A quick stroll through the rapper-blog gantlet reveals a few things we already knew: Kanye West has been keeping up with his Dwell subscription and Prodigy’s latest prison blog for Vibe Magazine is just slathered in awesome. In this installment, we learn what really happened to the Sphinx! After the jump: ironic yuppie Dixie cups, cubist fish tanks and demonic owls.
From the time Run-DMC rapped about “My Adidas,” sneaker culture has been more in step with hip-hop than rock. And with Nike’s recent glow-in-the-dark Kanye West sneaker, the Air Yeezy, that connection is more prevalent than ever.
But rock fans need not feel left out, because today street fashion mecca Supreme over on Fairfax Avenue releases its limited-edition Vans Sk-8 HI tribute to punk gods Bad Brains.
Although it’s just another addition to Vans’ hokey “band shoes” category, we can only imagine how cool it would be to run around in these multicolored kicks, while paying homage to one of the greatest punk bands around. Of course you could also wait until May, when Converse drops its Kurt Cobain collection. But we hear people are already snickering at that marketing ploy. And you’re on your own if you buy the Liberace kicks.
–Camilo Smith
Photo courtesy Supreme
A travel advisory for emo kids everywhere: You might want to rethink that spring break in Mexico this year. The reason? Marauding hordes of crusty punks and metal heads are apparently taking to streets and pummeling anyone in sight with choppy bangs and red eyeliner. For almost a month now, mobs as large as 800 have been organizing via social-networking sites and hunting down emo kids in Mexico City, Queretaro and reportedly even more cities around the country. Why this is suddenly happening in a nation whose people’s affection for Morrissey is well-documented is unclear, and it’s striking to see fans of the current radio-dominating strain of alt-rock music in America as victims of widespread assaults. Daniel Hernandez is doing some great reporting at LA Weekly on this story, and he cites this anti-emo rant from Televisa host Kristoff as the flashpoint (with Kristoff’s choicest words coming at the :42 second mark). Mexican newspaper La Jornada goes as far as to say it’s a result of a social schism after the 2006 election tensions. There seems to be a nasty undercurrent of homophobia here, and Mexican gay-rights groups are organizing marches and meetings with local governments to quell the violence. Soundboard would never condone taste-based violence of any sort. That said, since when do Mexican riot police call Hare Krishnas for backup?– August Brown
Update: For a far more bemused take on the bruised and battered emos, read Ken Ellingwood from LA Times here.
Last week, Jack White threw down a glove and ushered the music industry onto what duelers call the field of honor. A press release announced that “Consolers of the Lonely,” the new release from the Raconteurs, White’s band with songwriting pal Brendan Benson, would be issued in all formats today.
The quick turnaround was designed “to get this record to fans, the press, radio, etc., all at the EXACT SAME TIME so that no one has an upper hand on anyone else regarding its availability, reception or perception.”
“The Raconteurs would rather this release not be defined by its first weeks sales, pre-release promotion, or by someone defining it FOR YOU before you get to hear it,” the statement continued.
Always a control freak, White seems to view music culture’s current anarchistic drift as both a bane and an opportunity. His enemy, the statement suggests, is anyone who engages in hype: bloggers, radio programmers, directors of Apple commercials, the publicists supposedly at his service and, of course, critics. He can’t stop every leak — “Consolers” was briefly available through iTunes on Friday, and Indie 103.1 played at least one cut Monday — but he can try to throw the machine.
Some writers (most eloquently, Jason Gross at PopMatters.com) have wondered if good criticism will get lost in the dismantling process. But what if players in the game of promoting and contextualizing music took White at his word? What if critics got off the release-date train and imagined new ways of approaching recorded music?
A few weeks ago, I interviewed Bad Religion founder Greg Graffin about his band’s recent string of L.A.-area dates. Bad Religion’s been through several commercial revivals, as wiseacre punks, as an unlikely radio act in the mid-’90s (”You and meee … have a diseeease …” ) and most recently as something approximating a hugely successful local band. They play large theaters and festivals and sell decently around the world, but to someone whose experience with rock radio is limited to KROQ, they must seem as big as Linkin Park. I always chalked it up as a Southern California thing, that the ’90s varietal of double-time skate punk that came to be called the “Epitaph Sound” put its claws in deep after the Offspring and never let up. All that grindable pavement, the year-long sunshine and the intraversible open space of L.A.’s mutant version of urbanity certainly helped.
Oscar week got off to an early start Wednesday night with a music-themed party honoring (we think) our beloved planet Earth. The 5th annual Global Green Pre-Oscar Party featured performances by Michelle Branch, Damien Rice, Oscar-nominated duo Glen Hansard and Marketa Irglova from “Once” and Michael Franti.
Branch’s performance proved the highlight of the evening, with a set heavy on new material, including “Long Goodbye,” her song with Dwight Yoakam from her forthcoming full-length. Branch, wearing a white silk dress, also offered up a nice rendition of Tom Petty’s “You Wreck Me” for the crowd, which seemed heavy on agents (or just guys who could afford the tickets) and their much younger dates. And Adrian Grenier was there too, lest you think only agents care about the environment.
Kyla Fairchild’s home in Seattle is a sanctum of the salvaged homespun: a brick Tudor furnished with thrift-store finds, from the comfy couches to the art on the walls to the kitchen stuff that helped this businesswoman, mom and community connector host frequent parties over Pabst Blue Ribbon and backyard barbecue. Fairchild’s sensibility extends to Hattie’s Hat, the Ballard neighborhood bar she and her husband, Ron, helped save from the yuppie invasions that offed most of the working-class Pacific Northwest’s leisure landmarks. At Hattie’s, the bartenders all play in bands, but a fisherman can still feel comfortable. City council members throw fundraisers there.
I bring up these real spaces touched by my friend Kyla, because a virtual space she helped build is about to endure major downsizing. No Depression, the magazine for which Fairchild served as publisher, is fading from print to ether. For 13 years, that journal was the major organ of Americana music – a.k.a. alt-country, or (after the magazine, in fact) No Depression. Its name was thrifted from an Internet mailing list, which had recycled it from an Uncle Tupelo album title, which came from a Carter Family song. The community No Depression repped believes that things are better when they’ve been lived in awhile.
Magazines come and go, but this one’s demise is hitting some particularly hard, even though the memo announcing it suggests we should have seen it coming. In the last decade, Fairchild and editors Grant Alden and Peter Blackstock have seen their beloved music go from obscure to cool to relatively obscure again. The Americana scene’s traditionalist bent made it an unlikely flavor of the month. These days, pop’s interest in tradition takes a more urbane form, in the music of Amy Winehouse, Sharon Jones and other retro-soul champions, or the disco faux-stalgia of bands such as MGMT.
Today’s retro-ism has one big plus: It’s more interracial, based in black-defined dance music instead of white-dominated strum and twang. It’s also very stylish. But No Depression (the magazine and the movement) has some great qualities of its own, which just aren’t made for these rapid-file sharing times.
It’s a slow read, for one thing. An issue of No Depression demands focus, not only because its features tend to be long, but also because its writers focus on the craft side of creativity, rather than chasing scandal or trends. It follows artists throughout their careers, even when they didn’t have much commercial pull. Compared to the declarative neon of instant-judgment criticism or the true lies of celebrity profiling, No Depression is actually pretty boring. It’s homemade and whole grain. Same with the music it upholds.
The diminishment of No Depression (it will remain alive, somehow, on the Internet) is a business story, but it’s a cultural one too. We’re living in a time of accelerated change, and most pop consumers seem happy to embrace it. Today’s ruling aesthetic is shiny, quick and fairly low-rent. Thrifting is out; Target is in. But the homespun always makes a comeback. No Depression may lie fallow for a while, but we’ll hear from Fairchild and her friends again.
– Ann Powers
Last night, In Style magazine and the Recording Academy celebrated musicians-turned-designers such as Beyonce, Jay-Z, Jessica Simpson and Justin Timberlake. Of course, none of them were actually there, but models with jutting hip bones showed off their wares in a quick fashion show united by a love of Skittles- colored tights and extroverted pop attitude. There was free champagne. Rihanna, in red glassy lips and her latest hairstyle (will it give rise to the tiny backhawk?), closed the show with a flawlessly confidant performance, one that made it hard to believe she’s only 19. But did I mention there was free champagne?
A friend of mine recently sent me a link to this video, saying that this is one of the hotter tracks in Sao Paulo clubs these days. Now, I don’t speak Portuguese and I have no idea what Mc Creu is talking about in this song, but I have a pretty good idea after watching the video (especially when it comes to the not-so-subtle confetti shot around 2:30). Sure, Americans may own air guitar, but it looks like no one can touch the Brazilians when it comes to “air humping” with control and rhythm. Not sure what to make of the repetitive jaw harp sample, however.– Charlie Amter
If you need any proof of the lockstepping ways of today’s music critics, just check out the top of Idolator’s Pop 07 poll and compare it to Pazz & Jop at the Village Voice, the old dinosaur Idolator’s poll was designed to defeat — or at least challenge — in its inaugural edition last year, when they called it Jackin’ Pop. If you hadn’t been told who was the flashy young upstart and who was the venerable old coot, could you tell the difference?
Idolator Pop 07 Album Top 10 (surveyed from 452 critics/voters):
1. LCD Soundsystem — Sound of Silver
2. M.I.A. — Kala
3. Radiohead — In Rainbows
4. Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
5. Amy Winehouse — Back to Black
6. Spoon — Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
7. The National — Boxer
8. Kanye West — Graduation
9. Panda Bear — Person Pitch
10. Of Montreal — Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?
Pazz & Jop Album Top Ten (surveyed from 577 critics/voters):
1. LCD Soundsystem — Sounds of Silver
2. Radiohead — In Rainbows
3. M.I.A. — Kala
4. Amy Winehouse — Back to Black
5. Arcade Fire — Neon Bible
6. Kanye West — Graduation
7. Spoon — Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
8. Robert Plant and Alison Krauss — Raising Sand
9. Bruce Springsteen — Magic
10. The National — Boxer
Only the bottom of the top 10 gives a little hint at Idolator’s younger crowd. I started to do some math regarding the finer points of the two polls, but I hate math so I’m happy to report that someone did it for me. It’ll likely hurt your brain, following along with all this parsing and delineating. I recommend stepping away from your computer after three minutes of analysis and then staring out the window nearest you, which with hope will show at least one scrap of nature.
–Margaret Wappler
Photo: LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy, the undisputed king? Credit: Robert Lachman/Los Angeles Times
