Back to the point of this post. Now, I rarely read this blog. It’s one of those not wanting anything to do with a club that would have you as a member. I don’t want to look up the quote. And there’s more proof about me being a shitty blogger, in no more ways than one.

Tonight was different. I browsed the DGS offerings, if for nothing else than to distract myself from the writing I was supposed to be doing for work, and to bask in a little schadenfreude. That’s my new favorite word, by the way. In my browsing, I came across Marcelo’s little stitch-up on Wild n’ Out and Lil’ John. I know I’m missing some apostrophes in there, but hey, don’t they know there’s a recession on? I can’t go throwing those things out there all willy-nilly. I’m not here to defend my TV-watching habits. I partook in more than my share of “starring Nick Cannon” offerings. Drumline marathon on VH1? Awrite awrite. My concerns concern the comments Marcelo so ungraciously (unconcernedly?) threw out concerning Food Network personalities. Yes, Paula Dean is quite loathsome, y’all. But, the “bobble-head Italian food chick” you speak of, dear Marcelo, I do hope you aren’t referring one Ms. Giada De Laurentis, meow. Not only is she gorgeous and talented (in more ways than one), she runs a mean cooking show. How do you thumb your nose at Everyday Italian, Behind the Bash, Giada’s Weekend Getaways, Giada in Paradise and Giada at Home? What have you ever done with your life that’s so great? Where’s your line-up of hit cooking shows? Where’s your mouth so big that it looks like that monster that almost ate the Millenium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back?

Look what you did, Marcelo. You made her try to eat her own finger. Apparently, she’s a bleeder. But, seriously, what crazy asshole authorized this photo shoot?

I believe the following is actually an artist’s rendering of Giada crushing Nick Cannon’s arrhythmic and untalented, yet wholly entertaining, heart.

And I know below this post it urges you to subscribe to the RSS feed. I can’t change that. Don’t sign up. It’s only a ticket to disappointment when we don’t post for weeks on end (during Nick Cannon marathons), and then even more biting disappointment when our posts show up in your feeder of choice and aren’t worth the bytes they’re printed on.

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So I know to the holier-than-thou indie music kids this post may seem dated, but you know, I do things on my own time and I get into things as I find them. I got into M. Ward a while ago, and I’ve really been digging the Post-War album.  I don’t remember how exactly I stumbled upon him, but I remember going on youtube and looking for some of his songs.

He’s got an awesome video for the song “Requiem” which I’ve featured below. It’s an awesome song. Nice blend of folky acoustic strums with some distorted guitars and a cool solo. Plus his raspy voice is fantastic. The old man in the video reminds me of my grandpa. I hope to someday be a really cool old man.

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Now, I’m not saying that TV is bad. By any means. I’m the type of person to sit in front of a TV and zone out for days. You may even need to detach me from my couch using a spatula every few days to prevent me from becoming grafted to the couch. It’s the reason I don’t own a TV and the reason I try to avoid it.

That being said, there is some seriously terrible programming out there. And there are some seriously unfunny people on TV. Nick Cannon is one of them.

Back in college Nick (this blog’s Nick, not Nick Cannon) and I, often joined by others (Nasco), used to sit around and just watch anything. We watched the bobble-head Italian food chick and Paula Deen at lunch way more often than I’d like to admit. Daily basis at one point maybe. We also managed to watch the aforementioned Mr. Cannon’s, Wild ‘n Out.

That’s some seriously unfunny stuff most of the time. Listening to Nick Cannon is like chewing tin foil. No exaggeration. He did have some great guests though, and they made the show what it was: nothing to write home about most of the time, but every once in a while you’d get a pop culture nugget that would keep you laughing for days…or in my case a couple of years later.

The clip featured below, the great moment I’ve been alluding to, is from the episode featuring Lil Jon, born Jonathan Mortimer Smith (WHAT!?!?!),  doing his version of “London Bridge.” Absolutely stellar performance.

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Don’t get sentimental. Jokes aside, you make an interesting point. Given the music is so closely tied to image, style, fashion, and other media, I’m wondering where things will go in terms of those as well under the Carter Theory. Will we delve into fashion trends of the past? Will we be wearing 80’s garb AND singing along to our favorite 80s songs? Will movies and sitcoms fall back on older pop gems to supply their soundtracks? And given that, will we be making movies about the past? Maybe TV and movies could be a vehicle for new music. You know how many indie songs end up on soundtracks for movies and TV series, and in commercials. After all that’s how our dear friend Feist made it big. I will be curious to watch all of this unfold.

There is always a big thing though, be it a pop gem or not, someone gets the spotlight, and some record company makes a killing. While mass marketing may not be the same now as it was before, other things in the past just kind of blew up on their own, through independent circuits. Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit,” was a bit of a fluke in the sense that college radio started playing it and people latched onto it immediately. That’s the first example that comes to mind. But grunge was a huge success, an enormous movement that had us all angsty and flannel-clad. And you never hear people rocking out to Nirvana at bars. At least I don’t.

While I agree that there are songs that lend themselves to being mass marketed and constantly played at bars for people’s enjoyment, there are movements that propel themselves on their own and THEN the market capitalizes on them. Grunge, hip-hop, and all that jazz (badum bum). There are other ways for things to get big, and there will still be “shared-experience pop music,” it just might not be your grandmother’s shared pop music.

Until then we can continue listening to Bon Jovi masterpieces like this one:

Or who knows, maybe we’ll be stuck in a world full of awesome covers of classic 80’s songs like this one by Petra Haden:

And just for kicks, how about this cover by Finnish symphonic metal cover supergroup, Northern Kings:

Sincerely,

Marcelo

P.S. How sweet are metal covers?

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I’m a 23 year-old male, and I spend a lot of time in bars.  If you’re anywhere within the ages of 18 and 35, then you can probably relate to the following:  you go to a bar that has either a band or a dj, and without really understanding why, by the end of the night you find yourself screaming along, at the top of your lungs, to some ‘classic’ like “Pour Some Sugar on Me” or “Don’t Stop Believin’.”  And if that’s true, then you probably fall into one of two mindsets: Either,

A) you looooove 80’s music and love wailing ‘just a city boyyyy!’ at the top of your lungs, or

B) you grudgingly drink until you’d yell just about anything, and scream along with the lyrics because hey, why not, everyone’s doing it?

I place myself firmly in category B, and my friends have all heard my (often drunken) ‘why the hell does everyone love 80’s music so much?’ rant.  But that’s not what this post is about.  Not exactly. (I encourage someone smarter and more interested than I am to probe the murky depths of my generation’s fascination with 80’s one-hit-wonders.)

No, the true source of my anger / disappointment / resigned acceptance is the death of shared pop music.  As Major Record Labels make layoffs and Radio Stations lose market share the pop market is effected in 2 major ways:

1. There are fewer ‘huge bands’ that sell millions of records (e.g. Coldplay, Britney Spears, etc.) so that the market dissipates, and artists at the end of the long tail gain more market share, and
2. Said ‘huge bands’ no longer reach mass audiences on the airwaves.

And now, a quick anecdote: Back in the late 90’s, my friends and I used to come home from school every day and watch the now defunct TRL.  It was a far cry from great television, and its audience generally lost interest sometime after the age of 13, but it was a crucial part of the cultural zeitgeist.  I remember when Britney Spears’ “…Baby One More Time” video came out, largely because it was around the same time my libido went into hyperdrive, but also because it was everywhere, all the time.  And that’s the point: TRL’s top 10 may not have been populated by the ‘best’ music, but virtually every song on that countdown was a huge radio and commercial hit.  Which meant that everyone my age knew “…Baby One More Time” and all the other mega-smash hits that bombarded our airwaves.

But that rarely happens anymore.  And it will happen less and less in the coming years, as the market continues to splinter and diversify.  TRL has gone off the air, MTV plays virtually no music, radio stations are already cementing their playlists in the 80’s and 90’s, and the old machines of pop mass-marketing are headed for extinction.  Which means that the number of shared pop songs will continue to diminish as well.  Oh, the Britney Spears’ of the world will continue making music, but now you won’t hear that fresh new single everywhere you go.  Which brings me back to those drunken nights where I wear out my vocal chords to some song I don’t even like.

Most bars, like most radio stations, play songs with the most mass appeal.  There are niche, corner bars that play whatever they want, or that let patrons take over the jukebox, but for the most part, bar playlists are a collection of what’s ‘hot’ and what’s ‘popular among drunk people.’  So you have your Top 40 hits (Flo Rida, anyone?), and your old classics (Journey, natch).

Now, I understand that as the host of a so-called indie music blog, I’m at the extreme of the “Top 40 vs. Indie/Smaller Band” spectrum.  But this effects us all, people.  It is entirely possible that in 10 years, there won’t be any Top 40 left, or if there is, it will be a hollow shell of its former already-pretty-hollow self.

So there will be virtually no shared-experience pop music, but bars still have to play something that appeals to the majority of their audience.  And when the Flo Rida’s of the world fail to reach critical mass, the bars will simply resort to the old zeitgeist.  Which means (drumroll please)…We will be listening to “Don’t Stop Believin’” in bars for the rest of our lives.

Happy Holidays!

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Anyway, the song “Coldest Winter” is just under 3 minutes of Kanye + autotune, and the lyrics are fairly simple, but the combination still packs a fair punch.

“Good bye my friend will I ever love again, Memories made in the coldest winter;” it’s not James Joyce, but there’s a raw earnestness to the way he sings it that makes it that much more powerful.  Now it’s gonna get stuck in your head:

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A couple weeks ago I had the fortune of seeing the Decemberists live.  The show was incredible, especially the always epic ‘The Island.’  What I wasn’t expecting was the opening band, Loch Lomond.  They’re a 7-person ensemble from Portland, Oregon (indie music central?) whose music stretches from the quietly moving to the folksy epic.  To paraphrase my brother, their sound is akin to listening to an orchestra while underwater, a description no doubt inspired by the fact that their name refers to a famous loch in Scotland.

The group uses an eclectic collection of instruments to produce their sound, including piano, violin, guitar, theremin, and the surprisingly powerful falsetto of the lead singer.  It’s the kind of music that is often soft (at least before the crescendo), but soft in a commanding way, not like some weak shit that just tinkles along in the background.  It demands your attention.

Also, there’s a lot of songs in 3/4 waltz rhythm, which is always sweet.

Loch Lomond - Song in 3/4

Loch Lomond - A Field Report

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Pavement - Shady Lane

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