Matt Yglesias

The Internet is Good for People Who Listen to Music!

One of the crazier things about contemporary life is that you see tons of words spilled on the question of how much the internet is hurting the music industry. This goes on even though I’ve never heard anyone even attempt to argue that a person in 2009 looking for some good music to listen to is in a worse situation than was a person in 1989. Tobi Vail, guest-posting for Carrie Brownstein, isn’t quite focused in on that point, but I think it’s implicit in what she says:

I asked a younger friend of mine if he thought the Internet had eliminated the hierarchy of “cool,” and he said, “Instead of hanging out with annoying record-collector guys, kids today just read that guy’s blog, but the same guys still get to decide what’s considered cool.” I think he’s right regarding hipster culture, where there does seem to be a handful of male-dominated music sites that exert a disproportionate influence over what’s trendy. But women have thrived in the past 10 years, and our history is being documented and preserved like never before.

Today, previously hard-to-find records by ’60s soul queens Irma Thomas, Marva Whitney and Betty Davis are readily available. People know who Betty Harris, Meredith Monk, Karen Dalton and Patty Waters are, and if they don’t, they can easily find out once they hear a name. Listservs such as Typical Girls offer a place to share information about out-of-print recordings by esoteric post-punk groups like Y Pants, Bush Tetras, Fatal Microbes, The Mo-Dettes and Snatch. A new generation of all-female bands such as Erase Errata, Mika Miko, Wet Dog and Finally Punk were informed by this history. “Feminal” all-female punk groups The Raincoats and The Slits reunited, and still play to responsive crowds who know all the words to their old songs; original members of both groups are actively pursuing solo careers. ESG, Pylon and Young Marble Giants are groups everyone has heard of, if not heard. Yoko Ono has a new record out at 76!

Which is just to reiterate once again that to make minimizing violations of intellectual property law the goal of intellectual property policy would be circular and pointless. Making the goal to maximize producer income would be non-pointless but illegitimate. The goal ought to be to ensure as widespread availability of works to consumers as possible. And all indications are that consumers are much better off than they used to be, and increasingly so. When people start reporting some practical difficulty in finding new music recordings, then call me about strengthening enforcement.

Music Mystery Solved

I said yesterday that I was wondering what song Cold Cave’s “Love Comes Closer” reminded me of. As several people said, the entire track is very reminiscent of Joy Division. But JoshM nailed what was really getting to me; the opening beat is straight from Q Lazzarus’ “Goodbye Horses”, made famous by The Silence of the Lambs.

Contrarianism: Alive and Well

The Economist wondered the other day if the negative reaction to SuperFreakonomics represented the end of contrarianism as a popular journalistic trope. The answer, it seems, is no. Slate is doubling-down on contrarianism by offering the case for Creed. This is ridiculous. Creed is a good band like solar panels are black. Your memory is correct. Absolutely everything about this is terrible:

I bet al-Qaeda plays this to recruits in order to whip them into an anti-Christian fervor.

Today’s Controversy

I was watching football and Mad Men during the Video Music Awards last night, but I now feel fully caught up on the Kanye West / Taylor Swift controversy and am prepared to offer the following expert commentary:

— First, “Single Ladies” is a good song, but the video’s pretty boring and the dance routine is derivative.

— “You Belong With Me”, by contrast, provides a solid narrative context for the song:

That said, the conceit of Taylor Swift as the plain girl next door type is a hard sell. The whole video is basically a smear against nearsighted-Americans. Maybe instead of ditching the glasses for uncorrected vision, thus offering a horrible lesson to young girls everywhere, she could have just bought some more attractive frames?

— I’m also a bit confused by the conceit that this is a “country” song. The concept of genre seems to get a bit fuzzy when applied to the tween market. Swift’s nominally country tune seems to bear a striking resemblance to Avril Lavigne’s nominally “punk” music.

— Both of the videos in question are demonstrably inferior to “Heads Will Roll”. Compared to the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, neither Beyonce nor Swift appears to really even be trying. The band is dismembered by a werewolf!

Where’s the Accountability?

In the course of human affairs, people sometimes write bad songs. Indeed, we have no real idea how many bad songs are written and go unheard. But sometimes a really bad song becomes a widespread radio hit. And one dark summer, LFO’s “Summer Girls” was just such a song. A song that I believe to be the worst hit song ever recorded:

Alyssa Rosenberg offers something of an analytic take on what’s wrong with the referential lyrics here. But the larger issue that bugs me is how is it that there’s been no accountability for this atrocity? Why hasn’t Eric Holder launched an investigation into how this happened? Not just the writing and recording of the song, but its widespread distribution and airplay. A conspiracy so vast and so sinister isn’t something we can just overlook in the interests of moving forward.

Marc Lynch vs The Game

Humboldt Mountains, South Island, New Zealand (cc photo by kiwinz)

The Game is heading to New Zealand, and commenting on the growing body of international relations theory centered around his spat with Jay-Z:

Wellington, Aug 7 NZPA – American rapper The Game doesn’t know much about New Zealand, except that “it’s pretty new”, and says if he comes across any sheep, “maybe I’ll make me a jacket”. [...]

In a recent Foreign Policy article, George Washington University Professor Marc Lynch, likened the feud to the battle of global hegemony — with Jay Z in the role of the United States, and The Game as the “erratic wildcard”: Iran and North Korea.

The Game asks for an explanation of why that’s not a favourable comparison, before likening Lynch to Greenland — isolated from the top writers in the world — and Jay Z to Iceland “coz he’s gone cold”.

Now as Spencer Ackerman observes this seems to be a serious blunder. Lynch wasn’t trying to diss the guy, he likes his work and was just making a general observation about his strategy. But by lashing out, The Game has, I think, illustrated Lynch’s general point about the dangers of this kind of erratic behavior:

In other words, The Game is treating a reconcilable as an irreconcilable. He’s like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi! Marc Lynch is a middle-class, fence-sitting Sunni Iraqi — surely an academic — in Diyala or Anbar or Baghdad, judiciously able to see both sides of the U.S. and AQI feud and not particularly inclined to throw his lot in decisively with one or the other. And here’s The Game, trying to humiliate Marc in public for apostasy or cut his fingers off because he enjoys a cigarette. Defeat sets in right there. Soon will begin Marc Lynch’s Awakening. Which is a good name for a mixtape.

I’ll just also point out that Greenland is much colder than Iceland.

Alice in Chains?

John Hollinger opened up his most recent chat with this “Got a bunch of grunge CDs on shuffle right now, so if this chat comes across as angry and jaded blame Kurt Cobain.” That, in turn, led to the following exchange:

J-Vicious (Morristown, NY)

I dig that you’re jamming to Nirvana. Do you think Gilbert Arenas will come out of the dead this year and perform like the elite point guard he was a couple years back?

John Hollinger (3:45 PM)

We got Nirvana, Pearl Jam and the criminally underrated Alice in Chains going head to head right now. As for Arenas, I’m really suspicious. He had a very serious injury and it’s not like he’s 7-feet tall — the guy is entirely dependent on his cutting and quickness. Even if he stays healthy all year I think it’s highly unlikely he has the same zip.

That’s right on Arenas, but Alice in Chains? It seems pretty clear to me that the third leg of that particular stool ought to be Smashing Pumpkins:

I think their not-very-good later work sort of brought them into discredit, but Gish, Siamese Dream, Pisces Iscariot, and Mellon Collie alone constitute a reasonably extensive body of excellent work. Alice in Chains, meanwhile, gave us “Man in the Box” and . . . what?

Tuesday Screeching Weasel Blogging

The Punk President

I was looking at the archives of Ben Weasel’s blog earlier today for no particularly good reason and came across this September 2006 post about his desire to write a song called “The Surrender Hymn of the Republic” that would be about “giving up on a relationship” and take “the form of a series of sarcastic little barbs designed to mock the standard Leftist line on 9/11, the Iraq War and pretty much anything Bush says or does.” He also explains that he’s “actually written several songs on the theme of modern Leftist idiocy since 9/11 but they were all pretty straightforward attacks on dumb-bell ideology” and he’s very interested in “the notion that Islamic fundamentalist terrorism wouldn’t be a problem if we’d simply sit down and talk with the terrorists.”

At any rate, this struck me as an interesting sign of political change in the United States. Back in 1995’s “I Wanna Be a Homosexual”, being gay was posited as a way to “shock the middle class.” But eleven years later, it was probably the case that espousing a pro-Bush ideology and support for the Iraq War would be a much better way to épater le bourgeois than coming out of the closet.

Memories of a Bleak Era

Personally, I consider myself someone who enjoys nostalgia. But this article (via Alyssa Rosenberg) about the boom in twentysomething nostalgia mostly reminded me of bad times via the phrase “three of the biggest bands of the period — Blink-182, Limp Bizkit and Creed — have each reunited for summer tours.” What a bleak period! Those bands are terrible. Any time you have a list of bands such that Blink-182 is by far the best, you’re in big trouble.

Can’t we have nostalgia for other, better moments of fin de millennium music? Keep it Like a Secret, Emergency & I, and 69 Love Songs were all released in 1999.

Bands Seek New Distribution Models

One obvious response to the challenge the Internet is posing to traditional music industry revenue models is for artists to try to disintermediate the record labels whose comparative advantages in distribution and promotion are less relevant in the contemporary world. Brad Stone’s article on the phenomenon happens to mention one of my favorite bands, Metric:

Bands that have taken this approach say it can be arduous. In 2007, after releasing three records with independent labels, Metric, an alternative band from Toronto, finally got several offers from the big record companies. But the band declined to sign after concluding that the labels were asking for too many rights and not offering enough in return.

With help from a grant from the Canadian government, the band cut its own album in April, “Fantasies,” and started selling it directly to fans on services like iTunes, where it has scaled the popularity charts.

A good excuse to embed the “Sick Muse” video:

Here’s a whole bunch of stuff for sale on their website.

The Blueprint

Marc Lynch and the growing IR literature on The Game’s challenge to Jay-Z hit the bobo big time in the form of a “Morning Edition” segment on NPR.

The Game vs. Jay-Z Through an IR Lens

(wikimedia)

Mark Lynch brings an international relations perspective to The Game’s recent attacks on Jay-Z:

So what does Jay-Z do? If he hits back hard in public, the Game will gain in publicity even if he loses… the classic problem of a great power confronted by a smaller annoying challenger. And given his demonstrated skills and talent, and his track record against G-Unit, the Game may well score some points. At the least, it would bring Jay-Z down to his level — bogging him down in an asymmetric war negating the hegemon’s primary advantages. If Jay-Z tries to use his structural power to kill Game’s career (block him from releasing albums or booking tour dates or appearing at the Grammy Awards), it could be seen as a wimpy and pathetic operation — especially since it would be exposed on Twitter and the hip hop blogs.

The Realist advice? His best hope is probably to sit back and let the Game self-destruct, something of which he’s quite capable (he’s already backing away from the hit on Beyonce) — while working behind the scenes to maintain his own alliance structure and to prevent any defections over to the Game’s camp. And it seems that thus far, that’s exactly what he’s doing. We’ll see if that’s a winning strategy…. or if he’s just biding his time getting ready for a counter-attack. Either way, I’ve succeeded in wasting a lot of time so… mission accomplished!

One thing worth noting is that even when restraint can be identified as the best strategy, it’s often emotionally difficult to choose this path. When someone comes after you, you get angry. You want to respond in an intelligent and effective manner, yes, but there’s also a desire to do something that will make you feel better. And lashing out as per the Ledeen Doctrine (”Every ten years or so, the United States needs to pick up some small crappy little country and throw it against the wall, just to show the world we mean business”) often can achieve that goal. And of course there’s a risk that members of Jay-Z’s camp who urge a policy of restraint will be accused of actively harboring pro-Game sympathies or otherwise failing to manifest a sufficient degree of loyalty.

The Kindle and Cultural Display

I’ve said before that thought I love my Kindle, it deprives me of the signaling fun that comes along with reading traditional books. I’m going through Infinite Jest, as are a lot of people this summer, but I can’t visibly display the book on the Metro or around my house. James Wolcott has a good essay on this:

Books not only furnish a room, to paraphrase the title of an Anthony Powell novel, but also accessorize our outfits. They help brand our identities. At the rate technology is progressing, however, we may eventually be traipsing around culturally nude in an urban rain forest, androids seamlessly integrated with our devices. As we divest ourselves of once familiar physical objects—digitize and dematerialize—we approach a Star Trek future in which everything can be accessed from the fourth dimension with a few clicks or terse audibles. Reading will forfeit the tactile dimension where memories insinuate themselves, reminding us of where and when D. H. Lawrence entered our lives that meaningful summer. “Darling, remember when we downloaded Sons and Lovers in Napa Valley?” doesn’t have quite the same ring to it. The Barnes & Noble bookstore, with its coffee bar and authors’ readings, could go the way of Blockbuster as an iconic institution, depriving readers of the opportunity to mingle with their own kind and paw through magazines for free. Book-jacket design may become a lost art, like album-cover design, without which late-20th-century iconography would have been pauperized.

Now I’m pretty sure the world will survive this transition. But it’ll be interesting to see how it happens. I note that one thing a lot of people, myself included, sometimes do is use the Adium feature that automatically sets your IM chat status to the title and artist of the song currently playing on your iTunes. One way to think about that is as a substitute for the old game of visually displaying the physical records or CDs you own in your house. It’s a way to turn your music consumption into something quasi-public. Perhaps reading books in groups and writing blogs about what you’re reading will be the new way to share your cultural consumption with the world.

Popular Music and Social Democracy

Cato’s Ilya Shapiro says Michael Jackson makes the case for capitalism:

The King of Pop’s creativity allowed him and his family to make hundreds of millions of dollars, yes, but it also created thousands of jobs in the music and marketing industries and brought joy to fans around the world. Whatever his personal eccentricities — perhaps, in part, as a result of them — Jackson represents a capitalist success story.

No central planner could have invented him, and no government bureaucracy could have transformed pop music in the way he did.

It’s unquestionably true that central planning’s record in pop music is extremely poor, though they did okay in film, but this seems to have limited relevance to our current policy debates. Suppose that Jackson had paid somewhat higher taxes over the course of his career, and that the funds had gone to provide nutritious meals to poor children? I think the world of pop music would have been just about as strong under that scenario, but America as a whole would also be a stronger and more just society. After all, among non-Anglophone countries I think you’d have to say that it’s Sweden which has had the most pop music success. High tax rates don’t seem to discourage their music entrepreneurs.

What’s more, if you consider musicians operating outside of the “child star with horribly abusive father” paradigm, I think it’s clear that a more social democratic system is going to be advantageous. Consider that in the United States quitting your day job to focus on your promising band can have dire implications for your ability to obtain health insurance. This is particularly the case if you have the misfortune of a pre-existing medical condition. An up-and-coming Canadian or British guitarist is taking a financial risk by choosing to focus on the band, but an American can be really putting his life on the line.

Songs About People Named Allison

In the elevator up from work, I butted into a conversation between two colleagues about songs about people named “Allison” (or, if you prefer, “Alison”). The works under consideration where Elvis Costello’s “Alison” and The Lemonheads’ “Alison’s Starting to Happen.” I chimed in to mention the Pixies’ “Allison” (I also like the Eve 6 cover). I think the Pixies tune is the best, but if you’re talking about “best video for a song about someone named ‘Allison’ that I was able to find on YouTube” then I think I’d have to go with “Aly, Walk With Me” by Danish duo The Raveonettes:

The above is also, of course, one of the top urbanism songs. The Raveonettes are from Denmark, a land of excellent urban planning and transportation policy and the song specifically references New York City and Portland, the United States’ two great hubs of forward-thinking urbanism.

“Sick Muse”

My friend AM has decided that Metric is “boy music for boys” but I think it’s awesome music for awesome people. What’s needed is a larger sample to weigh-in on this crucial question, so what is one to do but turn to the internet:

I should confess that I feel a special obligation to hype Metric up, because they’re just about the only band I like that I discovered without first having had them hyped-up to me by someone else. Instead, years ago I went to a Walkmen show at the 9:30 where Metric was the opener. Heard ‘em, loved it, bought Old World Underground, Where Are You Now? and the rest is history.

Anvil! The Story of Anvil

Over the weekend, I went to see Avil! The Story of Anvil, a surprisingly affecting documentary about a Canadian heavy metal band. Anvil, it seems, had a modicum of success in the early 1980s and were influential on a number of bands that went on to become much more successful metal acts. But instead of riding the hair band wave of success, Anvil sort of slipped into obscurity. And yet they kept playing and, indeed, have kept on playing right up to today. Here’s one of their early music videos:

Definitely worth checking out the movie if it’s playing somewhere near you.

The Breeders

So in this post about how John Thune says he won’t vote for a gay Supreme Court nominee, I used the term “breeders” which is a derogatory slang term for heterosexuals. For this I stand accused by the humorless right of anti-straight bigotry. As a hetero-American myself, I think of it as me “reclaiming” the term.

Good excuse for a “Cannonball” video, though.

Just a Friend

My friend A.M. pointed out this morning that somehow Biz Markie’s “Just a Friend” has wound up as number thirteen on the iTunes hip-hop charts despite being old. My hypothesis is that this once again illustrates the underestimated cultural power of mediocre Dutch beer. The upsurge in Markie enthusiasm, in other words, is probably due to the fact that this Heinecken ad, currently in heavy rotation during NBA playoff games, is pretty funny:

Alternatively, everyone’s so glued to the energy bill debate on the Hill that they’re confusing Biz Markie and Representative Ed Markey (D-MA).

On Covers

I said yesterday that I was inclined to think that the Pixies’ cover of “Head On” is better than the Jesus and Mary Chain’s original, but that “I always hesitate to claim that a cover is better than an original.” Minderbender replied “Calling bullshit on this one. Every time you mention an original/cover comparison, you come down on the side of the cover. See Nirvana/Vaselines.”

I’m flattered those posts were remembered! But of course the point is that the minority of covers that are arguably better than the originals are the most noteworthy ones, the ones you’re most likely to blog about.

NOM Remix

Gay marriage threatens to put us on a terrifying slippery slope:

Intellectual property policy angle here.

It’s Blitz

Yesterday, writing about the Yeah Yeah Yeahs’ new album It’s Blitz Ta-Nehisi Coates said he “liked each one of the YYY albums better than the last” and idiosyncratic view he attributes to “missing any music created by white people during the mid to late 80s.” I, for one, have been listening to music created by white people for my entire life and completely agree with him about the band’s growing powers. Besides which, Karen O is half-Korean so it’s hardly white people music. Well, okay, that’s exactly what it is. But still.

Here’s “Zero”

At any rate, I’m lamer than ever these days so dismiss my views if you like, but I’m loving this album.

A Capella “Maps”

This is via Ta-Nehisi Coates and somewhat disturbing, but also somewhat awesome:

Something to think about while I go to an hours-long strategic planning meeting!

My Generation

Rick Hertzberg writes about the irony of listening to “My Generation” now that Pete Townsend’s in his sixties rather than hoping he dies before he gets old. For my part, I first heard the song in the form of a Green Day cover on their seminal album Kerplunk:

It struck me, in eighth grade, as an incredibly awesome anthem of generational angst and change. It was only later that I learned the irony—it was appropriated from an earlier generation. To this day, I’m still not sure exactly what to make of that, but ultimately I think it speaks to the enduring power of the song—it captures sentiments that remained vital long after they had ceased to really make sense in the mouth of the original singer.

The Zune Era

A good friend of mine with general wise views on most matters has, in recent months, started taking the strongly counterintuitive line that those of us with iPods — a group that includes himself — are suckers and that the Zune is actually a better product. Except apparently nobody told Microsoft about leap years:

Owners of 30-gigabyte Zunes began flooding Zune-related Web sites with complaints early Wednesday morning. They said their players had suddenly stopped working, displaying only a frozen start-up screen.

After spending much of the day digging into the problem, Microsoft said that it had traced it to a software bug “related to the way the device handles a leap year.” Apparently the Zune was expecting 2008 to have 365 days, not 366.

Sloppy! I’ll say nothing more about my love of Apple products until Steve Jobs comes through with the product placement deal I deserve. Consider this post a good venue for a general Mac versus PC flame war — gotta get traffic back up.