to each his own” philosophy – there is no established “proper” way to bookmark or tag. Looking at Luta’s page, it seems like he is tagging mostly for himself and his own reference. But I think his tagging is also a bit haphazard; with almost 3,000 pages bookmarked, it would be very difficult for him to organize them for himself with tags alone, much less for a larger public who would be viewing his well-documented browsing history. I expect that once his number of bookmarks got to a certain point it would become overwhelming, which possibly explains why stopped bookmarking at the end of 2011.

Looking through his bookmarks, some very interesting pieces stood out to me. Particularly, Luta found this gem, which shows the historical and geographical origins of dance music in a mesmerizingly visual way. You can click play to see the progression, but it happens so fast that I would recommend slowly drawing your mouse from the left to the right side of the screen to control the map yourself. It’s awesome to see how much music and influence has traveled in the past 20 years in particular to create our modern genre-defying perspective on music. Also interesting was this LA Weekly article about Blue Note’s departure from their jazz specialty for a foray into more poppy music, and this Racialicious essay about first-world pop musicians reference and treat issues of race and power.

I think these three examples give a great sense of Luta’s social bookmarking tendencies. He covers a huge intersection of different items relating to music, but to his credit, I have found every piece he has tagged to be genuinely interesting, whether it covered a topic I am typically interested in or not. I think Luta really gets it – the fact that I found so many of his tags personally interesting and relevant demonstrates that he has a great awareness of his audience, which I think I fit into perfectly. His target audience is made up of people who are really into music, but also have very broad musical awareness and levels expertise. Thus, he bookmarks pages that are focused on specific aspects of music but are also easily understood by any music fan. And if 

I’m any judge, he’s pretty successful at it. 

Hollywood Bowldowzer - Part 2

Last night I posted part 1, explaining the history of Flying Lotus. Here's the rest of the story...

Fast forward to present day. Flying Lotus’ follow-up to Cosmogramma, his new album Until The Quiet Comes, is highly anticipated and he is invited to play the Hollywood Bowl, opened in 1922 and perhaps the most historic venue in his home Los Angeles, opening for Animal Collective, one of the most acclaimed bands of the past decade. Typically, when Flylo performs live, he simply controls all of his songs and samples from a mixer – there are no instruments being played live. Looking through the Hollywood Bowl’s last 5 years of performances, I don’t believe that a solo DJ has EVER played the Hollywood Bowl. Again, Flying Lotus is breaking new ground. But he had a choice to make – how was he going to set up his DJ show for an 18,000 person venue, probably the biggest crowd he’s ever played for.

The choice he made can maybe only be described as ballsy. Set up in its lonesome on stage was a barely-translucent white screen. All of his equipment was set up behind the screen, and the audience never saw him until he came out for his (spoiler alert!) standing ovation. Projected on the screen was a customized video light show, with different designs corresponding to each song he played and their movements programmed to respond to his live improvisation. In essence, his visual performance was the light show and the light show alone. It seemed as if he was saying, “it’s not about me, it’s about the music (which the light show was dictated by), and the experience (which the light show created).” And yet, because of the screen’s utter so slight translucency, we could barely see a shadow that was Flying Lotus’s outcropping, a subtle reminder that, after all, the music and the experience were created by a person.

But ah, I haven’t told you about the music yet have I? Before the show, my friends and I were picnicking outside the Hollywood Bowl as we always do, making sure to save some wine to bring inside (which seems to be allowed solely at the Hollywood Bowl). A question was posed that turned into a fifteen minute conversation: What is Flylo going to play tonight? Those of us who had seen him before threw out possible scenarios – maybe he wouldn’t play his typical bass heavy set given the circumstances; he’s playing at a huge venue (who’s average crowd is typically much older than smaller LA venues) and opening for Animal Collective (who’s fans you wouldn’t expect to be “bass-heads”). Maybe his new album is more orchestral and less bass-oriented, as against the odds as that may seem. Maybe he would just do his thing, blow everyone’s faces off, and not give a fuck. No one knew.

Well, he answered all of these questions very quickly. After playing a brief cut of John Coltrane sax, dedicating the set to him, and thanking everyone for coming, Flylo proceeded to play one of the hardest bass-heavy beats shows I’ve ever seen. Who knew the Hollywood Bowl had such an incredible sound system? Midway through the first song, my friends and I were taking bets on how long the 50-something women sitting next to us would stay (to their credit, they stayed for the whole show). He played almost all of his new album (which can now be streamed online via NPR) and some classics from his earlier library. A couple of songs in, he spoke to the timid crowd saying, “You can get up and dance if you want to…” Immediately, at least a quarter of the crowd stood up and almost everyone was dancing by the end of his set. That’s EIGHTEEN THOUSAND people at THE HOLLYWOOD BOWL on their feet, getting down to the newest and freshest LA Beats. I always thought I’d see the day, but not so soon. I don’t even need to speculate on this one – I know that the Hollywood Bowl has never seen a show like that.

To me, this show was, in typical Flying Lotus fashion, utterly ground breaking. It brought the concept and the culture of LA Beats to a whole new level: it’s no longer just an underground thing. It’s now a real thing, a thing that has a chance of piercing the general consciousness we know as “the mainstream.” And it’s a thing that has a face, the face of Steve Ellison, a 28 year old man from Winnetka, Los Angeles.

The day after the show, Ellison tweeted from his @flyinglotus moniker: “Hope u guys like ‘until the quiet comes’ I feel like I did my best to tell you my story, honestly”

I don’t know about you, but with a story like this, I can’t wait to hear the next chapter...

As a release party for his new album, Flying Lotus and the rest of the Low End Theory crew will be playing at The Boiler Room next Tuesday, joined by special guest and neo-soul legend Erykah Badu DJing under the   moniker "DJ Lo Down Loretta Brown." The event is invitation only but can be streamed live at http://boilerroom.tv/live/.

Hollywood Bowldowzer - Part 1

This weekend, I had the pleasure of going to the Hollywood Bowl for a show headlined by one of my absolute favorite bands Animal Collective. But while their show was amazing, it’s not the indie-psych-rock outfit that’s the inspiration for this post. Instead, this post is about Flying Lotus, who opened the show and, according to pretty much everyone in attendance, proceeded to steal the show from the veteran headliners.

Steve Ellison, also known as Flying Lotus, is a Los Angeles native, multi-genre producer, and arguably the leader of the Beats movement. Great-nephew of jazz pianist Alice Coltrane (who was married to jazz legend John Coltrane), Flylo, as he is known by fans, first gained popularity as the producer of the Cartoon Network's Adult Swim “bumps” – the 10-15 second beats they would play in their pre-show interludes. But his mark was truly made on the independent music scene with his 2010 album Cosmogramma. The album received unanimous critical acclaim, with music blog sputnikmusic.com predicting Flying Lotus to be “the next big visionary” of electronic music and PopMatters comparing him to rock kings Radiohead saying, “Flying Lotus, much like Yorke, Greenwood & Co., has made a definitive summary of a decade's worth of advances in electronic music, a release that transcends genre and deserves to become a glorified phenomena by those who experience it.”

The album transcended genre because it was unlike anything before it – it combined elements of jazz, funk, hip-hop, techno, and even rock. But beneath all of these influences was one common thread – the beats. Take a song like Nose Art (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oqNFkQmmbcQ) – it begins as an orchestral dream with drums layered on top, until the 26 second mark, where he throws in a vocal sample saying “we’ll talk about a place with our beat…but no one believes it exists.” And then the beat drops, a dramatic bass line that owns the other elements of the song. And at 1:01, for a mere three seconds, Flylo reveals that bass upon which his song is centered, cutting all audio tracks except the sound of oscillating electronic bass. Listen to this whole album and I can guarantee you’ll agree – you've never heard anything like this before.

But before all of the hype and popularity that his groundbreaking album brought him, Flying Lotus was in an exclusive group of producers who founded Low End Theory, a weekly Beats club in Lincoln Heights. In its six year lifespan, Low End Theory has become somewhat of a Los Angeles institution. The show is still held in The Airliner, its original tiny home (the indoor stage/music area only holds about 150 people, while the back patio holds many more), is still age 18+, and still costs a mere ten dollars, with no advanced tickets ever sold. But unlike the club’s early days, the line to enter now forms an hour before the doors open and wraps around the block by the time they do - it can take multiple hours to get in. What are people waiting for? Well, each week three or four guest DJs are announced and appear, with additional sets from Flylo’s co-founders like The Motherfucking Gaslamp Killer (I swear that’s what he calls himself) and DJ Nobody. I have been to Low End over ten times but had only heard of the performers before going two or three times - whether you have heard of them or not, every single week amazing underground DJs from all over the world show up and throw down unbelievable sets. And the crowd, made up of locals between 18 and 30, who have waited in a painful line to get in, goes nuts, always willing to dance their asses off. But in addition to these weekly announced guest, Low End Theory attracts unannounced special guest appearances from the likes of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke (who is featured on Flying Lotus albums) and UK soul-bass protégé James Blake. And since Flying Lotus’ explosion in hype and popularity, he can now only play his own show as a secret guest, lest the line be around the block by 8pm... 

_

To hear the rest of the story and find out what happened at the Hollywood Bowl, check back for part 2 of this post later this week!

What are beats?

Nope, they’re not those stylish yet exorbitantly overpriced headphones you’re wearing. But they are what you should be listening to in your Dre-adphones.

Since this blog is focused around the LA Beats scene, I thought I should write a post laying some general foundation by explaining the music and the scene for those slightly less informed. So what are beats? Most of you probably think of a beat as a song’s percussion or rhythm, and that’s not wrong – at it’s most basic level, a beat is just that, any type of percussion in a song. But when speaking of Beats (capital B) as a musical genre, a beat is much more than simply the drums underneath a song.

In the Beats world, the beat IS the song. The concept was bred in hip hop– as rap developed as a genre and electronic production became more prominent, there became a stark distinction between the rapping (or vocal verses) and the music underneath the rap, often including samples from older music. No longer was the rapper the sole artist – instead, the rapping and the music production were often done by two (or many more) different people.  That’s not to say that this was always the case; indeed, in many cases rappers are also producers who create their own beats. But increasingly, the two arts were being separated, both in terms of creation but also consumption. Rap songs slowly became more and more judged and defined by their beats, almost as if the rapping was mere icing to the beat’s cake.

This set the stage for hip-hop DJs, who are the real fathers of the beats scene. Pioneered by legends like Grandmaster Flash, these DJs began mixing beats from multiple songs live, creating their own samples manually from vinyl records on the spot (sometimes rehearsed, others totally on the fly).

Check it out: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GiP7RwIpdqI&feature=related

A short self-serving digression: Wikipedia informs me that Grandmaster Flash supposedly invented the first crossfader (necessary to mix between two record turntables) with parts he found in a junkyard in the Bronx. Damn that’s cool. I actually saw Grandmaster Flash perform in Hong Kong while studying abroad there, and let me tell you, the man has still got it.

In the hip-hop DJ arena, the beat was king – a DJ’s ultimate goals were to a) find the coolest (ideally unknown) beats to demonstrate supreme musical knowledge and awareness and b) to mix those beats to create new, more interesting and more inventive beats. DJs began recording their mixes and releasing them as stand-alone music.

But, as you can see by that video’s quality and Grandmaster’s Eddie Murphy-esque style, DJing (and therein, beat-making) has been around for a long time. So why has the Beat scene just taken off? One critical step: the explosion of electronic music. In the past decade, electronic music genres like House and Dubstep have skyrocketed in popularity, especially in the US. It was this critical step that made it possible for Beat music to become popular (although it still hasn’t breached the ever-elusive “mainstream”).

Beats music is all electronically produced. It’s rap beats meets dubstep. That is, it combines the drum-driven nature of rap beats with the extremely bass-driven nature of dubstep. And we’re talking deep, deep bass. It’s also intended to be played LOUD. Like your-body-is-vibrating-from-the-insanely-deep-and-insanely-loud-bass LOUD. Like dubstep, it’s allure is largely physical. It’s visceral music that isn’t necessarily made to make you think. It’s made to make you go “UGGHHHH” because you’ve never heard anything so filthy in your life. Filthy, that’s how a Beats beat is supposed to be. It hits hard and it’s impossible to ignore. It’s not easy listening.

That being said, Beats are also very groove-oriented and made to meant you dance. In fact, when the right beat gets played, you won’t be able to help but dance. That is, if you’re able to find the groove amidst the walls of bass. It’s not an easy thing to do, and most people wouldn’t want to do it upon first hearing the music. At first you might be turned off – the music is really intense. But that’s why it’s amazing. It’s amazing because it is so bassy, so loud, and hits you so hard. It’s amazing because you’ve never heard music that makes you feel this way before and it’s a totally crazy feeling. And if you let the music take you and dance as hard as the music suggests, scream as loud as your body feels it needs to, that feeling of crazy will turn into a feeling of euphoria. And that phenomenon, that feeling, is why this blog exists.

Some beats for your listening pleasure:

Cushion by Samiyam: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UwnWFmAaQ2c

Mercy (by Kanye West) remixed by Salva and RL Grime:  http://soundcloud.com/salva/mercy-rl-grime-salva-rmx

araabMUZIK producing beats live on an MPC (will explain what this means later): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-qKtyPQ0bJ4

Where the ladies at?

When you hear “grunge,” what comes to mind? To me, grunge is all about the movement’s leaders (Kurt Cobain of Nirvana and Pearl Jam’s Eddie Vedder, for example) and their general attitude of “not giving a _____ (insert expletive here).” It was an aggressive, angry, and masculine attitude. But what is my perspective based on? Because I was born in 1990, and thus just a child as grunge gained mainstream popularity in the early 90’s, I never had direct exposure to the movement. Instead, my perceptions of what “grunge” is, means, and represents are totally created and determined by the media’s representation of the movement: everything from MTV specials, Rolling Stone articles, and The Simpson’s episodes have influenced my views of the grunge movement. But are those views correct?

As I found out while reading Catherine Strong’s article Grunge, Riot Grrrl and the Forgetting of Women in Popular Culture, my understanding of the grunge movement is missing the fundamental elements of gender-neutrality and women’s role in the movement. And yet, it seems that my ignorance about the importance of gender in the grunge movement is reflected by individuals who experienced the movement first hand; many of Strong’s interviewees (who were alive and active in the grunge movement) also perceived of grunge as a particularly masculine movement and had largely forgotten about women’s influence.

This article has sparked my interest in women’s role in music culture, both in general and specifically in LA. Ultimately, I agree with Strong’s assessment that it is exponentially more difficult for women to be considered “serious” musicians, as they are quickly made into sex objects and classified as girlish “pop stars” by the media. Take Katy Perry for example – after beginning her career as a Christian Rock singer, she tried to break into the mainstream market as an Alanis Morissette “girl-rocker” type. But after failing in this role for years, she was forced to abandon her artistic direction to become a “pop star,” breaking into popular consciousness with I Kissed A Girl, a song with clear sexual implications. From that point on, she continued to sing nothing but catchy (and usually sexual) hooks over electronic dance/houce music, and she became the first female artist with five number-one singles on one album (Michael Jackson is the only other person with this accolade).  Historically, however, there are many women who have had mainstream success as “serious” musicians –Morissette, for example. But ultimately, it seems as if stereotypes have indeed persisted, with many more men than women achieving this goal.

Does the same reign true in the LA Beats scene? Unfortunately, the beats scene is extremely male-dominated, as I only know of one female producer (Tokimonsta). I assume this is a result of the scene’s hip hop influence, as hip-hop is historically extremely male-dominated. Oddly, however, the demographics of the beats scene don’t match hip-hop: hip-hop is dominated specifically by African American men, while the beats scene is predominantly comprised of white men. While I have no evidence to support this, I believe this is a result of more stereotyping: because it is generally not accepted for white men to rap, beat-production allows them to participate artistically in an environment that is dominated by black men.

Different genres and movement of music have different influences, and as such would be expected to have different demographics. But Strong’s article, more than anything else, raised the question: how much those demographics are a result of the media’s perception of a genre rather than the genre’s influences itself?

Two women who I incredibly respect (and am incredibly in love with) are Merrill Garbus and Annie Clark, lead singers of the bands tUnE-yArDs and St. Vincent respectively. They have individually risen to the top of the indie-rock world and are considered by many as the de facto leaders of women in the field. In a conversation earlier this year, the two rock stars discuss the question: “What’s it like to be a woman in music?” Clark’s response, if optimistic, is also poignant. “The only difference…” she says, “…is that you get asked ‘what’s it like being a woman in music?’” And Garbus? “Why are we talking about gender when men don’t get asked, ‘what’s it like to be a man in music?’”

And yet, here we are.

The LA Beatnik

When I stepped through the doors of the Echoplex, I didn’t know what I was getting myself into. As always, the room was shaking with bass that could be heard from blocks away. But what stood out was not the music’s volume or even the music itself; it was the packed crowed of twenty-somethings going ape-shit as Salva played his remix of Kayne West’s Mercy. The show’s headliner was the LA-native beat producer Shlomo, but it was hard to imagine how he would follow the set by Salva, also an Angelino, which relentlessly brought the house down for a solid hour. Still, Shlomo held his own, offering his spin on the hip-hop and dubstep influenced genre that is known simply as “beats.” This was easily the best of the three beats shows I had been to that week, and a standout show of the entire summer; moreover, it was a show that defined the “L.A. Beats” scene in many ways, from the crowd, the intensity, and, of course, the music; and ironically, it was in anticipation for this show that my brother and I were comparing the L.A. Beats scene to Seattle’s 90’s grunge scene.

As a lifelong music fan, I was excited to get a taste of LA’s music scene when I moved here for school in 2009. I instantly fell in love and, with nightly shows for less than ten dollars, began to dedicate much of my free time to seeing live music. I quickly found, however, that the styles of music I was most interested in and knowledgeable about, indie or alternative rock, were becoming less and less prevalent, quickly being replaced by electronic music which was rapidly gaining mainstream (if only “college mainstream”) popularity. While I was skeptical to adopt techno, dubstep, and house music into my musical lexicon, I didn’t have much of a choice: not only were DJ shows taking over the best local venues, they stood out as much more energetic and fun shows. At a rock show, I would be one of the few crowd members head-bopping and dancing to the music. At an electronic show, however, most of the crowd was there to dance. Thus, slowly but surely, electronic music shows became, if not the norm, a more than viable alternative to rock shows.

When I first heard dubstep, I made a prediction: the way to make this style of music popular for the mainstream audience, I hypothesized, was to put the ridiculously bass-heavy beats under rap verses. I am proud to consider myself prophetic, as this is the basic concept behind the “beats” style of music which has burgeoned in popularity over the past two years, with weekly beats clubs and nightly shows springing up all over LA. What’s more, the scene is getting national attention, reputation, and praise. When I made my predicition, however, I didn’t know that clubs like Low End Theory, a weekly dubstep and beats club founded by five resident DJ/producers including the now-famous Flying Lotus, had been already throwing rap verses on top of dubstep beats for years.

But it’s not simply the music I intend to discuss and analyze in this blog; rather, it’s the culture surrounding this scene that I am interested in. Why is LA the particular hotbed for this genre and this scene? How does it interact with and relate to other music scenes in LA? Who are the leaders of the scene, what are their influences, and what are they influencing? How does this music scene compare to historical musical movements like the 90’s grunge, and what will help it reach or prevent it from reaching mainstream success? As someone who attends multiple live shows per week, these are questions that are always on my mind and that I hope to hash
out in this blog.

I have decided to name my blog The LA Beatnik. It serves three meanings: establishing myself as someone who will be able to deliver the latest “beats” (news) about the LA music scene, telling the subject of my blog, and suggesting an importance of the LA Beat scene by relating it to the Beat generation of the 50’s.