Mark Richardson

Here’s one of those things: I am a fan of both...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 12:20:00 -0500

Here’s one of those things:

I am a fan of both Fitzcarraldo, Werner Herzog’s 1982 film about a rubber baron who tries to drag a ship over a mountain in the Amazon jungle, and Burden of Dreams, Les Blank’s 1982 film about the making of Fitzcarraldo. If I’m honest, I like the documentary even more than the film it’s about, which might have something to do with why I read so little fiction these days. Anyway, Burden of Dreams is a strange documentary because it basically tells a story very similar to Fitzcarraldo, but a “real life” version, in which Herzog actually has a ship dragged over a mountain in the jungle for his film about a guy who drags a ship over a mountain in the jungle. Both the filmmaker and the fictional character are portrayed as grandiose dreamers attempting the impossible. So you see both these movies, time passes, and you kind of forget which scenes happened in the fiction film and which scenes happened in the documentary. Someone brings up something about one or the other movie and you can’t remember which was which.

So then years later I hear this song called “Virgin With a Memory” by Destroyer and it opens with him asking himself “Was it the movie or the making of Fitzcarraldo where someone learned to love again?” He must have had this precise cognitive experience and thought enough of it to insert it into a song. Something very comforting about this to me, to know that I share these small glitches of consciousness with someone else in the world. Plus, great melody.

It’s been a long time since I’ve seen either, but I don’t believe anyone “learns to love again” in either of those movies, that’s just Bejar being funny, as usual.

One of those moments of real happiness he talked about here. A...

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 09:51:54 -0500

One of those moments of real happiness he talked about here. A genius at work.

Peter Sellars, Love vs. Work, 1974. Jump to 2:40.

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 02:06:00 -0500

Peter Sellars, Love vs. Work, 1974. Jump to 2:40.

Born to Die.

Sat, 11 Feb 2012 00:38:00 -0500

Born to Die.

This record hasn’t aged a day. This track is called...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 19:00:00 -0500

This record hasn’t aged a day.

This track is called “Them, Their”, and it’s from Jan Jelinek’s 2001 album Loop-finding-jazz-records.

The mix is just incredibly well done. The proportions between that “warm” organ bit and the “cold” clacking stuff around it are exactly right.

The first time I heard this and realized you could use a microscopic unit of digital crackle as a snare and make it work was an epiphany. Minimalism!

Born to Die.

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:46:36 -0500

Born to Die.

Juana Molina,”Salvese Quien Pueda”. Wonder if...

Fri, 10 Feb 2012 00:25:52 -0500

Juana Molina,”Salvese Quien Pueda”. Wonder if Merrill Garbus was inspired by her approach.

Best Smiths cover ever? Name a better one.

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 21:46:03 -0500

Best Smiths cover ever? Name a better one.

This song, Dylan, “Mama, You Been on My Mind”. He...

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 00:26:26 -0500

This song, Dylan, “Mama, You Been on My Mind”. He wrote it in 1964. He was 23. Was anyone writing songs like this in 1964?

I’m not pacing the floor, I’m not not begging, I’m not asking you to say words like “yes” or “no,” I don’t even care who you are sleeping with. You don’t owe me a thing, basically. And I understand that you have your own life, your own desires, and that they don’t include me. I’m just thinking about you, is all, and I want you to know this. 1964!

Sometimes I listen to this and it seems very overrated. I mean,...

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:57:00 -0500

Sometimes I listen to this and it seems very overrated. I mean, how could it it not be overrated? They make this album, then join Fleetwood Mac, and next thing you know we’re talking Fleetwood Mac and Rumours. And, mostly importantly, this record has been out of print for decades!

It’s the perfect “Hey, I’m getting into vinyl” album. It has an air of rarity, since it was never issued on CD, but I have a feeling Polydor printed many copies of this and it didn’t sell well. Because this is the kind of “rare” record you can find in a decent used vinyl shop far from a large city for something like $10. I shudder to think what a clean copy is going for in NYC these days.

So yeah, it doesn’t even close to the next two records they would work on together (very few albums do) but, listening again for the first time in a while, there are some good songs on here. Like this one.

Florence Green, Last World War I Veteran, Dies at 110 - NYTimes.com

Wed, 08 Feb 2012 00:14:00 -0500

Florence Green, Last World War I Veteran, Dies at 110 - NYTimes.com:

In 2006, I had a random thought: Were any veterans of WW I still alive? I crunched some numbers and it seemed unlikely—the vet would have to be well past 100. But then I googled it and discovered that there were, as of May 2006, still 74 remaining. A Wikipedia page had all of their names, where they served, where they lived now, how old they were. I started tracking it, and they were dying quickly. A few months later there were 10 fewer, and on down it went. Once you are past 100, to live another month is a miracle. Then it was the last combat veteran, then the last non-combat solider. And here we are not quite six years later and they are all gone. This woman, a member of the R.A.F. who served in an officer’s mess hall, died last weekend.

Something very interesting about this to me, the point where human memory becomes replaced entirely by media. As of last week, she was the last person on earth who could tell you a story about serving in WWI based on her own experience. And now there are none. We have books and photos and websites but the imperfect human memory is no more.

One of the greatest songs of all time, or the greatest song of...

Tue, 07 Feb 2012 21:47:29 -0500

One of the greatest songs of all time, or the greatest song of all time?

Considering launching a Kickstarter to pay Todd Terje to do an edit of this.

This is the last scene in the generally-pretty-bad 1982 film The...

Mon, 06 Feb 2012 22:00:00 -0500

This is the last scene in the generally-pretty-bad 1982 film The Last American Virgin. The movie is typical teen comedy fare, falling somewhere between Porky’s and Fast Times. It’s mostly about some high school dudes trying to get laid. But the tone is unstable and it has some weirdly dark elements. The story centers around the friendship of two guys, one of whom is “cool” and good looking and the other of whom is kind of geeky but “nice.” At one point, they both find themselves interested in a pretty girl who just transferred to their school. The Cool Guy has sex with her and impregnates her and, after that, he wants nothing to do with her. The Nice Guy goes to her, wants to help, and then sells his possessions and borrows money in order to pay for her to have an abortion. She has the abortion, it is traumatic, but he helps her through it. And after a short time, there is a hint that she is now interested in him as boyfriend material. So she invites him to her 18th birthday, and him showing up to this party begins the final scene of the film. In his hand, he has a locket that he bought her as a gift.

Guess I should say “spoiler alert” here, but I really doubt that you want to see this movie.

So Nice Guy shows up, is looking for her, and then he goes into the kitchen, where he finds what he thought was his new girlfriend making out with the Cool Guy, who slept with her and then abandoned her after she discovered she was pregnant. And Nice Guy is devastated. And he drives into the night, crying. James Ingram’s “Just Once” is on the radio. The credits roll.

I saw this movie on HBO when I was around 13. I was lonely and had no confidence and I took it as an article of faith that no girl would ever be interested in me. At that time, if I were to sit down and think about why anyone would want to go on a date with me, the only answer I could possibly come up with is that I was a “nice guy.” And I knew, even then, that being a nice guy carried little weight. So when I saw this movie at age 13, you had better believe that when the credits came I thought “Yes, this is exactly what life really is. Here on the screen is the perfect articulation of why people like me are doomed.” So I could wallow in this self-pitying fantasy. The comfort in being sad. Nothing to be proud of, but hey—I was just hitting puberty.

More recently, I learned that there is a minor area of study in feminist theory called Nice Guy Syndrome. As far as I can tell, and I haven’t done a lot of research here, since this is just a Tumblr post, this entire idea has to do with Nice Guys feeling like women owe them something for being Nice. Seems closely connected to the ending of this movie. And it basically reduces the emotional exchange between partners in a prospective relationship to something purely transactional. I do this, I get this, basically. And obviously, yes, this idea that Nice Guys are owed anything is bunk. A passive-aggressive way of denying humanity. But it’s complicated.

For me, there is still something, deep down, some kind of shameful imprinting, that, as a dude who grew up seeing his own desires and insecurities reflected back to him in movies like this, looks for the kind of perceived injustice that this film ham-handedly presents during its final scene. I am aware of it, I know it’s off-base, presents a wrong-headed version of the world, but it’s still there, just the tiniest bit. Maybe I will never shake it.

I thought of Nice Guy Syndrome when I was listening to the new album by (sorry!) Lana Del Rey. The main character in most of her songs likes the Bad Boys, guys who are terrible for her but she can’t help herself. They have what seem, from the songs, to have few redeemable qualities. But LDR’s narrators find them irresistible.

I could be off here, but I wonder if some of the hostility directed at LDR is a result of the Nice Guy Syndrome on display here in this final scene. That a lot of men get particularly upset by the idea of women making what seem to them to be bad choices, which choices also happen to not include them. And maybe, maybe it’s what Liz Phair was railing against today, as confused as I found her piece (sorry, but “If she’s pissing everyone off she must be doing something right” is a Newt Gingrich line.)

“I would argue that the uncomfortable feelings she elicits are simply the by-product of watching a woman wanting and taking like a man,” Phair said.

Is that connected to this idea?

Also very much enjoyed the exchange between Marc, Kasia, and Judy.

"Q: Obviously a tool is a tool and you can use it any way you want. It’s your choice to keep working..."

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 13:11:08 -0500

“Q: Obviously a tool is a tool and you can use it any way you want. It’s your choice to keep working on tape.

Yeah, I think there’s more to it than that. I don’t think you can unilaterally say anything like that. The digital systems — their history and evolution — is that they’re editing programs. All of their development has gone into making them more powerful and flexible in the manipulation of already recorded sound. The act of recording a sound, within the digital paradigm, is perceived as a solved problem. Once it gets in the box is where the magic happens. I feel that’s an inversion of the process. I think there’s more implied in digital recording than just the manner of storage. There’s a whole culture of manipulation that has developed. I don’t think it’s a neutral technology. I think it’s had a detrimental effect on music as a whole. I think it’s structurally dangerous to artists. They don’t have an option of not ceding their music to someone. It’s not value neutral. The reason that I’m in the chair as a professional is that someone is expected to trust me to make choices that won’t make them vulnerable. I feel that’s one of the problems with digital recording; there’s no disincentive to making someone vulnerable.”

- Tape Op Magazine > Articles > Steve Albini

So in the full print version of this, which I finally finished reading there are great anecdotes about the Pixies, Nirvana, all of that. But this quote above is definitely the “lede,” if you will.

(via desnoise)

Last night I posted a live video of Minnie Ripperton doing...

Thu, 02 Feb 2012 01:26:10 -0500

Last night I posted a live video of Minnie Ripperton doing “Loving You”. This track, by Terre Thaemlitz, is called “Between Empathy and Sympathy Is Time (Apartheid)”, and it’s from his album Lovebomb.

Thaemlitz, in addition to making music, also writes about politics and culture. This is an excerpt from his liner notes for Lovebomb, which is a concept album about “love” as a social construct:

Love - no matter how inexplicably mentally consuming - is not so much an emotion as an equation of contextually specific cultural variables. Whether it is the acknowledged caress of hands between a man and woman in public, or the unacknowledged punch of fists behind closed doors, both patterns coexist in countless accepted systems of chaotic imbalances. A key element of love is the justification of violence. The simple fact is most violence comes from people we know. We internalise the flight-inspiring family relation, unable to explain the love that binds. “Surely that is not love!” you say… but look deep and consider yourself fortunate if you find no scars of emotional or physical violence associated with those you love(d), either in reception or infliction, advertent or inadvertent. Ask yourself, in what ways do the social relations of “family” or “lovers” facilitate behaviors that are unacceptable in other environments? Certain social relations presume the presence of love, and it is that love which enables us to overlook the oppressions of the pleasant neighbors who beat their spouses, the parents who beat their children, or the priests who molest their congregations. In the end, post-Industrial love is just another ideological device facilitating a division between “public” and “private” space, and is complicit with such a division’s basis in inequality and exclusion. The very process of finding a partner itself is not so much a quest for the right person as an exclusion of the multitudes.

So yeah, not exactly a fun guy, at least on paper, but the conceptual aspect of Thaemlitz’s work, and the way it is informed by his interest in theory (his writings in this realm, I freely admit, I don’t always understand), has led to music with a lot of layers.

This track takes sound effects and a speech from Radio Freedom and runs it through a harmonizer keyed into the “Loving You” chord progression. Such an elegant effect, leading to a song that is eerie, frightening, disorienting, unbearably sad, and, ultimately, enlightening—political art of the very best kind.

Incredible that Minnie Ripperton sang this live in a TV studio....

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 01:00:00 -0500

Incredible that Minnie Ripperton sang this live in a TV studio. It’s like seeing an old theater in which stonemasons made intricate carvings on a ceiling you can just barely see because the idea was to do everything right, no shortcuts. Stevie Wonder produced the studio version; Ripperton says her daughter’s name in the outro, which must be bittersweet for her daughter to hear now. I know people who think this is cheesy but I find it very moving.

Semipop Life: Best Lana Del Rey Writing 2012 (part 1 of 1961)

Wed, 01 Feb 2012 00:12:47 -0500

Semipop Life: Best Lana Del Rey Writing 2012 (part 1 of 1961):

semipoplife:

Sasha Frere-Jones:

Most of the tracks were produced by Emile Haynie, who has mostly recorded hip-hop until now—a slightly misleading credential, since “Born to Die” sounds only intermittently like hip-hop, and there is nothing like rapping (except for a few Dad-like eruptions of vernacular in…

HEY MARK! When you said this: "I have written about this a little bit, but it’s one of the beautiful mysteries of music, that songs about sadness and loneliness can make you feel less sad and alone," is there somewhere one could find what you've written about that?

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:54:27 -0500

Pretty sure I was thinking about this column from a couple of years ago, about Tune-Yards’ “Fiya”. That’s probably my favorite song from the last five years or so, and I was trying to get at what it meant to me.

B Michael Tumblr: A Serious Observation

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 23:51:47 -0500

B Michael Tumblr: A Serious Observation:

bmichael:

I made a joke about this to my partner, but the rate of Lana Del Rey thinking and writing (‘scholarship’) was actually amazing and cool. I mentioned her in a piece back in, I think, November — and that was after resisting mentioning her a few times already. At this point, all the greatest music…

This track got some play in high school. Don’t think...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 05:38:46 -0500

This track got some play in high school. Don’t think I’ve ever seen this video.