Recently I stumbled across this article in Rolling Stone, in which the author makes a passing comment comparing the band Fountains of Wayne and the NPR radio show This American Life. It blew my mind.
One of my favorite bands of all time is Fountains of Wayne. They are best known for their Mrs. Robinson-esque hit, Stacy’s Mom (”Stacy’s Mom has got it goin’ on”), which (ironically because it was off of their 3rd album) earned them a nomination for Best New Artist at the Grammy’s. FOW achieves this high status on my list of great music because they pair storytelling with kick-ass pop melodies. They are one of the forerunners of modern-day power pop. Like the Beatles, they try to take on as many different genres as possible within an album, and are able to transition from rock n’ roll to country to lullaby like nobody’s business. Their songs about events that outwardly seem inconsequential turn into gorgeous snippets of everyday life. Adam Schlesinger, the bass player and one of the main contributors to the songwriting of the group, has also penned songs for movies like Music and Lyrics and That Thing You Do!. The overlying factor of their brilliance, however, is really that their music places a simple narrative story about everyday life in the context of an upbeat pop song.This American Life, Ira Glass’ radio show and new series on Showtime of growing popularity, also does this with varying levels of success. In their best episodes, all of which can be found here, Ira Glass and his team tell great, captivating stories that keep you interested for an entire hour. Music, interviews, and personal storytelling is shown at its best on this radio show. At a time when entertainment is quickly moving towards fast-paced images and movies that place more emphasis on shock than literary value, it is really refreshing to have a show - on the radio - that tells extraordinary stories about people without being too flashy or contrived. The show easily moves from humor to sadness to political commentary, in the same way that Fountains of Wayne is able to transition between these different emotional elements within an album or song.
However, for some reason, before the Rolling Stone reporter made that offhand comparison between Fountains of Wayne’s new cohesive album Traffic and Weather and an episode of This American Life, the thought never entered my mind that two of my favorite things to listen to would be related by the affinity of telling a good story.

So tell me what you want, what you really really want,
I’ll tell you what I want, what I really really want,
I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna, I wanna really
really really want you to stop making music!

It’s 2007 (almost 2008) now and what do we need more of? Spice Girls, of course! Really? Apparently. After taking their own advice - “friendship never ends” - and returning to the music scene earlier this summer with their reunion tour (tickets sold like hot cakes), the dysfunctional five have even more good news for us: a new single is on its way!

According to Geri Halliwell, also known as Ginger Spice (which you definitely won’t find next to the paprika in my cupboard), the new single is a “big love song” and a “Spice Girls classic.” Titled Headlines (Friendship Never Ends), the track will be released on November 12 as the first single from their upcoming 15-track Greatest Hits album, which will be released in the United States on November 6.

I know the seven year Spice Girl hiatus has been heart-wrenching for all of us. I’ll try to provide a half-decent review of the single once it hits the shelves.
Until then…
You know it’s time to say goodbye (no no no no)
and don’t forget you can rely

Link: BBC News

PS: To any Bandwidth readers with Last.fm accounts, please don’t hesistate to befriend me!

	Ozma
	Eponine

BORIS IS COMING!!! BORIS IS COMING!!!

I’ve already seen them twice but I still can’t hold back my excitement. Like the post title says, this is just a reminder. Check back next week for the review. Any details you need can be found at the Echo’s website.

A couple fridays ago, I attended the DJ Spooky Visions and Voices event at Ground Zero, primarily for a musical analysis assignment in one of my courses. Unfortunately, the event turned out to be more of a lecture than performance, but it sparked some interesting philosophical questions. DJ Spooky was clearly a very intelligent and educated individual, but I found myself disagreeing with some of his perspectives on art and ownership.Before continuing, I recognize that not everyone can DJ. Finding the right samples to mix together into a compelling track isn’t a simple craft. And it can be impressive to hear two songs that, while seeming completely incompatible with each other in their original form, end up combined in an engaging, sonic latticework that makes you wonder: “How did he think of using those together?” And with an easier access to the world’s music, globalization has opened up even more possibilities for DJs.

That said, being a DJ seems to have artistic limitations in terms of self-reliance, in that most his work is usually, albeit complex, an amalgamation of original creations by other musicians. The DJ, then, to paraphrase DJ spooky, acts like “a filter.” Various works come through him and are uniquely filtered to form a mix. But he also consistently referred to himself as an artist, and I guess where Spooky and I differ is in the degree of innovative artistry involved in being this “filter.” For me, unless a DJ uses mostly his own material, it is a preponderance of external sampling that compromises a DJ’s artistic independency. And this is because I believe art is significantly qualified by it being exclusive to its creator. If Bach had never existed, would another composer have come along and written the Well-Tempered Clavier, note for note? You’d sooner see Jessica Alba act well. One could argue, of course, that with all the variables a DJ works with when sampling and mixing a track together, his final product is his creative brain-child; the artistic lens of his filtering is exclusively his. To an extent, I would agree, but without those other innovations that lens would have nothing, or very little, to work with. Going back to the Bach example, if a DJ has sampled Bach in his works, then deleting Bach’s music from history would critically fracture that DJ’s music as well. Yes, in general, musicians are inspired by other musicians, and are therefore subject to some artistic dependence as well, but this relationship usually serves (if one isn’t a flagrant plagiarist) as a creative motivator, a catalyst. Original recordings may inspire a DJ as well, but it’s also the medium they work with. Rather than carve a new sound sculpture, they segment and combine pre-existing ones, however interesting that may be. I’m not saying that DJ’s are rip-off craftsmen masquerading as artists, but after listening to DJ Spooky I wonder if some DJs may be giving themselves too much credit.

What’s peculiar is that DJ Spooky seemed to uphold a rather socialistic approach to music, in that it’s more “of an exchange between people” than a stable item. In my opinion, this is rather inconsistent with labeling oneself as an artist, especially an independent one. I don’t disagree that there’s dynamism to pre-existing compositions, whether it be in interpretation, transcription, covers, etc. But there are also immutable characteristics that make “Bohemian Rhapsody” what it is: “Bohemian Rhapsody.” And I don’t recall DJ Spooky ever explicitly calling himself any kind of visionary or innovator (in fact, for the most part he was pretty humble), but it seems hypocritical to suggest individualism by planting your stage name on your oeuvre and then suggest collectivism by asking, as he did when referring to copyright law and the transfer of digital memory, “who owns memory?”

If one is to embrace both this perspective of personal “filtering” and no concept of intellectual property, can’t I just edit the tags on my iTunes library to say they’re my own? Unfortunately, this has already happened to some degree with common P2P file sharing programs like Kazaa or Limewire. Tracks are frequently labeled with the wrong information, and become shared so rapidly that the genuine data might be in the minority. Would we really want this to exacerbate to a point of complete musical solipsism? DJ Spooky said in the Q & A that copyright laws “stifle creativity,” which is very understandable if you embrace his philosophy. But, while I don’t at all advocate a totalitarian control of intellectual property, I think copyright laws give musicians some dignity for their creations. I may even go far enough to say that they can be helpful reminders of how special music is.