Rob Salkowitz: Noise

Fri, 31 Jan 2003 16:08:25 GMT

Rockin' the House

Seattle's smartest art-punk band the A-Frames is finally getting some love from the city's alternative weekly newspaper. A positive profile by Michael Alan Goldberg leads this week's music section in The Stranger. A fixture on the scene since the mid-90s, the A-Frames (who began life as Bend Sinister) serve up terse slabs of sonic meat, their lean cuisine inspired by bands like the Fall, Gang of Four, Birthday Party and various Krautrock groups of the 70s. The band was disappointed when a gig supporting Australia's seminal garage-punks The Scientists fell through earlier this month. They'll have to settle for opening for Mudhoney next weekend at the Crocodile. If any of this sounds like your cup of noise, go henceforth to the site of Dragnet Records for the latest info and ordering information.

Tue, 24 Dec 2002 06:19:23 GMT

Death or Glory

From every dingy basement on every dingy street
I hear every dragging handclap over every dragging beat
That's just the beat of time-the beat that must go on
If you been trying for years-then we already heard your song

– “Death or Glory,” Joe Strummer and Mick Jones

12 hours and a bottle of wine later, I’m finally able to write something about Joe Strummer. For someone who was the most important musician of his generation, his sudden death is getting remarkably little attention. He was only 50 for christsake.

Why is Joe Strummer important? Leave aside the dozens of amazing songs and immortal performances he gave us in his five years with the Clash. Joe Strummer was the last major popular artist to really stand for something and not be ridiculous. He didn’t compromise the music, he didn’t compromise his politics, he didn’t hold back a goddamned thing. He didn’t burden us all with his problems or his ego, he didn’t smother us with false humility. He was a real guy, saying his bit, and it was brilliant. I doubt we’ll see his like again, and that’s worth crying about.

Of the punks of ’77, Syd and Johnny got more attention, but it was Joe Strummer’s voice that set the tone. “They said we’d be artistically free if we sign a bit of paper,” he screamed on “Complete Control,” the Clash’s most ferocious single. He thought he was being ironic. But he really was good enough to make it stick.

Whenever I hear “Tommy Gun,” I’m transported to a flat in East Kensington, summer of 1988 (long after the Clash were dead and gone), where I’d turned up for no good reason the night before and was waiting for my then-girlfriend to get home from work. I was watching “Rude Boy” on the video with a bunch of Australian guys. They didn’t know me from Adam – all they knew is that I was some cocky Yank fucking their cute flatmate. But, and this sounds dopey to see it in print, the music brought us together. Anyone who liked the Clash was cool enough to hang out with. True in ’77, true in ’88, true today.

You ever see “Rude Boy”? It’s a terrible film – handmade and rambling, without any kind of plot. The Clash are basically background characters to the main story about this confused kid. It was shot in ’77 and ’78, when it was all happening. The scene of the Clash playing the Rock Against Racism show is historic. Joe sang “London's Burning” like a man possessed. Nothing in rock history – not Elvis in ’55 or the Beatles at Shea Stadium or Jimi Hendrix at Monterey – compares to the visceral power of that moment. The man and his time were one, and the camera caught it all forever. Those 140 seconds of film are worth every plodding moment that comes before and after.

Strummer was so hard for the media to peg because he wasn’t some kind of caricature. He wasn’t a self-destructive moron like Syd Vicious or a preening cartoon character like Billy Idol. Sure, he was punk through and through, but he was about the music, first, last and always. It’s all there on the records. Just put them on and listen. No bullshit, no rockstar pose. There was nothing to make fun of about the Clash, nothing to reduce to cliché. The songs were great, the performances completely convincing, the adventurous spirit and musical chops 100% authentic.

The Clash were the anti-media. They were about the real experience, not some mediated simulation. Their politics weren’t from some weird point of view or reducible to some comfortable pigeonhole, but they were utterly in confrontation with the dominant culture. Their best songs were well-argued tracts set to an irresistible rhythm. You couldn’t listen to the Clash without getting upset about something. As a result, they had no value in commercial culture even as a sideshow like the Sex Pistols. If people saw the Clash on the evening news, they might take them seriously, and we couldn’t have that. Except for the annoying problem of all those people who bought their records, the media’s only response to a band like the Clash was to completely ignore them.

Now Joe decides to drop dead. No warning, no spectacular drug flameout or assassination by crazed fan. Just a poor workingman’s death. Heart attack at 50. It’s not a tragedy for the music, because the man said his piece. The Clash hung it up for all intents and purposes in 1982, and when I saw Strummer play in 1998 with his new band, they were a nostalgia act. Their new stuff was OK, but when Joe sang “White Man” or “I Fought the Law,” it was 1977 all over again. He was the moment, the moment was him. Now the moment is passed and all we have to mourn is the man.

Sorry to see you go, Joe. You done good while you were here.

Wed, 18 Dec 2002 16:44:42 GMT

Return to the Paisly Underground

I'm a sucker for clever '80s alt-pop: the dbs, Marshall Crenshaw, the Feelies, Robyn Hitchcock and Camper Van Beethoven are all among my faves. One band I thought never got enough attention for its well-crafted, literate and often-rocking work is Game Theory, whose best albums are now long out of print. Unfortunately, I hestitate to search too aggressively online for their classic double-album masterpiece for fear of ending up on the FBI's kiddie-porn hitlist. The unfortunate title of this great work? Lolita Nation. (ok, Google, bring on the pervs...)

Wed, 11 Dec 2002 18:19:35 GMT

Blast from the Past

I thought I was getting too old to see a rock and roll show at a club on a Tuesday night until I got a load of the rest of the crowd that had gathered to see the Blasters reunion gig at the Crocodile Café in Seattle last night. I’d be surprised if there were a half-dozen of the three hundred in the house under 35, with more than half closer to 50. Lots of big guts, lots of gray ponytails, lots of patches of scalp where the ponytails used to be. Kind of like the band, actually.

The strange thing is, the Blasters really aren’t that old. They got started in LA around 1980 and were history before Reagan left office. Often associated with fellow bands like X and the Stray Cats, their connection with the LA punk scene of that era was more social than sonic. The Blasters, more than practically any other band since Creedence Clearwater Revival, played straight-up rock and roll. They probably drew an older crowd even back then.

Just for the record, there aren’t a whole lot of reunion tours I’d pay to see, but I was a big fan from way back and had seen Dave Alvin (the Blasters’ amazing lead guitarist) play with his own group, the Guilty Men, enough to know that he, at least, still had his chops. Dave is good enough on his own to make you feel like you’ve almost seen a Blasters show, but his gravelly bass is, in the end, no substitute for the rubber-voiced antics of his hyper-kinetic brother, Blasters’ frontman Phil Alvin. Intriguingly, it was apparently tension between the two brothers that broke the band up in the first place.

They took the stage a little bit after 10:00 pm and launched into a non-stop set that covered almost their entire catalog. The Blasters were always a crisp, professional musical unit with virtuoso Dave leading the charge on guitar, plus an outstanding Jerry Lee Lewis-style piano and rock-solid rhythm section. Even the crappy sound of the Croc’s PA system couldn’t disguise the fluidity and drive of five incredible musicians playing their hearts out and having a grand old time doing it. By the third or fourth song, there was enough dancing among the middle-aged crowd to make an Advil sales rep beam with delight.

Up on stage, Phil howled and grimaced and sweated his way through one Blasters classic after another. “Red Rose,” “No Other Girl,” “American Music,” “Long White Cadillac,” “Dark Night,” “Border Radio” and a dozen others sounded as great as the first time I’d heard them. Part of the reason the material has held up so well is that the songs sounded old – or perhaps timeless – even when they were new. Dave Alvin’s songwriting genius is what propelled the Blasters from to the front ranks of American bands. His songs didn’t just ape the structures of folk, blues, swing, rockabilly and country-western styles, but went deep to explore the sensibility behind the music. Both of the Alvins know their American roots – historically, emotionally, politically, poetically. Their understanding of the complexity behind such basically simple forms is what gives their music a richness, sincerity and authenticity that separates it from the simple-minded revivalism of groups like the Stray Cats.

On stage, the tension between Dave’s musical professionalism and Phil’s crowd-pleasing clowning gave the performance some drama. At one point, the brothers looked like they might come to blows. Never fashion-plates even in their younger days, the band has ripened into an almost surreal physical ugliness that also made for compelling viewing. Gaunt, gap-toothed Dave was hunched over his guitar like a wounded coyote while Phil, sporting the balding remains of his trademark flat-top, flailed around like a wild boar with an aneurism. The rest of the band looked like they were rounded up from the local filling station and issued a pack of cigarettes and a six-pack of long-neck Buds along with their instruments.

By the time the band launched into the inevitable finale – “Marie Marie,” the best song Chuck Berry never wrote – the Croc had been transformed into a beer-soaked, smoke-filled roadhouse, with the portly, sweaty audience gasping in delight and exhaustion. An unknowing stranger who happened in off the street would have shrugged and wondered what the big deal was: just a veteran bar band on a good night. But hey – isn’t that rock and roll?

Sat, 30 Nov 2002 18:30:09 GMT

Bad Folk Rock,

or, Bob Dylan, David Blue and Me

Much of my taste in popular music is founded on the cornerstone of Bob Dylan. An adolescent fixation on his mid-60s era work left me with an indelible appreciation for good lyrics and a boundless tolerance for rough-hewn but expressive vocals. Since I grew up 20 years downstream from Bob's prime, the tides of time had already washed away a lot of the residue of his influence from those years, including the slew of Dylan imitators and followers whose work was pervasive in the early 70s. Over the years, I've tried to hunt down specimens of this species and found them a very mixed bag. Strident protest singer Phil Ochs eventually matured into a genuinely tragic Romantic poet, and his last few albums are as great as any music made in the late 60s, whereas hacks like Tom Paxson started bad and only got worse. I thought John Prine's first album was Dylan when I first heard it - a mistake I'd never make about his departed colleague, the occasionally-inspired but often-insipid Steve Goodman.

One name from that era that always intrigued me was David Blue (né Cohen), a hanger-on from Dylan's Greenwich Village period who recorded a few records in the late 60s and early 70s that were reputed to be the closest emulation of Dylan's style that anyone dared commit to vinyl even in those shameless times. However, Blue died sometime ago and his oevre is now entirely forgotten (save by current-day folk gangster John Wesley Harding, who memorialized him in a song called "Phil Ochs, Bob Dylan, Steve Goodman, David Blue and Me"), so I despaired of ever hearing it for myself.

Enter Don, my ex-brother not-in-law (e.g., my girlfriend's sister's ex-husband), owner of the finest record collection in Appleton, if not the entire Fox River Valley, whose enthusiasm for this sort of music runs deeper than can possibly be imagined. He was good enough to provide me with David Blue's magnum opus, These 23 Days in September, which he had painstakingly transferred from his original vinyl to CD - along with "bonus tracks" of fellow forgotten folkies from that era such as Eric Anderson and Patrick Sky. 30,000 miles over Billings, Montana, I had my first listen.

Does anyone here remember a track on an old Simon and Garfunkle album called "A Simple Desultory Philippic," in which Paul Simon does a merciless parody of the Dylan style over an organ-driven blues track? Imagine an entire album of this, meant to be taken seriously. Bad singing, flat melodies, pretentious lyrics that miss by a mile, dated production, the works – all cringe-inducing, but not quite terrible enough to be funny in spite of itself. I guess when even Bob Dylan himself is a second-rate Bob Dylan imitator these days (at least when he performs material from his 1960s catalog), what did I really expect? Oh well – I guess some historical time-pieces are meant to stay buried.

Fri, 15 Nov 2002 16:41:45 GMT

Sex and Violins

Joshua Bell is looking more and more like the next big thing in classical music. The 33 year-old Grammy Award-winning violinist was just here in Seattle on tour with the Academy of St. Martin in the Fields, where he was both guest director and featured soloist. He’s been touring madly for the past few years, showing his face in all the right places, including performing the Oscar-winning score to the respected art film The Red Violin a few years ago.

Every generation, classical music produces one or two figures who attain wider recognition in the popular culture: Isaac Stern, Yitzhak Pearlman, Yo Yo Ma. Bell seems poised to be next. He has the upward career trajectory, the superstar look with his long brown hair and black silk shirts, and the $3 million Stradivarius. On Monday night, he made his case with lively performances of Bach and Haydn, followed by Mahler’s arrangement of Shubert’s Death and the Maiden. Bell’s virtuosity is impeccable, even to my untrained ear, and he holds the stage marvelously with his dynamic and demonstrative style. But I’ve seen him three times now and each time I am more and more convinced that there is a coldness, even an abrasive quality to his sound. It’s a very subjective opinion, but one that is further confirmed each time I’ve seen him.

Last night, by some quirk of the Symphony schedule, I found myself at my second performance of the week. Another violinist was featured, this time 27 year-old Nikolaj Znaider. Though not as seasoned or polished as Bell, Znaider offered a masterly rendition of Max Bruch’s Violin Concerto in G Minor, which benefited from the brisk, tight pace provided by guest conductor Yakov Kreizberg. And I couldn’t help noticing how much more pleasing Znaider’s warm, rounded tones were to my ears.

It’s too early to say whether Zniader will amount to anything. He also has performed and recorded widely, but he’s half a decade younger than Bell and has a ways to go in his career before recognition is available to him beyond the concert circuit. Most notably, however, he lacks the look – the star-power charisma that oozes from every pore of Joshua Bell. Even in the stately circles of classical music, branding is everything, and increasingly, Joshua Bell is looking like the choice of the next generation.

Mon, 11 Nov 2002 18:13:24 GMT

Electric Masada Acid Test:

John Zorn’s Separate but Equal Jazz

The best jazz has always been about the blues. Over the course of the 20^th century, this sprawling, multi-layered complex of musical expression has been based on a foundation of traditional African-American (and African) harmonics, rhythms and feelings. African-American musicians who work in the idiom of jazz are therefore playing on their cultural home field. Others can and have made contributions, and while the music that results is not always inferior per se, it must always be judged in relationship to the core African-American tradition rather than as part of it.

Various efforts to reconcile jazz techniques with European art music over the course of the 20^th century were often unsatisfying. Whether instigated by African-American or white musicians, there was a certain uneasiness between the informal, conversational style of jazz and the self-consciousness of whatever it was being “fused” with. The only really successful hybridizations of jazz have been with other folk styles: Latin, Gypsy folk music (such as the work of the great guitarist Django Reinhardt) and, in an oblique way, Appalachian music (as in Western swing). Of these, only Latin Jazz has produced an important independent tradition, and the success here might be because of the shared African roots.

Enter John Zorn. Early in his career, the Jewish saxophonist was clearly uneasy with his outsider’s relationship to the African-American blues-jazz tradition. His first efforts were spectacular if sterile excursions into the avant-garde, often turning on cleverly-conceived innovations in musical theory. He promoted a new approach to improvisation through an elaborate game called Cobra, and sought to root his music in various non-blues forms such as film music. The results were often more “interesting” than satisfying, but in the course of his explorations, he developed an incredible virtuosity both as a player and as a band leader.

Sometime in the early 90s, Zorn hit upon the vehicle that allowed him to express his most complex and imaginative musical ambitions within a framework that was as comfortable to him as the blues tradition is to African-American players: the traditional folk music of European Jewry. The power of this breakthrough was staggering. His new combo, Masada (named for the stronghold of a band of die-hard Israelite nationalists fighting Rome in the 1^st century), produced a music that was exciting, adventurous, historically-resonant, and capable of supporting the complex musical superstructure of jazz technique as readily as the blues. Zorn and his (mostly Jewish) colleagues were finally able to infuse their theories with the hot blood of an authentic cultural experience in which they were fully immersed, creating a music as electrifying in its own way as the early bebop of Charlie Parker and Dizzy Gillespie or the mid-60s free jazz of John Coltrane and (Zorn influence) Ornette Coleman.

In lesser hands, the core idea behind Masada could quickly degenerate into a novelty or cliché. But Zorn is possessed of an almost superhuman commitment to his music and a rare burning genius for invention and innovation. Masada relentlessly explored the avenues made available by this new approach in an ongoing series of recordings released according to the sequence of the Hebrew alphabet. While it took 40 years for African-American jazz to get from Louis Armstrong to Cecil Taylor (or James Brown, if you prefer), Zorn collapsed the evolution of his new genre into less than a decade.

Last night in Seattle, he performed with his new Electric Masada septet featuring Kenny Wolleson (drums), Cyro Baptista (percussion), Trevor Dunn (electric bass), John Medeski and Jamie Saft (keys), and Marc Ribot (guitar). Performing with amplified instruments is of course nothing new to Zorn, but the makeup of this particular combo with the two keyboards, percussion and electric guitars allows the new Masada to create the same kinds of musical textures that Miles Davis achieved with his late-60s, early-70s group that produced the landmark album Bitches Brew, in marked contrast to the more traditional acoustic approach that Masada had employed in the past.

The critical mass of talent under Zorn’s iron-fisted leadership exploded in a fireball of musical fury. Zorn’s compositions, frequently rooted in the minor key harmonics of his traditional source material, provided a wide-ranging palette of melodies, tempos, dynamics as well as a solid foundation for the most far-reaching improvisations. Zorn appeared to incorporate a few of his Cobra techniques to direct the soloists and shape the performances like a magician conjuring with powerful mystical forces. He allowed each of his virtuousos plenty of room to embroider, featuring his own formidable skills on the alto sax only occasionally and to staggering effect. The interplay of the group onstage was utterly spontaneous and produced a string of exciting moments. Every passage seemed to be a tour-de-force. At times, the group thundered along as if trying to lift themselves and everyone in the audience into space by achieving some kind of musical escape velocity. It was beyond belief.

If last night’s performance is any indication, Electric Masada seems ready to write a new chapter in musical history. The quixotic, cerebral, often intentionally difficult Zorn has found the alchemical formula for marrying his undeniable musical genius to a rich tradition of which he is fundamentally, organically a part. By ambition, talent and sheer will, Zorn has created a place for an authentic, non-blues-based music in the hallowed pantheon of American jazz. Mazel tov!

Fri, 08 Nov 2002 16:14:24 GMT

Wrong About Everything

No, this isn’t about politics – that subject is way too depressing right now. It’s the title of a song by John Wesley Harding, creator of some of the smartest, catchiest tunes on the planet. Never heard of him? Think Elvis Costello (but less bitter and more melodic), or Robyn Hitchcock (just as clever but not as weird), with a bit of a disheveled George Clooney look about him. A displaced Brit, he lived in Seattle for a while and whenever he returns here on tour, it’s guaranteed to be a great show. Last night he rocked through an energetic set of winning material, punctuated by some absolutely hysterical off-the-cuff remarks and stories. If he stops in your town, do yourself a favor and catch his act.

Sat, 05 Oct 2002 20:39:19 GMT

Tangled Up in Blue

“But all the while I was alone, the past was close behind…

And I just grew – Tangled Up in Blue”

- Bob Dylan, 1974

From 1961 to 1975, Bob Dylan filled album after album with memorable, poetic, often melodic songs dripping with relevance and cultural significance. These masterpieces should be sealed in barrels and buried in a secure facility under heavy guard to protect them from being performed by the contemporary musician responsible for such fine work as Love and Theft and Time Out of Mind.

The artist now known as Bob Dylan writes literate, well-crafted songs in a range of American styles from bluegrass to Appalachian folk to delta blues and rockabilly. He performs them with nuance and feeling, backed by a lean, tight band. His voice, though limited, is warm and expressive. His melodies are haunting, and the lyrics often surprise with a perfectly unexpected turn of phrase. Seeing this man perform live is a wonderful, affirmative experience and proof positive that older artists can continue producing vital work in a rock idiom without embarrassing themselves or their fans.

Then there’s the other Bob Dylan – the one who wrote “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “Like a Rolling Stone” and “All Along the Watchtower” and “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door” and literally dozens of other classics. The one who burned through England in his motorcycle jacket and dark glasses, cutting journalists to ribbons with his caustic repartee in the classic 1965 documentary Don’t Look Back. The one who changed American music forever and became a legend in his own time. That Bob Dylan, sorry to say, hasn’t aged too well, and when he makes his appearance during a live show, it’s time to crawl under the seats.

It’s not the songs. Sure, maybe some of the hits appear ragged and yellowed from too many years on the rock radio playlists, or maybe the venerable album tracks like “It’s Alright Ma, I’m Only Bleeding” have become creased and dogeared from being passed hand-to-hand through the underground for so long. Still, it’s possible to envision an inspired artist breathing life and credibility into such inherently strong material. There was a time when Dylan would surprise and delight the crowd with radical new arrangements and exciting performances of his classics, revisiting them as new and continually relevant works rather than the material of nostalgia.

But not any more. The old stuff clearly bores Bob to tears these days. So great is his contempt for his back catalog that he hardly bothers to even fake it anymore. Using his trademarked phrasing technique of playing with the meter and accents within each measure, he systematically reduces even his most beautiful melodies (like the amazing “Love Minus Zero/No Limit”) to a repetitive, atonal cant. He doesn’t vary the inflection for effect, he doesn’t look for new possibilities within the melody, he doesn’t change emphasis to illuminate the lyric – he’s simply getting it over with. I’ve seen him play about ten times over the last 15 years and had never seen a performance of my favorite Dylan song, “Mr. Tambourine Man.” After last night, where Bob did the equivalent of hacking the tune to pieces with dull bread knife for five excruciating minutes, I wish I never had. Even his band members were exchanging puzzled, vaguely amused looks by the end.

Please, Bob, if you don’t feel like doing the time, don’t do the crime. Play your new stuff. I love it. You love it. The band loves it. The audience should love it, and if they don’t, f*ck ‘em. The past is the past and we can listen to the albums. As you once said in one of those great old songs that I hope you never play live again – “I was so much older then, I’m younger than that now.”

Fri, 04 Oct 2002 22:15:23 GMT

Bob Dylan – the Perfect Mix (1986 version – 120 minutes)

Side A (mostly electric)

Isis (Live, 1975, Renaldo and Clara soundtrack, later released on Biograph)
I Ain’t Got No Home (live with the Band, 1968, Tribute to Woody Guthrie)
All Along the Watchtower (live with the Band, 1974, Before the Flood)
Maggie’s Farm (live, 1965, Newport Folk Festival, 1^st electric performance)
Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues (live with the Band, 1966, Liverpool, b-side of the single “I Want You”)
Forever Young (live with the Band, 1977, The Last Waltz)
Knockin’ On Heaven’s Door (1973, Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid soundtrack)
Song To Woody (unreleased 1970 session with George Harrison)
I Shall Be Released (“Basement Tapes” version with the Band, later released on Bootleg Recordings vols. 1-3)
Just Like a Woman (live acoustic, 1970, Concert for Bangladesh)
Subterranean Homesick Blues (1964, Bringing It All Back Home)
Jokerman (1984, Infidels)
Wheel’s On Fire (1966, released 1975, The Basement Tapes)
Like a Rolling Stone (live with The Band, 1966, later released on Live at Royal Albert Hall)

Side B (mostly acoustic)

Tangled Up in Blue (1974, Blood on the Tracks)
Mr. Tambourine Man (live at Newport Folk Festival, 1965, including intro)
Mama You Been On My Mind (live with Joan Baez, 1964, from bootleg recording All Hallows Eve)
The Times, They are a-Changin’ (1963, The Times, They Are a-Changin’)
Blowing in the Wind (1962, live at the Gaslight Café, bootleg, first public performance)
Baby Please Don’t Go (1961, Minnesota Hotel Tape bootleg)
Visions of Johanna (live acoustic, 1966, released on Biograph)
Blind Willie McTell (1984 unreleased piano/electric guitar version with Mick Talyor)
Lay Lady Lay (1968, Nashville Skyline)
Idiot Wind (1974, Blood on the Tracks)
A Hard Rain’s a Gonna Fall (live 1975, unreleased, from bootleg Robert and Sara)
It Ain’t Me (live 1984, Real Live)
Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright (live 1974, Before the Flood)

Sun, 22 Sep 2002 20:37:31 GMT

The Long Kiss Goodbye to the 20^th Century

Last night I caught the final Seattle performance of Lipstick Traces, a stage adaptation of Greil Marcus’s history of the artistic expression of anarchism that culminated in the punk rock moment of 1976-77. Difficult subject matter for a dramatic performance to be sure, especially since the production design complemented the confrontational nature of the text. It wasn’t easy viewing, but it was definitely successful in raising issues about the way certain kinds of art achieve effect and purpose not through aesthetics, but by the ability to create situations of immediacy that open the eyes of the audience to new possibilities, if only for a fleeting moment.

Marcus traces the development of “situation as art” from its rude beginnings in certain heretical movements of the Middle Ages to the Dadaist Cabaret Voltaire in 1916. Dada performances were designed to confound expectations as a way of illuminating the voluntary nature of social constructs. The “art” of Dada is not in the artifact or the passive consumption of the performance, but in the audience’s active exploration of its own responses to the absurd, the unexpected, the tasteless. Only by seeing these things can we engage the questions of what is sensible, what are our expectations, on what do we base our taste? And in the examination of them, we come to grips with the reality that inhibitions, obligations and repression do not arise from nature but require our consent, and are subject to change through concerted action. In that moment of realization, life ceases to be inevitable and becomes intentional.

As the 20^th century careened from depths of atrocity to periods of stultifying boredom and conformity, people’s need to feel alive through the experience became increasingly urgent. The market recognized the demand for authentic experience and built a vast apparatus for the manufacture, distribution and promotion of spectacle. Advertising imagery taunted the public with the promise of peak experiences available only through the consumption of particular products. But the more desperately people chased this mirage, the more rare and precious actual transcendence became.

Enter Malcom McLaren, a shrewd entrepreneur who succeeded, briefly, in performing the Great Work of capitalist alchemy – commodifying an experience that completely satisfied the public desire for negation. He called it The Sex Pistols. Of course, the recipe was far too volatile to last, and both the band and the punk moment quickly decayed into base metal like the results of some atomic particle experiment. But he showed it could be done, and since that time, the Spectacle Industry has labored mightily to profit from the howling alienation that it has itself propagated.

Punk rock, like Dada, forced the audience to confront its expectations and its complicity in the corruption of culture. But that realization is, by nature, fleeting. I was too young to see the Sex Pistols in ’77, but I remember experiencing a landmark Nirvana show in 1990 and realizing that something very powerful and important was happening. Then, in 1992 and ’93, you could see the energy drain out of Seattle like the receding tide exposing a stretch of mudflats. Today, as audiences come to expect the outrageous and demand the transcendent as part of the price of their ticket, even the most shocking and spontaneous performances fail to deliver. The ante has been upped. The line between spectacle and reality begins to dissolve. This dissolution, according to Marcus, constitutes the “Secret History of the 20^th Century.”

The 20^th century ended on September 11^th, 2001. On that day, the implications of the theory of spectacle came home to roost. On that day, the world was presented with a spectacle of monumental proportions – an act of total negation so extreme that it was almost beyond conception.

Time stopped. The reality of events had pierced through the stultifying layers of mediation. Images tumbled out of the screen. If this could happen, anything could happen. The nearly panicked, unrehearsed shock in the voice of Peter Jennings when he was informed that the first tower of the World Trade Center had collapsed was riveting because it made us alive to the possibility of spontaneity in even the most controlled channels of communication. For an instant it appeared that a horrifying catastrophe might give birth to a whole new, more authentic reality. It was the moment of universal transcendence that art had been striving for since Dada. But when it came, it was not artists who provided it but mass murderers.

With that realization came a profound guilt. The electrifying images were whisked out of sight like dirty magazines when a parent enters the room. We were told, and many of us felt, that to derive exhilaration from such ghastly events was unseemly, almost inhuman. And yet, in a culture that constantly tantalized itself with false promises and mediated experience, that was locked into an escalating spiral of extreme experiences and sensations – the real thing was irresistible. Now it’s too late. We’re addicted to the pursuit of authenticity because the simulations that the market provides are getting more and more sophisticated but less and less satisfying.

The tragedy of 9/11 is that it took airplanes flying into buildings to blast away the accumulated layers of phoniness, commercialism and propaganda that cloud our vision. And even that didn’t last.

Mon, 16 Sep 2002 06:22:10 GMT

Masterpiece: The Clash’s Sandinista (1981)

The Clash tower over the skyline of modern music like the Empire State Building, a monument forged of an audacity and ambition almost inconceivable today. In 1981, after out-playing and outlasting most of their punk cohorts, they released their magnum opus: the triple album set Sandinista. Seen at the time as a disappointing, self-indulgent follow-up to their previous double album London Calling, Sandinista today conclusively proves that the Clash not only had a crystal clear artistic and political vision of their own times, but were also able to predict in meticulous detail the shape music would take for the next 20 years. Indeed, the farther we travel from 1981, the farther ahead of its time Sandinista appears to have been.

Since its earliest days, the Clash had chafed against the stylistic straightjacket of punk rock. Sure, they could play three-chord anthems as well as anyone on the scene, but, almost incidentally, they were also the best white reggae band ever to record. On London Calling, they branched out in other directions, slowing the down the frantic beat and incorporating elements of blues, funk, and folk in addition to various Caribbean and African rhythms. London Calling’s combination of variety and ferocity yielded one of the most satisfying albums of the era.

As it turns out, that was just a warm up for the eclecticism of Sandinista. While retaining their vocabulary of lyrical concerns (social justice, racial politics, international affairs), the Clash march through a catalog of styles from straight-ahead rock (“Somebody Got Murdered”) and sizzling reggae (“One More Time”) to less obvious choices for a modern punk band, such as New Orleans rhythm and blues (“Junco Partner”), gospel (“The Sound of the Sinners”), top 40 pop (“Hitsville UK”) and protest-folk (“Washington Bullets”). The inclusion and juxtaposition of such a broad palette of styles was not simple dilettantism: it postulated a radical melting of boundaries between established genres, a thoroughly post-modern “unified field” theory of music that was so revolutionary in its time that it still seems novel and exciting today.

Sandinista’s stylistic explorations not only looked backward in musical history, but forward toward developments that were at the time appearing only on the fringes of popular consciousness. Most conspicuous is the mutant variant of reggae known as dub, which remixes samples of the vocal and instrumental tracks of a song, carried forward by an exaggerated or distorted rhythm track. The Clash had worked in dub before – notably on the single “Armagiddeon Time/Kick it Over” – but mainly for effect. Here, it was deployed as a conscious method to deconstruct and decontextualize certain compositions, opening them to deeper layers of meaning and sonic possibilities: musical criticism embodied in the work through engineering and technology. Few if any bands were providing remixed versions of their own material in this way, though the technique soon became a popular and important element in the music of the 80s and 90s.

The Clash squeezed another major innovation onto Sandinista with the introduction of hip-hop rhythms on the lead track, “The Magnificent Seven.” The Clash were arguably the first outside (read: white) band to appreciate the significance and possibilities of rap and hip-hop, having witnessed the incipient DJ and break-dance culture during their 1980 stop in New York (they later chose Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five as their opening act in 1981). While not entirely convincing or authentic as hip-hop, “The Magnificent Seven” (and subsequent Clash compositions on 1982’s Combat Rock) demonstrates the Clash’s broad view of the music spectrum at a time when few considered rap to be music at all.

Sides 5 and 6 of the original three-record configuration are widely criticized as fluff and filler, since most of the music is dub versions or remixes of other tunes on the album. “Menforth Hill,” for example, is simply “Something About England” run backwards. “Silicone on Sapphire” is the backing track to “Washington Bullets” remixed with the melody carried by an acoustic flamenco guitar. There are several other experiments using found audio from radio DJs, announcers, TV program music and films. Critics at the time wondered why the Clash would dilute the focus of their song-based material with stuff like this.

The answer becomes clearer if we view Sandinista as a manifesto for music of the future rather than an offering to the tastes and preferences of the moment. On the first four sides of Sandinista, the Clash survey the scope of popular music like latter-day folklorists, presenting specimens of various styles and demonstrating how they can be adapted for revolutionary purposes. Sides five and six concern the application of technology to this project. Using (at the time) experimental methods like dub versions, remixes, samples, loops, noise and decontextualized dialogue, the Clash lay out a strategy by which folk and populist forms can survive the transition into post-modernism, gaining rather than losing power through the application of technology and the knowing appropriation of various cultural signifiers. In short, what confused and frustrated many listeners in 1981 today stands as the most radical and visionary contribution to a radical and visionary album.

By the time the Clash have said their piece – 36 songs on six album sides – little is left standing. The ground they plowed up has since yielded a bountiful harvest, from monochromatic punk bands (Green Day, Propagandhi) and socially-aware British reggae (UB40, Steel Pulse) to radical DJs (Spooky, Krush) and multicultural postmodernists (Bill Laswell). Without a doubt, 20 years down the line, Sandinista sounds more current and relevant today, which is why, although it may not be the best Clash album, it is certainly one of the most important pieces of music (and statements about music) of the 20^th century.

Tue, 03 Sep 2002 18:55:31 GMT

Linton Kwesi Johnson at Bumbershoot

Revolutionary dub poet Linton Kwesi Johnson (LKJ to his fans) made his first appearance in Seattle in 12 years at the Bumbershoot Arts Festival on Sunday, September 1^st. It was a puzzling show. On one hand, LKJ and his band, led by Dennis Bovell, were in top form, delivering tight, impassioned versions of his classic anti-racist works like “It Nah Funny” and “Fight Dem Back.” But strangely, this very articulate radical seemed unwilling to confront the mostly-white audience on any contemporary or immediate issues, from the high number of black suspects killed or injured in the custody of the Seattle Police Department to the implications of America’s response to 9/11 on the Third World.

Instead, LKJ stuck exclusively to familiar material from the late 1970s. This is classic stuff, to be sure – pointed, accusatory lyrics delivered in an angry monotone over sizzling dub and reggae grooves. In his introductions, LKJ provided detailed historical contexts for each piece, fuming in outrage at incidents that took place in Thatcherite England, lamenting forgotten martyrs now a quarter-century in the grave, describing in keen detail the social and political environment of his youthful rebellion. Only once did he attempt to bring the material into the present day, by noting the rise of European (though not American) right-wing parties before launching into "Fight Dem Back." Perhaps he was just content to allow the audience to draw its own conclusions about the continued relevance of the work – though such reserve seems very out of character for such a confrontational and self-conscious artist.

Whatever the intention, the effect of emphasizing the particulars to the exclusion of the more universal themes was to absolve the listeners of any complicity or responsibility for the kinds of injustices that the songs described. Instead of political poetry, the works became simply songs, or, worse yet, performances. And the righteous rage that would have incited Brixton crowds to riots in the early 80s was, for all intents and purposes, just part of the show. The crowd swayed and nodded, the (numerous) hippies smoked up and danced their curious steps to the “killer riddims,” comfortable in their safe distance from long-ago crimes in a far-away country, and unmoved to any action except perhaps some vague sympathy for victims of historical injustice.

Those less familiar with LKJ saw a good show; those who know his work saw a scrupulously-recreated facsimile of the original angry young black man (now not so young), as if preserved in amber from a 1978 Rock Against Racism event at the Hammersmith Palais. How odd, and sad, that such a principled and intelligent man who clearly has much to say about relevant cultural issues was, when provided a platform and a receptive audience, content to give what amounted to a black-face minstrel performance of 20-year old “greatest hits.”

Fri, 30 Aug 2002 18:34:29 GMT

A-Frames and Country Teasers Rock Industrial Coffee

The A-Frames have been around the Seattle scene for a while, both under their current name and their previous incarnation, Bend Sinister. Purveyors of noisy, minimalist punk rock with a distinctly paranoid feel, the A-Frames deliver hypnotic, oppressively repetitive anti-anthems in the manner of the Fall or Gang of Four. They just released a great album available on vinyl only. You can contact them at Dragnet Records and see if they have their album sleaves printed yet.

On Monday, August 26, they played a wonderful warm-up set for the Country Teasers, a British band just wrapping up a summer tour of the US. The venue was the cozy Industrial Coffee club in the bleak Georgetown section south of downtown Seattle. The Teasers - who also resemble the Fall in sensibility if not musical style - played a long, loping set that combined satisfyingly aggressive punk with acid-etched twang and hysterical between-song antics.