Are the CD hangers-on, vinyl collectors, and cassette fetishists the last people in love with music? Can people who have gone purely digital still care?

I was really bummed when Megaupload bit the dust. Of all the file deposit sites used by mp3/flac blogs, I very much preferred MU, because they didn’t engage in a lot of the usual nonsense of all the other sites, like throttling download speeds for non-paying users, annoying captcha stages, misleading “download” buttons/links, etc. Mr. Dotcom was a real stand-up dude that way. It was funny to learn more (or any, actually) info about MU. I had no idea that such money could be made from running one of those sites. I guess maybe I just figured they were some crazy freedom loving Swedes or Russkies or whoever, although I’m not sure I had even formulated that vague a conception of who they might be.

I have to say I was a bit surprised to see how scared shitless everyone suddenly became, with a number of other sites turning off file sharing capabilities or preventing all U.S.-based IP addresses from connecting. Even more mystifying and disappointing was that most of the music blogs I had been following threw in the towel and either stopped posting or erased their blogs, even though there still remained a number of other file sharing sites they could’ve used. Beyond other worries that could be mentioned, I guess it’s a bummer when all the music you’ve ever shared just got erased. People posted comments about the “end of an era” and “fun while it lasted” and “we had a good run of it for a while”, and so on. WTH, people?

With all that, it did start to feel like the end of the era. I’m hoping it’s just a pause, though. Really, I could use a pause. Especially with my recent nomadicity, I haven’t had a chance to listen to music as much as usual, and particularly not to recently downloaded stuff. And I have tons and tons of now bittersweetly stale MU links (among others) still in saved RSS posts. When I just had enough time I was sure to go through them all and figure out which of those many albums by artists known or unknown to me that either sounded vaguely intriguing, had supercool artwork, or had been raved about by the blog poster as classic and/or totally necessary, would be worth my time to download, tag, catalog, and eventually, maybe, actually listen to…

At least one blog I follow has finally snapped out of its non-musical funk and started posting again, albeit in a more careful manner. Hopefully more will follow. Those out-of-print lost-classic albums aren’t going to discover themselves, are they?

“There is a heavenly account with your name on it…Every seed of faith you have ever planted has been deposited in a heavenly account with your name on it…As you would receive a corresponding ‘receipt’ from a bank here on earth when you make a deposit, you are the holder of a heavenly receipt with God. And by your faith, you can tap into your heavenly account with God any time, according to His Word.”- Oral Roberts
 

OK, as I’ve made clear before, I have some basic issues with Kickstarter. Look, you think Hank Williams would have been on kickstarter?  Hell fucking no!  But that aside, there is a line to be crossed there where people take their audience for granted to such an egregious level that you may as well toss in poor ol’ Jesus’ name into the mix and get a show on TV.   Oral Roberts meet The Dirty Guv’nahs.  Now of course The Guv’nahs haven’t gone so far as to say that the lord will “call them home” if they don’t meet their goal but there is something just horribly sleazy to me in the way they grovel for cash.  Here is what you are greeted with on their website (emphasis mine):

We Are Partners! (Photo: Ashley Hoskins Photography)

“THANK YOU SO MUCH! We are completely amazed at how supportive you guys have been! This update is to let you know that The Campaign is Not Over! You have successfully helped us pay for the recording budget of this album ($20K)… but the overall cost of this album (including promotion, music video(s), mixing, mastering, and distribution) will easily approach $50,000! Because we have decided to stay independent, we will continue to stress the fact that You are our Record Label! THEREFORE… we have set some new goals, and we have created some new reward packages! GOAL #1. If we reach $30K then we will be able to pay for 3 Months of Publicity and Radio Promo…” and so on…

Wow! Does this sound a little familiar?

Oooooh, The Lawd has seen how ya Dirty Guv’nahs fa-yuns gave and he was evah so pleased but the right and powerful Lawd knows you can do bettah… much bettah. Sho we asked you for $20,000 and you gave that and moe, but the good Lawd wants you to dig evah so much deeper into that pocket.  Give more and the goood Lawd will favah ya with some new Reewa’d Packages. Hallelullia!!!! Amen Brothas and Sistahs.

Now, I know a lot of bands that can record an album a hell of a lot cheaper than $20K and those records can sound pretty solid.  Hell, I know people who recorded with Steve Albini for a hell of a lot less.  But that is neither here nor there, what gets me is that they turn around and ask for more?!!! What a bunch of fucking ungrateful douches!  You just got $20K… fuck no, you got $36K at this point and you still want more?  Wow!   Their fans may see it differetnly but all I can think of  when I see that picture of the band as they hold-up their cardboard sign at the corner of the digital intersection, is the words of the great Ignignokt whe he raised his middle finger and said…

"I hope he can see this 'cause I'm doing it as hard as I can."

Entertainment Weekly described this scene (which features Cooper dancing around his office in a Muppet version of a rap video) as “brain-pausing, spit-take inducing lunacy” and “one of [the Muppets'] strangest big-screen moments.” I’ll grant that it’s a weird scene.

However, I don’t think the song or the scene themselves are all that weird. To understand this scene, you have to know that, because music was such a big part of the show, the world of the Muppets was tied in to pop music in a very deep way, even to the extent that there are Muppet characters (the Electric Mayhem) who have specific referents in the real world of rock and roll: Keith Moon, Janis Joplin, Pink Floyd, Paul McCartney, Dr. John, Gato Barbieri. Numerous pop musicians appeared on The Muppet Show, and for pop music performances to happen on the show, so far from being remarkable, was part of its very structure.

But when The Muppet Show was on the air, hip-hop wasn’t much more than a gleam in the eye of a few DJs in the Bronx. The last widely seen Muppet film (The Muppets Take Manhattan) was made in 1984, the better part of a decade before the gangsta rap explosion. There’s no overlap between the world of the Muppets and the world of hip-hop.

Therefore, I don’t really think that what’s weird about this scene is the song or the action themselves. I think what’s weird about it is simply that the Muppets have never done a rap before. So the weridness is simply the incongruity of seeing a 60-year-old white man and a bunch of puppets performing a pastiche of gangsta rap.

In my opinion, that’s as far as the “joke” goes, because the song that Cooper performs here is really stupid. Sample lyrics:

I got more cheddar than some super-size nachos
Got cash flow like Robert has De Niros
I use more greens than Vincent Van Gogh
I make the baker make my bread out of dough
No, don’t eat it though- it’ll make you ill
There ain’t no flour in a hundred-dollar bill

As I mentioned, this is essentially a pastiche of a rap song, constructed out of the signifiers that are used in pop culture to represent rap lyrics: boasts about having money, expressed in the form of awkwardly phrased rhyming analogies and bad puns. Not only is this an old joke, it’s barely even a joke at all, because this is actually what some people think rap is. In fairness, this used to be sort of true- 20 years ago.

I don’t find this scene funny. But that doesn’t mean that the idea of finding humor in the juxtaposition of Muppets and rap music is completely without merit.

I think the Bert & Ernie one is my favorite, probably for the clip of Ernie rapping while Bert tosses and turns in bed.

Ultimately, the Muppets may have to engage with hip-hop in the same way they do with other pop music. Today, rap has been popular for nearly as long as rock and roll had been when The Muppet Show debuted, and if Mick “Bitch” “Rocks Off” “Sister Morphine” Jagger can be a Muppet, then surely the day can’t be too far off when Jay-Z, or at least ?uestlove, is rendered in felt.

Relevant:

Anyway, if the problem with “Let’s Talk About Me” isn’t simply that it relies on the juxtaposition of Muppets and rap, maybe the problem is that gag rap songs aren’t funny.

Let’s see if we can find some evidence for that.

Hrm.

The Community Christmas rap is especially instructive, because Donald Glover’s verse is a lot more enjoyable than Danny Pudi’s. Why? He’s a better rapper! Interestingly, Pudi’s most absurdly hilarious line:

If years were seasons, this December
Would be the December of our December

is similar structurally to one of Cooper’s from “Let’s Talk About Me:”

If something’s for sale consider it sold
I’ve got so much gold I gold-plate my gold

but the impact isn’t the same, because as mediocre as Pudi’s rapping is, Chris Cooper’s is downright TERRIBLE!

Sorry! I loved you in Lone Star, man.

So I think the lesson here is not that joke rapping isn’t funny, or that Muppets rapping isn’t funny, but that poorly performed rap isn’t funny (unless of course the joke IS that it’s poorly performed). Which makes sense; would it be funny to hear Chris Cooper performing a ridiculous folksong badly? No; it would be funny to hear a ridiculous folksong performed well:

Frankly I think it would be hilarious if Chris Cooper were a really good rapper. Unfortunately, it’s apparently not as easy as it looks.

To bring this all home, I feel like I need to point out that not only can rap be funny as a joke when it’s well-executed- it can be hilarious even when the music itself is not a joke. As someone who was into Weird Al (who has at least two other raps that I could have used above instead of “White and Nerdy!”) before any normal-people music, I think that’s one of the things I appreciate most about hip-hop.

That is to say, people seem to like this record quite a lot. I bought a copy after watching their performance on Late Night.

Most of the time, network TV performances from bands I like don’t do a lot for me. Sometimes things just don’t sound right. Or the clarity of the mix reveals that the singers can’t quite hit the notes they’re aiming for- much harder to look past in a recording, even a live one, than a concert. Or the performance reveals the limitations of the source material. Wye Oak’s performance, by contrast, benefits from a perfectly constructed song and Jenn Wasner’s powerful and skillfully deployed voice. And of course Andy Stack’s ability to play two instruments at the same time.*

Unfortunately, I must say I haven’t been able to get into the album the way I figured I would after seeing this performance. None of the other songs strike me as being as structurally perfect as “Holy, Holy,” and even with that song, the live version makes the album version sound a little tame. But that’s OK, that’s not really what I wanted to talk about anyway. Thinking about this album a while back, it struck me how much Wye Oak reminded me of another indie rock band from Baltimore, fronted by a woman gifted with a naturally beautiful alto-range voice, that recently put out an NPR-beloved album graced with a perfectly structured song.

Lower Dens, featuring former Houstonians Jana Hunter and Will Adams.

Obviously this isn’t an NBC-caliber performance video (or maybe it is, har har!), but I hope you’ll excuse that. The things that I love about seeing this song are the same things I love about the Wye Oak performance: the vocal performance, and the way the structure of the song transmits itself through the musicians.

However, while there are certain superficial properties shared between Wye Oak and Lower Dens, their music doesn’t sound very much alike. Civilian is light on guitar and drums; instead, the band uses keyboards and overdubs of Wasner’s voice to create rich, lush, glowing combinations of sounds. It’s a very warm and pleasant-sounding record, oriented around melody expressed vocally. That is to say, the aesthetic is “pop:” pretty songs, sung in a pretty way. (That’s a reductive way to put it, but as anyone who has performed in public can tell you, it’s a lot harder than it sounds!)

Lower Dens’ Twin-Hand Movement, on the other hand, is driven by thudding drums and twangy guitar. Both Hunter’s voice and the guitar are frequently masked by reverb and distortion. At times, the record is murky, dissonant, or just plain harsh. This isn’t to say the record’s not good. It’s very good. But its aesthetic is bohemian: it uses sounds that aren’t inherently pleasing to create compositions that are meaningful or striking- even beautiful, but not in the same way that Wye Oak’s songs are.

So even though Lower Dens and Wye Oak are playing the same kind of music, narrowly defined- “indie rock-” they’re doing it with aesthetics that are almost diametrically opposed. This isn’t even limited to the music itself; you can see it the song titles: the elevated “Holy, Holy” vs. the subversively gross “A Dog’s Dick.**” You can even see it in the way that the artists are marketed. Take a look at these press photos of the two bands, both used on Stereogum:

It’s dangerous to read too much into the apparent opposition here. It of course does not translate to any kind of relationship between the people in the bands. What’s interesting to me is that fact that two bands from the same city, playing the same kind of music at the same time, could end up artistically opposed in this way, however that may have happened. I think one of the defining characteristics of “indie rock,” at least to the extent that that phrase means anything anymore, is its ability to encompass both music that’s basically sub-mainstream pop and music that is underground for artistic reasons.

I started wondering if it there were other Janus-faced pairs of bands out there, where one had a “pop” and one a “weird” aesthetic.

Superchunk and Polvo, from Chapel Hill
Jawbox and Shudder to Think, From D.C.
The Sea and Cake and Tortoise, from Chicago
Silkworm and Shellac, from (Montana by way of) Chicago
Rocket from the Crypt and Drive Like Jehu, from San Diego
Sleater-Kinney and Unwound, from Olympia
Bright Eyes and Cursive, from Omaha
Parts & Labor and Pterodactyl, from Brooklyn

It occurs to me that a lot of the truly great bands of indie rock are capable to embodying both sides at the same time, or switching between them: Mission of Burma. The Melvins. The Pixies. Sonic Youth and Pavement are among the most skilled at this. I once saw the band Sebadoh described somewhere (the Atlanta alt-weekly Creative Loafing perhaps) as “is-it-punk/is-it-pop,” which I’d say is getting at the same thing. I think you could make an argument that some of the modern bands that have been consistently well-received in the indie rock world do this; I’m thinking specifically of Deerhunter and the Animal Collective. Women are another example, although they sit more on the “weird” side.

I think you could use this idea to construct a definition of the notoriously slippery idea of “indie rock” that’s about as good as any: rock music that sits somewhere on the continuum between pop and bohemian aesthetics, while- importantly- taking account of both of them. At least, that’s more or less how I’ve always thought of it.

Bonus Lower Dens!

* Aside for guitar nerds: check out Wasner’s fingering. If I recall correctly, she plays this song tuned to D#-G#-C#-G#-B#-F, which is a half step up from D-G-C-G-B-E, which is a variation on a tuning called Taro Patch, which is used in Hawaiian slack-key guitar. The hell?
** True, Twin-Hand Movement does have a song called “Holy Water,” but it also has a song called “Two Cocks Waving Wildly at Each Other Across a Vast Open Space, a Dark Icy Tundra,” so I think on balance my characterization is justified, much as this entire post is justified by the opportunity to type the name of that song.