Last month, I organized an event for Public Knowledge entitled World’s Fair Use Day. Over the course of two days, we attempted to highlight some of the creativity and innovation that the doctrine of fair use allows, by showcasing the work of technologists, musicians, entrepreneurs, filmmakers, educators, remixers and cartoonists. Among the speakers featured were Pennsylvania Congressman Mike Doyle, Negativland’s Mark Hosler, DJ Earworm, Copyright Criminals director Kembrew McLeod, RIP: A Remix Manifesto director Brett Gaylor, “Garfield Minus Garfield” creator Dan Walsh, Sita Sings the Blues director Nina Paley and cultural critic Mark Dery. TechDirt’s Mike Masnick—who also spoke at the event—did a great job of summarizing the conference here and here. The event also got written up by PC World and the San Francisco Chronicle and was mentioned in passing in a CNN story on DJ Earworm. An archived webcast and links to photos, tweets and liveblog coverage can be found at wfud.info (photo of me, Brett Gaylor, Kembrew McLeod and Mark Hosler by the one-and-only tvol, used under a CC-BY license).
The 2009 edition of “Slipped Discs,” an annual feature highlighting records that PopMatters writers felt slipped through the critical cracks in one way or another, is up this week. I wrote up two albums that, in my opinion, didn’t nearly receive their due: Wye Oak’s The Knot and David Bazan’s Curse Your Branches. Check out the feature here.
With love and squalor
Nitsuh Abebe’s fitting eulogy for J.D. Salinger quite ably sums up how I feel about my favorite author’s passing:
agrammar:
One morning a nice young man comes to your house. You invite him in and share some coffee. He’s thoughtful and charming — good company. He makes a miniature Ferris wheel out of toothpicks and jelly beans and sets it turning on your coffee table. That’s amazing, you say: how did you do that? He frowns and shakes his head.
Eventually he wanders off down the hall and locks himself in the back bedroom. He spends all day there. You can hear him hammering, sawing, drilling. No idea what he’s up to, but he seems content back there. At first he’ll talk to you through the door — just letting you know he’s doing well back there. But not often. After a while you just leave him to it — maybe even forget he’s around. But every hour or so, you notice the Ferris wheel spinning on the coffee table, and marvel at it, or toy with it, and wonder what he’s up to back there.
The whole day passes. And only when it’s getting really late, when you know it’s just about time for him to get some sleep — that’s when he emerges, seemingly satisfied with his very long day of work, and slips away.
No idea what’s back in that room. Maybe he left some incredible gift for you; maybe he didn’t. Maybe he built something for his own reasons and then tore it down. Maybe he locked the door behind him. Either way, it’s hard to feel too bad about his leaving: he spent a very, very long day where he wanted, how he wanted, building whatever he wanted to build. And maybe he left it behind for you to play with.
Year-end lists! All music nerds love them, especially those who publicly profess their hatred for lists. As usual, I voted in PopMatters’ “Best 60 Albums of 2009” poll and contributed write-ups on two of my favorite albums of the year (the Dirty Projectors’ Bitte Orca and Converge’s Axe to Fall). This year, I also participated in the Village Voice’s 37th annual Pazz + Jop Critics’ Poll, which is like the Destroy All Monsters of critics’ polls. My personal ballot, which lists my picks for the best albums and singles of 2009, can be found here. Thanks to the magic of personal computing, you can sift through P+J’s wealth of data easily by drilling down by album, track or critic. Which means that I can feel smug in the knowledge that Michael Azerrad and I both dug Wye Oak’s criminally underrated The Knot. Of course, no list is ever definitive and there were a handful of albums and singles that I really loved during this past year but couldn’t include in either of my ballots due to space constraints. They are as follows:
Sparklehorse + Fennesz — In the Fishtank
Diamond District — In the Ruff
Real Estate — S/T
Lady Gaga — “Paparazzi”
Das Racist — “Rainbow in the Dark”
The Depreciation Guild — “Dream About Me”
Gucci Mane f. Piles — “Wasted”
On Meeting Johnny Marr at the Supermarket
I was standing in the beer aisle, perusing the selection in the fridge case, as I am wont to do, when I felt someone hovering behind me. I turned, noticed a familiar face and then returned my full attention to the beer. Upon turning around a second time, however, I realized that the reason I had recognized the person standing behind me was because it was Johnny fucking Marr.
Read More
Up until last week, I had yet to cast my lot in the 20+ year debate regarding the Pixies’ merits as a live act or lack thereof. Which is a fancy way of saying that I had never seen the band play before. Granted, I was all of six years old when the Pixies first toured on Doolittle, though rest assured, I would have done my level best to see them, had my young mind not been held so firmly in the grip of the Beach Boys’ comeback hit “Kokomo” at the time. Regardless, I was disappointed to find that the Pixies circa 2009 are not so much performers as musical reenactors. While every note of Doolittle was reproduced faithfully and with great care, the band’s passionless, largely sedentary performance left a lot to be desired. Head over to DCist and PopMatters for my photos and full-length review.
In my humble opinion, the Eels are one of the most underrated indie rock acts of the last decade or so. Taken together, the one-two-punch of Electro-Shock Blues (1998) and Daisies of the Galaxy (2000) provide one of the more thoughtful, sincere and affecting meditations on love, life and death in recent memory. Unfortunately, head Eel Mark Oliver Everett has seemed creatively tapped out ever since (with the exception of the very enjoyable memoir that he penned), though I’ve long held out hope that he would eventually find his way again as a songwriter. Well, I’m happy to report that after nearly a decade, a return to form finally seems within reach for the Eels. “Little Bird,” the first single from the band’s forthcoming End Times bears all the hallmarks of a great Eels song; if I didn’t know any better, I might have assumed that it was a leftover from the Daisies sessions. Give the track a listen and read my brief write-up at PopMatters.
I normally don’t cover a lot of metal shows, so it was a real pleasure shooting Baroness, not only because they play with incredible ferocity and technical skill but also because they ham it up in a way that indie rock bands rarely do. Exaggerated facial expressions, rock star poses, gratuitous axe slinging: these dudes were having a blast and it showed. Check out my review and photos at PopMatters.
This past weekend, I saw two shows that, in some ways, felt like polar opposites. On Friday night, I headed down to the Rock and Roll Hotel to catch Cold Cave. The band was as cold, robotic and detached as their name and catalog imply and minor gripes aside (Wes Eisold’s vocals, unfortunately, could use a bit of work), they were quite compelling…right up until their set came to a screeching halt after only half an hour. Eisold has stated in interviews that he doesn’t like playing sets longer than 30 minutes in length, since that’s the longest that a band can hold his attention. That might fly in the hardcore world but with a headlining act that favors slow builds over explosive flare outs, a set that short just feels like a tease. My review and photos from the show can be found at PopMatters.
On Saturday night, I made my way out to Govinda Gallery in Georgetown to witness two of China’s latest exports: experimental folk musician Xiao He and post-punk stalwarts P.K. 14. Both delivered earnest, fantastic performances to a room of about 50 folks of all ages, including doll-toting little girls, beard-stroking old men and Ian MacKaye (natch). The show felt intimate, vital and community-oriented in a way that too few shows in D.C. do nowadays—leave it to some punks from Beijing to remind us Washingtonians of our roots. My review and photos from this show can also be found at PopMatters.
Like many of my fellow District of Columbians, I’ve been looking forward to Wale’s debut LP for what seems like an eternity. And like many people with Blogger accounts, I can’t help but feel a little disappointed by Attention Deficit. Still, a bit of perspective might be in order and that is precisely what Jeff Weiss provides in his definitive review of the record. By fully contextualizing the album, Weiss demonstrates that many of Attention Deficit’s missteps are inextricably bound to the clueless, shortsighted industry that birthed it. What’s more, Wale might just be the up-and-coming canary in the industry’s proverbial coal mine (“As fans, we may just have to resign ourselves to the idea that rap has become beholden to the Hollywood model, where stars do one lame blockbuster pic in order to do the daring independent film for no money”). I agree wholeheartedly with Weiss’ assessment, which is to say that I’ve found that Attention Deficit can be a very enjoyable record when approached with a realistic set of expectations. My review of the album can be found at PopMatters. While not nearly as relevant as Weiss’, it does come Raymond Roker approved.
On Wednesday night I learned two things:
1.) DC9 might just be my favorite venue in town.
2.) For two dudes separated by a table full of gadgetry, Fuck Buttons put on an incredible (not to mention incredibly loud) live show.
Head over to PopMatters for my review and photos.
On Tuesday night, I headed over to the Black Cat to see Girls and Real Estate, two bands that have been getting much love from experts in the field of hypertext as of late. Real Estate exceeded my expectations in just about every way; Girls, not so much. David Malitz over at the Washington Post really savaged the latter (sample burn: “Girls played an hour-long set that was amateur in quality and execution and not even engaging enough to qualify as boring”) and while I agree with the general sentiment of his scathing review, I honestly didn’t think that they were all that bad—though their live show could clearly use some more time in the oven. My full review and photos can be found at PopMatters.
So I’ve been pretty busy lately—too busy to update this site, apparently. Here’s what I’ve been up to. I reviewed Atlas Sound’s fantastic new record Logos for PopMatters. A few days before the album’s street date, I also photographed and reviewed Atlas Sound’s show with Broadcast at the Black Cat, which was one of the better shows I’ve seen this year. Later that week, I caught the Dirty Projectors at the Black Cat (review/photos here) and was thrilled to find that their live show has improved considerably since the last time I saw them. This week, I reviewed and photographed Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band at the Verizon Center. The show was outstanding but my photos were not, likely because I showed up at the venue with a 50mm lens, only to find that the photogs were stationed behind the soundboard, 100 feet from the stage (basically, I pulled the photographic equivalent of bringing a knife to a gun fight). Finally, I was interviewed in Washingtonian Magazine, for an article on DCbeer, which is a site I take pictures for sometimes.
So, I’m pretty sure that it was fate that brought Sunny Day Real Estate back together. To wit: the band played the 9:30 Club here in Washington on 9/30 and hit the stage at 9:30 p.m. sharp. Coincidence? I think not. I was too busy enjoying the hell out of the show with my little brother (who had flown in specifically for the occasion) to document it, though I did cover the band’s NYC show the previous Sunday. My photos from that set can be found at Stereogum and my full-length review can be read at PopMatters. Here’s hoping that the band heeds the numerological signs and keeps this reunion train rolling for as long as possible.
