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.

**For the sake of this post, I am including McLusky as a previous form of Future of the Left because of their similar band members and similar stylings. They are not, however, the same band**

I don’t know quite what to call Future of the Left, genre-wise. Perhaps FotL is one of the main reasons I really hate categorizing bands. They just don’t seem to fit anywhere. They’re most notorious for their abrasive, 2-minute, shout-alongs. But then again, my favorite tracks are the 6-minute lullabies which include various “movements” throughout. They were never famous (not even by indie standards) outside of their hometown of Cardiff, Whales but anyone who has heard one of their songs has no doubt been caught by the bizarre vocal delivery of singer/guitarist Andy “Falco” Falkous. Not only is his delivery unique, but his lyrics are also confusing, if not nonsensical. So why does their music appeal to me? Simply put: no one else is doing anything as creative of Future of the Left in the rock vein.

The 3-piece act have recently released their first full-length under a new name Future of the Left after switching bass players and dropping the name McLusky. Superficially the two bands sound almost the same. The back-up vocals are the main difference, obviously. If this is your first time hearing of the band don’t shy away from picking up their release, “Curses”. However, it would almost be mandatory research for the active music fan to get their hands on all of the McLusky releases plus the 3-disc bootleg/rarity fittingly called McLuskyism.

I won’t list my favorite tracks because it is sort of an unwritten rule that every Falco follower must have their own and I don’t want you adopting mine. And as far as a live show goes…

… and I guess I’ll call them “bar rock”.

Contemporary hip-hop’s emphasis on sampling has its share of pitfalls (see: P. Diddy) but occasionally makes the old and forgotten seem wonderfully new and urgent. And given Kanye West’s eclectic musical tastes, it’s not surprising that a bunch of unexpected and esoteric samples pop up on his most recent effort, Graduation.

West’s “Champion,” in particular, anchors its hook on a triumphant-sounding lyric from Steely Dan’s “Kid Charlemagne,” a single from their 1976 effort The Royal Scam It’s there because it includes the word “champion” and is generally illustrative of West’s declarations of his own musical prowess.

But in cribbing some lines from a pair of the most notoriously oblique lyricists in American pop music, I believe, West is doing more than creating a record that builds his appeal amongst the hipster set. He’s created his own Royal Scam, an album for the dancefloor that also reflects a certain amount of cultural malaise. It’s not difficult to trace the lineage of West’s darker, more spastic narratives back to the arch sarcasm of Steely Dan (”Drunk and Hot Girls” certainly owes a little something to the Dan’s irrationally exuberant ode to safe sex in the ’70s, “The Fez”).

Even if Kanye is all about cultivating a certain image, popularizing Venetian-blind sunglasses and appearing onstage with Peter Bjorn and John, his consciousness of his own place in the pop culture spectrum is enough to turn nearly anything he does into a riff on the bling-and-booty excess of mainstream hip-hop. Is Kayne the next Walter Becker or Donald Fagen? If his music continues to resonate with the current gangsta-weary, ironic zeitgeist, it might not be as odd as it sounds.

When I first discovered and got into the genre 4 years ago, I thought Powerpop had more or less been dead for 10-15 years. I bought and downloaded every compilation I could find: the D.I.Y. series, the Children of Nuggets 4-disc set, anything that included “Yellow Pills” in its title, etc… There were plenty of compilations to find if you looked hard enough. And there was a reason why the sound quality sounded so poor: Everything was recorded in the 70s and 80s. Every now and then I’d discover a song from the early 90s, but generally I couldn’t find anything substantial “powerpop” later than 1993. What happened to this once magical genre?

The Records, 20/20, Badfinger, Cheap Trick, The Motors, The Bats, the dB’s, etc…

Their sound was seemingly terminated somewhere in the late 80s…

Rather than continue on about my frustrations… I’ll get to the point. Powerpop got lost amid the punk movement and the MTV generation. Much of early punk was an outlash almost directly at the suburban spheres where Powerpop bands flourished. The two hated each other. Neither got much public attention and skinny guys in skinny ties were easy targets for the punks. Where does MTV fit in? I was a tyke when it started up in the 80s, but anyone from that era can tell you the music they featured was mainstream and still is. They weren’t revolutionary because they featured music videos from underground bands, they were revolutionary because they played music videos (I’ll give them credit for championing pseudo/post-powerpop bands, however. Read up and R.E.M., if you are interested).

There’s no clear boundary in my mind it was more or less a gradual decrease in the number of bands cranking out jangly guitar-licks and straightforward lyrics about girls they are hopelessly in love with. The day came sometime last summer. I moved back to my hometown for 3 months to wash dished at a local restaurant and enjoy the scenery and culture of the Deep South. I think it was a dream I had or a hallucination… whatever it was it finally made all the elements crystal clear to me.

Theory: Powerpop from the 70s/80s never fully died out. It simply became gradually less accessible to the public therefore limiting expose to the thousands of teens that form bands everyday and emulate their favorite groups.

It’s not a nobel-winning theory, but I think it works. I realized this after coming across bands like Gentleman Jesse and His Men, Cause Co-motion, True Love, and The Nice Boys. All contemporary groups with sounds straight out of the late 70s. But why all of a sudden are they popping their heads up? Why not in 1995? Why not in 2000? It’s my belief that downloading, blogs, and music forums have all enabled a new generation of impressionable teens to stumble across the genre that would have otherwise been forgotten. I mean… how did I find out about the genre? I read a thread about it on a music forum. Thank technology for allowing the cycle to continue.

The Nice Boys - Johnny Guitar

Cheap and quick - it’s how all of us expect to get our music delivered nowadays. Internet megasite Amazon.com has released their new service, AmazonMP3 to meet our expectations. Rivaling other services like iTunes, Rhapsody, and Napster, AmazonMP3 aims to provide a plethora of music downloads for relatively low prices. With currently over 2 million songs, there is surely something to please everyone.

What’s the difference between this and iTunes? Not everybody has an iPod, and therefore not everybody uses iTunes. The great thing about AmazonMP3 is that it provides DRM-free files that can be played in any media player and on any media device. Also, like other services, AmazonMP3 provides all the necessities - 30 second samples for each song, embedded album art, and high quality sounds. The best part, however, is the difference in price. Here is a chart comparing it to iTunes and Napster:

What’s the catch? There isn’t really a catch per se, but the service does require you to download the Amazon MP3 Downloader software onto your computer. Fortunately, this is a quick and painless process. You simply choose your artist and song, pay for it using your Amazon account, and the download automatically begins in the MP3 Downloader. High download speeds will get you your music before you know it.

Happy downloading!
Link: AmazonMP3.com

	Atreyu
	Our Sick Story

As a place known for its crabs (yum), murder rate (1 every 29 hours), and football (we don’t talk about the O’s when they suck), BALTIMORE sure has a weird music scene. Imagine a city sprawled out on a harbor full of east coast history and urban decay.

The ingredients:

2 cups Prep
3 pints Gangster
1 tbs. Suburbia
4 oz. Business
1/2 cup Homeless
1 Dash of Old Bay
2 Pinches of Art

It kind of makes you wonder how such a city spawned bands and artists that are so far removed from the norm (or maybe it’s exactly the kind of place you’d expect anything but the norm). Oddness aside, growing up in the suburbs, I wasn’t even aware a music scene existed in Bal’mor. I mean, we had maybe four music venues, a couple of rock fests, and that Orchestra my parents raised me on (not to mention the Peabody Choir I sang in… I got beat up a lot…). Who knew there was a quirky collection of artists hiding amongst the ghettoed victorian row houses and towering concrete business structures. It wasn’t until I moved to such a vibrantly musical city like Los Angeles that I started to notice how a lot of the music I was getting into out here was actually coming from my good ol’ hometown of Baltimore… and it was the oddest of the odd. Dan Deacon (video below), Animal Collective (all over KSCR airwaves), Spank Rock (nasty lyrics indeed), Cex (mp3), Frank Zappa (duh, he’s a freak), and Beach House (tamest of them all), just to name a few Bmore artists that have been receiving more and more attention, both from me and the rest of the music universe. Even Tupac kind of got started in Baltimore (do some research). With the exception of Pac and Beach House, you have yourself some of the weirdest (or most brilliantly unique?) people making music ever.

Maybe L.A. isn’t the place for you, Mr. Hipster. That is to say, even Pitchfork did a special on Whartscape. If it’s the one of a kind you want blasting through your stereo, scaring all those mainstream listeners away, then head to Baltimore and pick up a demo off the street. It seems like it might be weirder than anything you’ll hear here… Unless you go to the Neighboorhood Fest.

Here’s Dan Deacon performing without a crazy crowd fucking up the video (youtube some more vids of this guy and you’ll know what i mean).