the death of punk

I think these conversations are fun to have, even if this particular point is a little stunted. Yes, today's "punk" kids are just buying into a sanitized, corporate, censor-approved mimicry of the original in the same way that sk8ers 15 years ago stopped tearing up their own normal clothes bailing from their boards and started buying $80 baggy jeans from mail order catalogs that also sold skateboards, decals, and sex wax (for lubricating rails and curbs).

Let's take it a little further. Why would the original punks (arguably) not have shopped at Hot Topic and listened to Avril Lavigne? What's wrong with major labels and national chains? There's an anti-authoritarian bent to old punk that extends to "suits," that is, corporations and their soulless, vampiric boards that take things that are fresh and vibrant and raw and sterilize them, wrap them up in pretty packaging, and sell them to entitled suburbanites looking to irk their parents and earn a little hardcore cred.

Admittedly, my experience with punk is limited. Nevertheless, I think I can say defensibly that punk was anarchistic, that is both anti-authoritarian and anti-capitalist, but nobody nowadays wants to admit that they ever enjoyed or sympathized with such sentiment. It was this intellectual underpinning that bestowed all the trappings of the aesthetic with "a point," and separates old punk from the shallow, sterilized affect hawked at Hot Topic. At its best, punk was about snapping people out of their consumption-induced haze, about shocking people into waking up and looking at the world around them with clear eyes. Sure, the guys from Green Day might write songs that are critical of George W. Bush, but when the music is buffed to a glossy finish and released by Reprise Records with a mountain of manufactured, overpriced swag, it's just good ol' Starbucks and Apple Computers liberalism, not the gritty, half-smirking, half-sneering, violent thing that punk was.

I would also like to point out that the political lobotomy that punk suffered hardly happened in isolation. What ever happened to the cowboy hedonism and permissiveness toward drug use of outlaw country, and politics at all in rap music? What genre out there is expressing any actual political dissent, other than the occasional country tune supporting orthodox Republicanism or "punk"/rap song supporting Democrats? The only one I remember is a Rage Against the Machine video ten years ago supporting Ralph Nader.

Mr. Love and Justice

Billy Bragg pens a New York Times op-ed on the sale of Bebo and the plight of musicians in the 21st century market. The big question mark dangling over the music industry right now is how musicians can get a fair slice of the revenue their music generates. They can't just remain as sharecroppers for the recording companies, but turning a profit has proven to be a tough nut to crack for all but the biggest dogs in the biz. If your name doesn't sell content by itself, you're in a bit of a pickle because you need the publicity that sites like Bebo and Myspace provide, but there's a point at which that publicity costs you a living wage.

Yes We Can!

In the unlikely story that is America, there has never been anything false about hope. --Barack Obama

Seen this around a couple of places, including at Zee's place. Vote for Obama, because Scarlet and John Legend and Link from the Matrix and that guy in one of those cop shows says so!

But seriously, it is uplifting, and that was an amazing speech.

So was this one yesterday.

an unusual "Beatles" cover

Ok, this will get your wires crossed.

Clear Channel gets political?

Clear Channel has decided not to play Springsteen's liberal music despite the fact that it's no.1 on Billboard top album sales. Doesn't necessarily mean it's political, but it's an odd choice, and the company has a history of contributing heavily to Republicans.

King Wilkie

Great new band out of Charlottesville, VA. Get on iTunes and check out their song "Wrecking Ball." It was on 91.1 Globe Radio this morning, and it's been in my head ever since.

record labels going bust

Couldn't have happened to nicer guys. Seriously, though, if touring and music production are still going strong, then this just looks like justice to me.

Happy Mission Accomplished Day

the death of the album

For you music lovers, here is a good Op-Ed from The New York Times on the dysfunctional relationship between record labels and the internet, and how that led to the dramatic drop in the popularity of cds, and by association, the bankruptcy of small music stores and even some of the giants like Tower Records. I know it was just another big chain, but I still think it's a shame; I spent a lot of time as a kid in the TR on Guadalupe in Austin, TX, and something was definitely lost in the transition to Best Buy and iTunes.

everyone's favorite pastime... developing top 10 lists

Now it seems the recording industry's doing it as a gimmick to sell albums. I wouldn't pay too much attention to their list, it makes little sense (except, as Salon notes, from a marketing standpoint). I'll join in the fun here, though, and I suggest you do, too.

First, a note about my hermeneutic. What factors should we use to evaluate albums: sales, influence, proportion of good tracks to filler, or stuff that just plain RAWKS? Obviously, many factors should be weighed, though I personally am going to give influence on later music a position of primacy, followed by "rockin'"-ness, then the other stuff. I'm also going to stick to rock, for fear of venturing too far out of my element.

1. The Beatles' White album
2. Bob Dylan's The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan
3. The Jimi Hendrix Experience's Electric Ladyland
4. The Sex Pistols' Nevermind the Bollocks
5. Grateful Dead's American Beauty
7. Pink Floyd's Wish You Were Here
8. U2's The Joshua Tree
9. Cream's Disraeli Gears
10. Nirvana's Nevermind

I've obviously missed glam rock entirely, and that did take up the better part of a decade's worth of rock, but I feel that, for one, it was a shitty era with no one worth replacing any of the albums above, and for two, the things worth remembering and that were worth passing along from glam were borrowed from Hendrix, Floyd, and Cream.

As with any list, there were albums I wanted to add but couldn't, so here's a quick and dirty 11-20, in the order I thought of them:
11. Tool, Anima
12. Metallica, Master of Puppets
13. Elvis Presley, self-titled
14. Bruce Springsteen, Born to Run
15. The Doors, self-titled
16. The Rolling Stones, Sticky Fingers
17. Led Zeppelin, IV
18. R.E.M., Green
19. The Pixies, Doolittle
20. fine, Bon Jovi, Slippery When Suck