Tynan's Anger

Arts & Culture Commentary from a Loving Digital Skeptic

Alternate Headline: New York’s Most Finely Polished Turd Loses Its Luster

Posted on | September 2, 2010 | No Comments

Quick question: Is Gossip a good thing or a band thing?

Outside of a few media moguls, yellow newspapermen, daytime talk show hosts and their wannabes, the answer will be “no,” no matter who you ask. In most people’s day to day life, they don’t like being gossipped about whether or not the gossip bounty on your head happens to be north of five figures. Moreso, most half-decent people try to cut down on the gossip they engage in, whether they’re a “Good Christian” or a well-worn Brooklyn hipster sick of their friends being douchebags.

That’s what I thought when I read Foster Kamer and Joe Coscarelli’s requiem for the “golden days” of Walter Winchell, Page Six, and Liz Smith. Kamer, who’s a great writer and one of the better talents Gawker’s had in its post-Awl generation, is still just 25, and given his success in New York’s gossip industry, and his lack of naievete about what it would take, have made him a good writer and the perfect person to write the article he wrote for the Village Voice (where I have freelanced). The problem is the flaws in Kamer’s entire premise: that being in a power to ruin someone’s career at the drop of a pen on notebook paper, the ability to thoroughly vet whether or not Celebrity/Politician X is having secret S & M parties with Celebrity/Politician Y, and the fringe benefits of being in that position of power, are not good things for individuals, society, or anyone other than the one wielding that power at that particular moment in time. And yet still, thousands flock to New York each year to try to obtain a 1-1,000 chance of effectively obtaining that stink bomb, thinking that being that kind of jerk is something to aspire to.

See: Burt Lancaster’s monstrous, Winchell-esque J.J. Hunsecker in Sweet Smell of Success, who Kamer idolizes somewhat in his Village Voice feature. See also: John Hamm’s Don Draper in Mad Men, the dreamy, hard-drinking, slick New York ad exec from 1962 who ruins the lives of multiple good-enough people (and some bad ones), treats everyone around him like meat, still can’t get over his daddy issues, and is the envy of every New York media personality in 2010 (both as wanting to be him and, however implicity, wanting him).

I’m not knocking Kamer’ himself, his piece, or his career goals; he’s more accomplished and relevant than I am, and I’ve enjoyed his work bringing people who are theoretically and practically much more important than him down to size. But as a 25 year old just a few years removed from leaving the school where Sarah Palin got her degree, he’s got a lot to learn about being a good New Yorker. If nothing else, I do have almost two decades worth of experience as a New Yorker over him, and there comes a point as a New Yorker, be it 10, 15, or 20 years down the road, when you realize that behind all the asshole window dressing that New Yorkers embellish, kindness (also known as simply not being a douchebag), wins out (see: Greenberg, kinda.) Yes, there will always be bigger douches to fry: Kamer’s not the first person to lose millions insulting James Dolan, however obliquely, but that’s not an excuse to live a lifestyle (or make a career) of doing so.

In or out of context, the gleeful tone Kamer takes when writing the following graph makes sense in New York media circles, but sounds horrific just about anywhere else:

In 2008, Vanessa Grigoriadis, a reporter for New York magazine, wrote a profile of Gawker, daring to question the necessity of Page Six and calling them “emasculated.” The column responded all but threatening to rape her. The males on staff of Page Six would “take her somplace private and disprove her theory,” but, “lucky” for Grigoriadis, they, at that time, did not “like a woman with a mustache.” It might be worth noting that Grigoriadis, in a previous article on Page Six, called [Pager Six Columnist Richard Johnson] “movie-star handsome.”

How Draper-esque.

Look, the point is not whether the quality of fact-checking and sources makes a gossip columnist more or less robust. Nor is it, as Alex Williams sand-throwing feature on Kamer and others in the New York Times Style Section, about the fact that “the lines between ‘reporter’ and ‘blogger,’ ‘gossip’ and ‘news’ have blurred almost beyond distinction.” The issue is, as with every person in the world (and especially New York) whether you are a gossip who looks for reasons to dismiss people for their shortcomings, or a person who judges people by their strengths, geniality, and accomplishments, (see: 39-year-old Liz Lemon on Season 4 of 30 Rock.)

Ironically, as I started to write this, Kamer was publishing a post on “Fox News” vs. Hipsters” with a conclusion that’s pretty much the along the same lines, but still aligning himself with hipsters in an “us vs. them” mold. But the reality is that hipsters and the aspiring NYC media types who make them can be no less full of hate speech than Fox Newsers (there was even a popular but short-lived hipster column named after it). The hipsters from previous generations who based their lives on hate speech tend to end up on Fox News now, and I doubt that pattern is anything new beyond the particular media in question. As far as gossip-mongers not practicing what they preach, Kamer has just committed a small-scale Maureen Dowd-ism, something that his lack of naivete should clue him in on. More to the point: it’s nice not to be naive; the vast majority of people are naive, and yet no one in the gossip business can ever be. But if your career is based on polishing a turd, it’s not going to be substantial, and while it may be true that the turd-polishing industry in NYC has declined from where it was 30 years ago, it’s only because the money for preservatives has dried up with the recession.

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: > > > > > > >

Bloomington – I Think I’m Gonna Like It Here

Posted on | August 22, 2010 | No Comments

fuck grizzly bear graffiti

Bloomington's music-minded seem to be echoing my thoughts

Out of the many good omens that have come out of my most recent-move, this graffito is both the most satisfying and the only one I can’t explain to my parents. Given the hell I raised among my New York/Brooklyn friends along these lines, it’s nice to know that upon my return to middle America, where the juggalo roam and basketball is not an ironic passion, the kids outside the record stores are thinking similarly.

I’m not sure how long I can keep this up, but I’m thinking awhile. I’ve just started to pick up a bike once again, I’m living in a non-crappy apartment that doesn’t also occupy my parents for the first time in my life, and I still get to drink lots of beer, go to concerts, play video games, talk sports, go to comedy shows, eat at healthy and non-healthy restaurants and minimize my unethical shopping with the same stringency I did in New York.

Until then, I’m gonna enjoy the thinking that comes from not being told what to like. I don’t want to get too ahead of myself, but by guess is that Bloomington, Indiana will not feature the same kind ofsocial climbing for the sake of social climbing as my home town. If it does, well, that’s something to think about.

Enhanced by Zemanta
Category: Uncategorized
Tags: > > > > > > >

Oh Boy, I’m In Print! Talking About Marnie Stern, Marissa Pasternoster, Cathy Santonies in Venus Zine

Posted on | August 14, 2010 | No Comments

Say this for Navin Johnson, he made his print debut on page 73. On page 79 of the Fall Issue of Venus Zine, you’ll fine a piece by me, the first thing I’ve written that’s been printed in a non-college newspaper since I tried/decided to make this a career.

Yes, that is me, a straight dude, writing *that piece* on female guitarists, You know, the one that gets mentioned in every interview with Marnie Stern/Screaming Females/Kaki King/Heart etc? Well, the subject in general is broached here, with kind words, case-by-case evaluations, and invoking the “so you’re a lady who plays guitar; what’s that like?” style of questioning as little as humanly possible. Since the article was submitted, Marnie Stern announced her new album (self-titled) with a track titled “Female Guitarists Are The New Black” (would that make these guys the Beastie Boys? MAYBE):

But pick up this month’s issue of Venus Zine, as it may be the most prominent feature I’ve ever published (even if it’s in the back). I’d like to think it doesn’t suck, either. In order to quell my misgivings, I’ve complied a rather ludicrous (but accurately) titled playlist on MOG.com that runs through some of my favorite tracks on this subject matter.

Link forthcoming.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
Category: Uncategorized

Towards A Precise Definition Of “Hipster”

Posted on | August 12, 2010 | 3 Comments

ATTN: MUSIC BLOGOSPHERE. The next time someone mentions that the term “hipster” is meaningless, doesn’t exist, is a social construct, etc., etc, please refer them to this blog post. It’ll save you the time and energy.

What do we think of when we think of a beatnik?
beatnik dreawing
What do we think of when we think of a hippie?
hippie

What do we think of when we think of a punk?
punks

What do we think of when we think of a yuppie?
yuppie

These are all very clear concepts, even if their application to actual human beings in the 50s, 60s, 70s, and 80s/90s was rather flexible and indeterminate. People went in and out of phases (or as conservatives love to say, fads), never being purely classified as a pure hippie, pure punk, or pure yuppie for their entire lives (mostly), but a legitimate community of these types did exist, and the term applied loosely but accurately to actual people.

All of these terms were specific variations of their times that fit under the blanket term “hipster.” “Hipster” was a term coined by Norman Mailer in The White Negro, and it refers to the subculture of the educated, art-minded, young urbanites that resented and fought against the mainstream trends of its era, many of which were established by previous generations of hipsters. Hipster is a distinctly post-war American variation of the well established concepts of “bohemian” “bourgeois” “squatters” and “artist colony,” and in his definition, Mailer referred to the tendency of young, white, arty college graduates adapting black culture as a radical slap to the face of the establishment during the civil rights movement.

Each of the generations of hipsters listed had their distinct ideology: the hippies were a mix of peace and love that turned to violence when drafted, punks were a nihilistic, borderline anarchistic response to a world that had lost its innocence after Watergate/Vietnam, yuppies were responding to the rebellious identities of their parents by gentrification and business savvy with alternative culture thinking. Again, these are all generalizations that when applied to an individual person from that era, or even a group of people, don’t necessarily hold up. Nonetheless, as a national, broad, sweeping trend, the terms no doubt have resonance.

The term “hipster” as we use it today features the same resume and place in society as previous generations: Liberal arts college graduates, exposed to the most radical ideologies of their era, resenting the older, power-wielding generations, and focused more on art rather than immediate political goals (though it’s arguable that hipsters were one of the driving forces that elected Barack Obama.) The modern use of the term hipster probably originated from 2003′s The Hipster Handbook, and was promulgated around that time by Vice Magazine.

Once Mailer’s hipsters entered the mainstream, so did the commodification, appropriation, and condescension of black culture with rock and roll, rebellious advertising, and post-Civil Rights Act racial politics. While this continued through the 70s and 80s, it didn’t rear its uglier side until the culture wars took on political correctness in the mid 1990s. Most likely, the reason the term hipster has taken off in the ’00s is because of the fear of the of generalization and condescension that had been an integral part of hipsterdom up to that point. Furthermore, the hipster class is unprecedentedly diverse: it’s still predominantly white, but affirmative action in liberal arts schools and the boom in Asian and Hispanic populations have led to a much less uniformly. Look no further than the debates about “bipsters” and TV on The Radio, metrosexuality as a hipster appropriation of gay culture, films like Harold and Kumar and Better Luck Tomorrow, and the stand-up of Aziz Ansari and Donald Glover, to show the ethnic variations of hipster culture. In reality, the hipsters of today reflect the demographics of contemporary liberal arts colleges: unprecedentedly diverse, though still with a long way to go, and despite a heavy emphasis on financial aid and geographic diversity, still disproportionately from wealthy backgrounds.

In fact, the blanket use of the term “hipster” is really a convenient method of defining a group of people who reject being labeled in essentialist terms. The only consistent characteristic of contemporary hipsters is a refusal to be defined as such, though that is certainly not the only defining characteristic. Fashion, music, and artistic trends change so frequently thanks to the internet that it is hard to keep up with the changes in hipster fashion, though certain brands (American Apparel), music authorities (Pitchfork.com), film auteurs (Zach Braff, Wes Anderson, Noah Baumbach) stay relatively consistent in their influence (and simultaneous resentment).

The upside of the blanket contemporary use of the term hipster is that it helps avoid anger, resentment, and in-fighting due to a refusal to be labeled (if you think the internet noise over the term is bad now imagine if the term hipster didn’t exist.) The downside of the blanket use is that it prevents any coherent, transcendent ideas and cultural attitudes to come out of the hipster class except for the confusion, with the anger of previous generations muted rather than removed.

Depending on how you view things, this can be seen a great way to keep diverse opinions flowing and create a wide array of artistic and cultural attitudes. Alternatively, it can be seen as a convenient method of the powers that be to have the younger generations squabble amongst each other and let the military-industrial complex proceed unchecked by the demographic that’s traditionally fought against it. The breakdown of the music industry, another by-product of the internet and legitimately of a desire to “stick it” to a corrupt industry, has helped this confusion along, and the literary and print world is no less starved (though film, television, comedy and art worlds, all things considered, have done rather well, while theater has remained in dire straits as always).

One thing’s for sure: 20 years from now, when your kids see this image:

hipster

They won’t be thinking of an arbitrary social construct; they’ll think “hipster.”

Category: Uncategorized
Tags: > > > > > > > > > > > >

Why Pavement’s Music Doesn’t Matter Anymore

Posted on | July 27, 2010 | 5 Comments

Big Ones of Alternative Rock vol. 1
Image via Wikipedia

DISCLAIMER: Here are the reasons I don’t dislike Pavement:

1) Their music is fairly good.

2) I understand why they mattered so much in the early-to-mid 90s.

3) I like other independent label bands from that era that I wasn’t there to “get” either.

Here are the reasons why Pavement infuriates me:

1) They’re music is not as good as the preposterous fawning of a certain generation of critics would have you believe. Compare these certain favorite Pavement tracks to similar tracks of their era:
Pavement – Summer Babe (1992)

Nirvana – Sappy (1993)

Pavement – Conduit for Sale! (1992)

The Fall – Spoilt Victorian Child (1985)

Pavement – Zurich Is Stained (1992)

Blur – For Tomorrow (1993)

Pavement – Two States (1992)

The Fall – Who Makes The Nazis? (1992)

Pavement – Cut Your Hair (1994)

Presidents of The United States of America – Peaches (1996)

Pavement – Unfair (1994)

Soundgarden – Superunknown (1994)

Pavement – Fight This Generation (1995)

Radiohead – Paranoid Android (1997)

Pavement – Shady Lane (1997)

Mclusky – Alan is a Cowboy Killer (2002)

Keeping in mind thatall of these songs were iconic songs of the 90s by Pavement. I started with those before finding parallels. All the songs that are listed below them are contemporary, similarly-themed, musically, lyrically, and culturally. With the exception of The Fall tracks (which explicitly influenced Pavement) and the Mclusky track (a not-so-implicit response to Pavement’s increasing British influence from a band that known describe their own songs as “too Pavement-y”), all of the tracks were the product of major label bands that had much larger followings and less universal critical plaudits than Pavement (in some cases, outright ignorance). Yet all of them pretty much mop the floor with their Pavement equivalents. Personally, “Unfair” is my favorite Pavement track. I like “Superunknown” a lot more than “Unfair.” And the title track of Superunknown is at best my fifth favorite song from that album.

Nonetheless, if you were an indie kid, or something a purist in the early ’90s, burnt out by the overwhelming mainstream attention given to your community, Pavement’s emergence in the 90s as the “alternative” to alternative rock was a godsend. The recent Pavement best-of released by Matador (the dominant indie label of the last 20 years that Pavement helped put on the map) was clearly intentioned to introduce the band to a new generation. That means it features fewer tracks from Slanted & Enchanted (which says a lot about that album’s “importance” versus its greatness), more from Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain (the album that holds up best musically), and a bunch of highlights from the remainder of their catalog. The music is solid, but not exceptional, and in the context of the vast diversity of other music that has gone on before and since (including bands that loved Pavement and cited them as inspirations), it’s iconic status as one of the most fiercely independent bands came at the cost of the music being, in the words of an exceptional punk band, good, not great. In the ’90s, Pavement was one of the more prominent subculture links to a sub-genre of a particular style, so if you cared especially about that subculture or sub-genre, and less so about culture at large, they were godsends. But if you were just starting to discover music sometime 5-10 years following Pavement’s demise in 1999, the 10 year difference between Hex Enduction Hour and Slanted And Enchanted may as well be the difference between the New Testament and David Foster Wallace.

Other than the musical reasons for Pavement’s appeal in the early ’90s, there was another obvious cultural factor that has led to Pavement’s continued appeal in the indie music “community”:

Stephen Malkmus Pavement

Stephen Malkmus is cute. He in fact, may epitomize the look of the “cute indie boy” for an entire generation. He was in fewer photos than fellow cute alt-rocker Kurt Cobain, and thus his cuteness to girls wasn’t as well-documented in the mainstream press. But his appeal to girls burnt out by meathead metal fans and frat boys was no doubt an obvious draw for guys to like the band, even if their intentions were no purer than those meathead metal/frat guys. On the other hand, if the exact same songs came from guys who looked like this, guys would be interested but girls less so:

Mark E. Smith of The Fall

Mark E. Smith of The Fall

D Boon Minutemen

D Boon of The Minutemen

Dave Yow

Dave Yow of The Jesus Lizard

These are three musicians who are, to put it nicely, less cute than Stephen Malkmus, though no less beloved in the early 90s by the same dudes who loved Pavement. Girls would never like to look at these guys as much as they would Malkmus, which means that it is easier to bring girls to see Pavement shows and still come off as sensitive. But the dudes who saw Pavement would just as quickly see this:

At Pitchfork Music Festival 2009, which I attended and covered in no small part because of The Jesus Lizard’s presence, a five-year-old daughter of a fan, too young to understand the context of “get ‘er out of the trunk” but not too young to have good sense of music, was  dancing to this song on an amp. So don’t tell me the organizers of Pitchfork Fest 2010 have had a sudden change in sensitivity over the past year. In reality, the susceptibility of girls fed up with frat types to faux-sensitive hipsters young and old, in many ways also epitomized by Pavement, has been routinely lambasted in books, comedy, television and songs by musicians in the same camp as Pavement (such as the Mclusky one up there, and the most famous song Henry Rollins ever recorded). In that sense, you can see the cultural influence of Pavement on Interpol, Sufjan Stevens, Animal Collective, Grizzly Bear, Dirty Projectors, Neon Indian, The Liars, Phoenix, Girls…suffice to say, it’s a much uglier side of Pavement’s influence that has little to do with music.

So that’s the legacy of Pavement: being an “alternative to an alternative” that no longer exists, the creator of a few good songs that are now much easier to compare to better ones,  allowing willfully crude recordings to be considered finished products for reasons other than originally intended, and a textbook formula easily manipulating girls in hipstervilles across the USA. If you were in your 20s in the early-to-mid ’90s and Pavement was your first exposure to these kinda songs—or if you were an older rock fan during this time who saw the contradictions of “mainstream alternative”—you get an automatic pass if you like the band (the demographic, mind you, is the one to which rock critics drastically skew circa 2010). But for every other demographic, liking the band is more often than not a product of being “told what to like,” (Keeping in mind that those two demographics apply particularly strongly to present music tastemakers.) But that’s still not a particularly encouraging sign for Pavement’s legacy in the long term, let alone the present.

Related articles by Zemanta
Enhanced by Zemanta
Category: Uncategorized
Tags: > > > > > > > > > > > > > > >