Anyone from New Orleans has the sins of CNN's coverage of Hurricane Katrina indelibly seared in their brains, but last night's coverage of Michael Jackson's death on cable news once again underscored what a mediocre idea a 24-hour news channel is (or perhaps what a mediocre thing the 24-hour news channel has become). For over an hour, I watched Keith Olbermann try to fill as a helicopter airlifted Jackson's body to a coroner's van, and as hour rolled into the next hour, he had to stretch a decent observation - the irony of someone who once needed bodyguards now accompanied by three paramedics - until it was as stale as Michael Jackson jokes. He reached for resonances and echoes, but they didn't illuminate Jackson or the process we were watching. The reporter covering the moving of Jackson's body (Really? We needed a reporter on the body transportation beat?) tried to delicately refer to the last decade of Jackson's life, but the awkward combination of his efforts at solemnity and his discomfort with the accusations made toward Jackson made all the guarded language sound even more judgmental and sordid than if he'd have come out and talked about the charges, the documentary, the dangling of the baby, and so on.
I'm surprised that they didn't go for critics to help fill time; after all, they were easily found on facebook shedding more light on Jackson's significance than shots of a helicopter (shot from a helicopter!) buzzing over Los Angeles. But really, the story quickly hit a point where no more live coverage was needed, and critics wouldn't have helped. Sometimes, it's actually valuable to let the story be and return to it when events dictate.
... but my post's title is technically wrong. First we kill E! News. I didn't have the stomach last night to watch it to hear Juliana Rancic talk about "The King of Pop" in faux-somber tones, or Debbie Matenopoulos talk only semi-breezily about "MJ". If anyone saw E!'s coverage and it was less than loathesome, let me know, but the generally chummy, faux-hip, nickname-oriented, tabloid tone of the channel's - ahem - news department has rarely let me down.
Friday, June 26, 2009
Thursday, June 25, 2009
More Word Soup, Please
When I was a teacher, I was once asked to chair a panel at a teacher's conference, and one woman's paper promised to reveal a new way to use music to teach poetry. I introduced her and remembered the lame high school teachers we had who tried to tell us that if we liked rock 'n' roll, we really liked poetry. They then dissected songs the way they took Blake and Tennyson apart, leaving us with the bones of "Richard Cory" and "She's Leaving Home" - two songs that didn't say much to my friends and I, who had tickets to see Rush in our pockets. Of course, the woman's "new" approach was exactly that, only she substituted Creed for Paul Simon and McCartney.
In her semi-academic take on the poetry/lyrics debate, she threw out lines that were repeated, ignored all "yeah"s and "baby"s as simple metric placeholders, and overlooked refrains, which might explain why students today are lousier readers of poetry than we were - they've been taught that some of the words and lines matter and others don't. That teaching led to students who could claim a poem was about one thing by seizing on a few lines, nevermind that other lines confront that interpretation. My students would defend their partial readings with an indignant, "Well, that's what I got out of it."
These recollections were prompted by NPR's interview with Regina Spektor during "Morning Edition" during my drive to work. During it, she said:
"If I could explain every word of this song, then I wouldn't have been very inspired when I wrote it. I would have been more crafty and intellectual," she says. "I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful — there's no one that has all the answers."
However, that's not to say she doesn't want people to look for deeper meaning behind her songs.
"It's not like I have all the answers," she says.
Where to begin? The premise that if you know what you're talking about, you're being crafty and intellectual? The idea that her songs have meaning, but that some of the words are just stuff? Or, worse, that the words that don't directly address the central thought represent the "art"? Or that it would somehow ruin Kafka, Hemingway and Salinger if she found out that their work was deliberate and thought-through?
Her attitude also seems to reflect a shallow notion of artistic mystery and questions. I don't know if Roberto Bolano had Kerouac in mind when he wrote The Savage Detectives, but I couldn't get the Beats out of my head as he seemed to present a vision of the Beats as they seemed to those around them, something very different from the self-conscious, self-mythologizing perspective of Kerouac. Bolano may not have written that subtext in intentionally, but that doesn't mean those resonances aren't there.
In her semi-academic take on the poetry/lyrics debate, she threw out lines that were repeated, ignored all "yeah"s and "baby"s as simple metric placeholders, and overlooked refrains, which might explain why students today are lousier readers of poetry than we were - they've been taught that some of the words and lines matter and others don't. That teaching led to students who could claim a poem was about one thing by seizing on a few lines, nevermind that other lines confront that interpretation. My students would defend their partial readings with an indignant, "Well, that's what I got out of it."
These recollections were prompted by NPR's interview with Regina Spektor during "Morning Edition" during my drive to work. During it, she said:
"If I could explain every word of this song, then I wouldn't have been very inspired when I wrote it. I would have been more crafty and intellectual," she says. "I would really hate it if I could call up Kafka or Hemingway or Salinger and any question I could throw at them they would have an answer. That's the magic when you read or hear something wonderful — there's no one that has all the answers."
However, that's not to say she doesn't want people to look for deeper meaning behind her songs.
"It's not like I have all the answers," she says.
Where to begin? The premise that if you know what you're talking about, you're being crafty and intellectual? The idea that her songs have meaning, but that some of the words are just stuff? Or, worse, that the words that don't directly address the central thought represent the "art"? Or that it would somehow ruin Kafka, Hemingway and Salinger if she found out that their work was deliberate and thought-through?
Her attitude also seems to reflect a shallow notion of artistic mystery and questions. I don't know if Roberto Bolano had Kerouac in mind when he wrote The Savage Detectives, but I couldn't get the Beats out of my head as he seemed to present a vision of the Beats as they seemed to those around them, something very different from the self-conscious, self-mythologizing perspective of Kerouac. Bolano may not have written that subtext in intentionally, but that doesn't mean those resonances aren't there.
Tuesday, June 23, 2009
Complete Nonsense
On the drive in, I caught part of ESPN Radio's "Mike and Mike in the Morning," which I tend to dislike because Greenberg and Golic pose as wild, nutty guys while holding the most moderate, conventional opinions. This morning they said that history won't look kindly at the career of baseball players' union head Donald Fehr - which may be true - and that the next union head will have to look to be more of a partner with the league and owners. To that I say bullshit, bullshit, bullshit. Can anyone recall a change in any union leadership when someone didn't say that? In Fehr's case, Bud Selig and the owners sure weren't worried about steroids when Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire were refilling stadiums that had been empty since the baseball strike, and they liked the way crowds showed up to boo or cheer Barry Bonds as he chased Hank Aaron's record. Selig and the owners don't seem to feel a need to be more player-friendly or better partners with the players, so whoever takes Fehr's position needs to remember to take care of the players first. That is, after all, the role of the players' union head - no matter what Greenberg, Golic and all the talking heads say.
Thursday, June 18, 2009
Complications
The pairing of Steve Albini with Jarvis Cocker is a curious one, and it sort of works to the detriment of Cocker's Further Complications. The album rocks like a very good garage band, but Albini's indifferent attitude toward vocals forces Cocker away from the sly, under-his-breath asides and mannerisms that make him a three-dimensional misanthrope in the house of love. And the big rock context lacks the elegance and grace that makes his thorny wit all the more acute for how easily it nearly fits.
The Road Well Taken
Poor Stuart Murdoch. He set out to write his sort of album for female voices on God Help the Girl, only to discover that Camera Obscura's My Maudlin Career did twee, '60s-oriented Britfolkpop better a month or two sooner.
What's Berlin Up To?
I'm trying to connect to Fisherspooner's Entertainment, but at its best, it's good second generation electropop ("The Best Revenge," "In a Modern World." The robo-beats amuse me, but not enough to put up with the forced or wince-worthy words ("We Are Electric," "Infidels of the World Unite"). When it's satisfied with its pop-ness, I'm with it. When titles such as "Supply & Demand" and overly urgent vocals dominate, the possibility that this might be intended to be meaningful at some level is offputting.
Criticism in Twitterville
Michaelangelo Matos linked to this interesting conversation on music criticism in Twittering times. The piece begins:
One of the unfortunate side effects of the lack of critic culture: people are getting more stratified and separated in their listening habits. If you—if you read Spin or Rolling Stone in ‘96, you’d get an article on Nine Inch Nails, an article on Chemical Brothers, an article on Snoop Dogg—and, you know, the internet doesn’t work that way. If you’re into rap, you go to rap twitters. If you go into metal, you go to metal twitters. You know, bands build audiences for themselves! You just follow the bands you like. You don’t have to—you don’t stumble across this stuff, and that’s a problem! It’s harder to get exposed to things that aren’t in your comfort zone. I have friends that are so deep into indie rock that they don’t know what the fuck Katy Perry is, or Lady Gaga, and these are, like, the most ubiquitous songs in the country!
An interesting, logical observation that a check of anyone's iPod says isn't true. Listeners may read more or follow one genre more than others, but festivals and iTunes libraries say listeners aren't that stratified, and neither are critics. The second half of that, though - critics vs. the mainstream, if I read it correctly - there's something in that, but that's a tension that has likely existed since the dawn of modern music criticism.
... and there's a lot to think about in this post, more than I've excerpted.
One of the unfortunate side effects of the lack of critic culture: people are getting more stratified and separated in their listening habits. If you—if you read Spin or Rolling Stone in ‘96, you’d get an article on Nine Inch Nails, an article on Chemical Brothers, an article on Snoop Dogg—and, you know, the internet doesn’t work that way. If you’re into rap, you go to rap twitters. If you go into metal, you go to metal twitters. You know, bands build audiences for themselves! You just follow the bands you like. You don’t have to—you don’t stumble across this stuff, and that’s a problem! It’s harder to get exposed to things that aren’t in your comfort zone. I have friends that are so deep into indie rock that they don’t know what the fuck Katy Perry is, or Lady Gaga, and these are, like, the most ubiquitous songs in the country!
An interesting, logical observation that a check of anyone's iPod says isn't true. Listeners may read more or follow one genre more than others, but festivals and iTunes libraries say listeners aren't that stratified, and neither are critics. The second half of that, though - critics vs. the mainstream, if I read it correctly - there's something in that, but that's a tension that has likely existed since the dawn of modern music criticism.
... and there's a lot to think about in this post, more than I've excerpted.
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