Wake Up: You Are On Stage with the Arcade Fire (part three)

• This is the final post in a three-part series. Click the links for the first or second post.

Nearly six months had passed since the release of Funeral before I was willing to fully relinquish myself to the music of the Arcade Fire, and at the United Palace Theatre it was likewise only after a period of acclimation to the band and the crowd and the incredibly loud volume that I began to let go. Perhaps I was self-conscious. I was surrounded by thousands of people who, more than anything, wanted a glimpse of what I -- situated in the front row -- stood directly in the way of. Even if they weren't looking straight at me, many of them were obliged to look around my head in order to see the stage. I wondered what they thought. The songs from Neon Bible, the Arcade Fire's second and latest record, are less exuberant than those on Funeral -- more concerned with apprehension and inner turmoil than the gestures through which our worries can be externalized and, as they were on Funeral, released. The sense of everyone singing along, for instance, while not altogether absent, is no longer pervasive, and the feeling that Funeral conveyed, of having to confront something profoundly difficult, has been replaced with a retreat from something ominous and inescapable.

It had, of course, been necessary for the Arcade Fire to modify their outlook. Funeral was a beginning, an approach toward mortality that had relied on an urgent and one-off irreverence, only to draw back in awe -- enthralled, as the band's recent profile in The New Yorker ("Big Time") suggests, by the grandeur of a universe that was finally beyond its grasp; its songs forever reaching for, even on the verge of, a revelation that in the end simply wasn't there. This made for a nice variation on the young person's initial and predictably uneasy struggle with fate, but it wouldn't be sustainable if the band hoped to continue making music long term. Neon Bible would have to match the Arcade Fire's ambition with perspective and understanding if their sweeping movements and lush instrumentation was to constitute more than an empty (if agreeable) gesture. This may explain why so many of its songs address specifically the current and public turmoil that Funeral, by focusing on a turmoil that was instead universal and private, had so gracefully avoided naming. The results are clumsy and, for all the record's calculated references, lack those particularities that had distinguished the families and neighborhoods of the band's debut. There are lovely melodies and assertive rhythms, but no center of gravity to hold them together as Neon Bible is gradually overcome and buried beneath the weight of its increasingly loaded words: church, ghetto, MTV, bombs, downtown, holy war . . .

The stage production of recent performances only exacerbates the turgid subject matter, overpowering the viewer (who already had enough to look at during the Funeral tour, when the Arcade Fire was seven somberly dressed musicians) with more lights, horn players, neon reproductions of the new album cover, amplified megaphones and tiers of video screens that replicate and magnify every note and movement of the performers -- presumably a kind of comment on advertising and surveillance in the age of terror that succeeded only in making me dizzy (and sick of looking at the performers). Neon Bible was recorded last year in a church, and many of the subsequent performances have likewise been staged in churches -- the one I witnessed at the United Palace Theatre, which was originally a movie theater and is presently home to the congregation of a famous evangelical preacher, "Rev. Ike," didn't begin until the Arcade Fire had screened a brief sermon on the video monitors by an evangelical preacher (a woman, not Rev. Ike). So there is one more implication, I suppose, involving the relationship between religion and the secular media. The point is unclear. Has the media undermined our ability or willingness to pursue a meaningful spirituality by disseminating false icons, and is the hollowness of most rock concerts merely a reflection of our pervasive spiritual malaise? Is the church ideally a sanctuary from the electronic images with which we otherwise incessantly bombard ourselves? Or has televangelism subverted that sanctuary, as well as the media and perhaps the entire secularist enterprise by broadcasting messages that are originally intended for a particular congregation, to serve the political and economic interests of its leaders? The ambiguity of a song like "(Antichrist Television Blues)" seems, in this context, without consequence. If my suspicion is correct, and the setting of a church represents an attempt by the Arcade Fire to channel into their performance some celestial revelation, the band would've done better to simply jettison the video screens, stage effects, and lyrics about World War III, and instead concentrate more intently on the stylistic elements that had emerged on Funeral -- its soothing reiteration of ebullient rhythmic and melodic motifs, the singer's function as a fabulist whose stories unfold almost as a dialogue with the song of a distant and innumerably voiced reply, and of course a performance routine in which the natural playing movements of the musicians coalesce as a dance that brings all this into sharper focus, speaking to the audience -- in its best moments -- as if an intuition.

When such moments were in evidence at the United Palace Theatre, it was generally during the songs from Funeral, when little by little the crowd would begin to hum, sing, and all together emanate a tremendous ghostly noise that hovered somewhere above our heads, and commingled restlessly with the music from the speakers. If at first I regarded the singing of the crowd with skepticism, wary of a behavior that seemed mindlessly obeisant and conformist, when the noise continued to grow, at times even challenging the predominance of the musicians, I began to understand it as a form of empowerment. Rock concerts are exercises in visibility. They cultivate a yearning among musicians to see their work enlarged and circulated on a grand scale by manipulating the same yearning -- to see and be seen -- among listeners, who may find it difficult if not impossible to stand out from a crowd into which they are intended to recede. The individual who tries to rush the stage and claim a moment in the spotlight will, as several of my fellow United Palace theatergoers ascertained, be inevitably and ingloriously rebuffed by a team of so-called security guards, if not also forcefully removed from the venue altogether. An audience only effectively stakes an identity in unison. The singing of Arcade Fire listeners, then, which culminated during the last song of the set, "Rebellion (Lies)," when the musicians left the stage and for several minutes the entire theater continued humming the violin part until the band returned to play two more songs, was the most convincing act of defiance and self-discovery of the evening -- the crowd realizing that, together, it could not merely dodge the security guards but (more significantly) refuse to acknowledge the band's authority to stop the music, and thereby destabilize their claim to its possession.

Whether this qualifies as a proper purgative for the bitterness that springs inescapably from the audience of disproportionately celebrated performers is debatable. Encores are a standard element of rock concerts. If the Arcade Fire hadn't planned on playing two more songs, the lights would've turned on and everyone -- no matter how dearly they may have liked to stay and sing -- would've been forced to go home. As certain as there is a pure and elemental release that comes from wholeheartedly singing in a crowd, the moments of such release at the United Palace Theatre were occasional and of limited effect. More than half of the evening was devoted to material from Neon Bible, which is dominated by an unrelenting, brooding wariness; rather than ease or empathize with my concerns, in the end the concert merely drew my attention to them. When the band returned for its encore and I took the stage to sing "Wake Up," apprehensively and with the realization that I was being watched as well as photographed and videotaped by the rest of the audience, I could no longer tell if I was releasing something or simply working myself into a greater and more unsettled fervor.

***

The morning after the concert, I checked my e-mail and discovered -- at first with childlike delight -- that an image of the crowd on stage (myself visibly among them) was featured at the top of a popular blog. I indulged a moment of vanity in which I congratulated myself on a newfound sense of style and renown -- then took another look at the photograph and grew dismayed. I was lost in the crowd! Only the reader who already knows what I look like can identify me and see that I am actually turned in profile, as if to show off the line of my jaw. I also appear several times on YouTube, climbing onto the stage, and in a three-part video taken by another theatergoer on stage -- equally indistinct in each instance. (All told, I've found more than a dozen clips of the crowd singing "Wake Up" on YouTube -- and, in most of them, at least one and usually several audience members can be seen filming or photographing.) The more I thought about this, the more startled I became, first by how successfully I had disseminated myself across the web and then at how vacuous an achievement this was. I've often had the feeling that I'm being watched, but now, ever since the concert, I worry not only that my suspicion is true but that all I amount to in the eyes of my observers is an indiscernible blur flashing somewhere in the background of a grainy two-inch screen. Perhaps this is what the Arcade Fire are describing in "Black Mirror," the first song on their new record, in which the protagonist wakes up from a nightmare to sing of the impossibility of seeing oneself through the lens of a security camera -- "you can't watch your own image," he says, through the "black mirror" that "knows no reflection."

If so, among the conclusions one may draw from the Arcade Fire's run at the United Palace Theatre, which began on a Monday with "Black Mirror" and culminated Tuesday May 8, 2007 in the crowd taking the stage, is that the systematic surveillance to which each of us is presently subject has not been constructed by an Orwellian government agency, but by our own camera phones, wireless connections, and MySpace pages, in other words -- as Kafka implied in The Trial -- it is primarily self-imposed.

Other blog reviews of the Arcade Fire's United Palace Theatre concerts: (Mon., May7) Thoughts on Stuff, S/FJ, Brooklyn Heathen, Brooklyn Skeptic, Brooklyn Vegan, New York Magazine, Qbertplaya's Gigoblog, The Tripwire, Fluxblog, the daryl sng blog, Snakes Got A Blog (Tue., May 8) Fresh Bread, Shelves of Vinyl, Product Shop NYC, Vicarious Music (Both nights) Earvolution.


Photo: (above) of Win Butler at the United Palace Theatre, and on a screen - by Product Shop NYC.

Interesting Links: The Arcade Fire performs in Union Square, and in an elevator. Two reviews of early Arcade Fire concerts by a Canadian listener. How much would you pay to see the Arcade Fire? Did the Arcade Fire steal this guy's basketball? Is it okay for Radio City security to beat up the Arcade Fire's fans? Win Butler guest-blogs about music and Czech history. The Arcade Fire's violin player has a band called Bell Orchestre! David Bowie performs "Wake Up" with the Arcade Fire on TV. Thoughts on the United Palace gigs from opening band The National. More photos of the Arcade Fire at the United Palace Theatre on Flickr.

Notes

Frere-Jones, Sasha, "Big Time," The New Yorker, Feb. 19 & 26, 2007.

Moore, David, "Review: Funeral," Pitchforkmedia.com, September 13, 2004.

Petrusich, Amanda, "Interview: The Arcade Fire," Pitchforkmedia.com, May 14, 2007.

Schreiber, Ryan, "Interview: The Arcade Fire," Pitchforkmedia.com, February 14, 2005.

Bitter Tonic: On the Closing of NYC Night Clubs, and the Discussions of Indie-Blog Readers

Last weekend Tonic, a well-known Manhattan night club, self-described as "a home for avant-garde, creative, and experimental music," closed its doors for the last time, priced out of the Lower East Side by a large and expensive condominium tower. The proprietors say they still hope to re-open in another location. Meanwhile, supporters of the club staged what they're calling a Tonic Eviction Musical Protest last Saturday, which resulted in the arrest of two musicians, as well as a press conference this afternoon outside City Hall:

"Let it be a wake-up call to say that small music and cultural spaces can no longer pay these outrageous rents and that important music and culture is being forced out of NYC! We need YOU to come to our press conference at City Hall, so that city government sees how many people need and support all kinds of non-mainstream music. ... City Councilman Alan J. Gerson of District 1 is supporting this press conference and will stand in support of our group; and will challenge other members of the City Council to come to the table on the issue of public interventions to save artistic creation in NYC."

When CBGB's closed last October, I considered the fuss Patti Smith made about "the empty new prosperity of our city" a rather pretentious display of "bourgeois sentimentality." But my feelings about Tonic are mixed. I have no illusions about the space itself -- I always found Tonic cold and inhospitable -- but neither am I optimistic that a new place will soon emerge where the free and open exchange of musical ideas would take precedence over the needs of finance. The kind of music that once played at CBGB's, or Sin-é (another recently closed and bemoaned rock club), will find a new home -- as long as that music is popular and potentially lucrative (which it still is). The music at Tonic, however, was of marginal interest from the start, and it offered limited financial incentive to either the club owners or the musicians, most of whom make a better living performing in Europe or Japan than they can anywhere in the United States.

The organization of a mass rally outside City Hall is therefore a well-intentioned, if somewhat misled, effort -- to show the officials "how many people" support a music that is, by definition, not widely supported. The task that these organizers ultimately face is in fact quite different -- and more formidable: to convince not only the officials, but the public at large that certain music must be valued and supported, regardless of its unpopularity or commercial promise, simply because it places more emphasis on the act and process of creation than on the creation itself; that the products of an artistic pursuit may be less valuable than the undertaking -- not only for the artists, but for the community as a whole.

To give an idea of how formidable it will be to convince even a sympathetic audience of this, I'm posting a series of comments about Tonic, retrieved from the message board of a popular indie rock blog called Brooklyn Vegan. The comments indicate a formidable, if latent, hostility among indie rock listeners, not only toward music of limited commercial appeal but -- what is more distressing -- the people and institutions that would support it. (These comments are conspicuously different from those posted on Brooklyn Vegan last October, when CBGB's gave its final performance, most of which were about celebrity sightings... )


From Brooklyn Vegan
(see all the comments, originally from two posts, here and here):

What can really be done though? That's capitalism, right? And also the reason that parts of Brooklyn and Queens are flourishing.

***

The Tonic protesters want "to ask for public and political intervention to protect new music/indie/avant/jazz in New York City"

They seriously hope to accomplish that? Why should an indie club have more of a right to exist than some other business? Furthermore, why should people devote their political efforts to this cause, rather than something that would benefit a greater proportion of the population?

***

music venues are businesses. they may represent something culturally significant or worthy, but make no mistake, they exist to make money. real estate owners and investors are also businesses. they also want to make money. this is what makes the world go round.

what do you suggest be done about this?

force the owner of the property to not get (or try to get) more money for his investment if someone is willing to pay it? or force the owners of tonic or other venues to run their business smarter so they can make more money so they can pay more rent or to negotiate better lease agreements...such that they could stay where they are forever?

Tonic or any another venue (CBGB's...) that looses its' lease can surely open up somewhere else if they've planned appropriately. surely they knew the day of reckoning would come and they would have to consider such a move. i think that is the issue that one should attack - their lack of planning or just plain bad business sense. the owners of these establishments have let us down, not rising real estate prices.

one business or neighborhood changes or goes away, another replaces it...THAT IS WHAT NEW YORK IS ABOUT...and this is nothing new.

***

"yeah, blame the owners of these places for not making enough money booking shows that have artistic merit."

Exactly. Why should taxpayers support a business that can't make money on it's own? In the cases when taxpayers do provide subsidies, it normally goes toward the greater good of the public. I loved Tonic, but it's patrons do not constitute the greater public by far. Keep the government out!

***

so anon 9:15pm, instead of criticizing, why don't you offer a suggestion? Let me guess: raise taxes so that the government can subsidize Tonic and other venues that cater to YOU.

***

Whats the point? If you cant pay the rent go find a cheaper space.

cant expect landlords to lose money in the name of experimental music and what is the mayor supposed to do about it anyway?

Get a job.

***

dont any of these people have jobs?

***

my favorite part about your porous arguments:

-all people that live in condos are bland and boring

-people who have or make money should be willing to lose it to investing in something that is historically a money sieve.

You sound like a bunch of naive, xenophobic hipsters. start something yourselves, sponsor something yourselves. stop complaining start doing.

***

And Elsewhere...
Similar perspectives can be found on Curbed, a blog dedicated to New York City real estate:

What is it with you socialists. You want evryone else to foot the bill for your "art". Okay, I think taxpayers should provide a fund so that teenage girls can buy Britney Spears albums. How is that different?

As it regards Tonic, if they either cannot pay the rent and/or the landlord refused to reup the lease, then that is life in the big city. Take up your shit and find another place like the rest of us do.

***

These comments are not intended to represent the majority opinion of either blog's readership, or of most indie rock listeners -- only of a tendency that exists, prominently in this case, among the audience (perhaps I should say, consumers) of the so-called independent media.

Also, the comments on Curbed feature one very intelligent exchange, between the authors of comment #3 and comment #17, which is followed promptly by the amusing retort of comment #18.

More Thoughts on Closing Tonic:

Neither More Nor Less (many lovely photos, in three parts: I, II, III)
Tiny Mix Tapes
William Avery Hudson
The New York Times
Village Voice
TimeOut New York
New York Magazine
Gothamist

Take it to the Bridge is the organization that put together Saturday's Tonic Eviction Musical Protest. They have a petition and an update on Tuesday's City Hall press conference.

Rejected Book Proposal: Metal Machine Music

So this is my first rejected-book-proposal post . . . I'm hoping it will be my last . . . and if it's not, at least I can say I'm assembling a Ghost Library of my unwritten books.

This book proposal was for Continuum Publishing's 33 and 1/3 series, "of short books about critically acclaimed and much-loved albums of the last 40 years." I proposed a book about Metal Machine Music, Lou Reed's double-LP recording of 1975.

One has many regrets as soon as one has irrevocably submitted a book proposal. One could have misspelled an important name or overlooked an embarrassing grammatical error, for instance, or mixed up one's facts or dates or mentioned that I've never listened to the record I'm proposing to write about (at least not all the way through). One may also wonder if one shouldn't have implied that he is insane in the first sentence of his proposal -- or if music-book publishers ever avoid writers who refer to their subjects as "novelty records" or "a bad joke," "the figurative dead-end of pop music listening." (Maybe it was unwise to admit that I didn't think Metal Machine Music was "a fully realized avant-garde composition" or even "a work of art.")

Perhaps it was a bad idea from the start, to propose to write a book for people who are unusually attached to their records at a moment when I'm desperate to detach myself from mine . . .

***

[Note: the proposal was to include my name; a brief outline (up to 1000 words); a brief bio of myself explaining why I'm the best person to write about that album (up to 500 words); and a couple of sentences on which 33 1/3 book I've enjoyed the most so far, and why.]


Outline: Metal Machine Music

Perhaps I'm mad. Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music has been ranked among the worst records ever released by a respected rock musician and I'm proposing to write a book about it. Surely I'm deranged -- a four-sided LP, more than an hour long, consisting of nothing but amplifier feedback; a rip-off, as many of its original customers claimed when they returned it to the store and demanded their money back. Alright, then, suppose I am deranged . . . but only enough for the task with which I ask you to appoint me. After all, Reed was at the peak of his popularity when he released Metal Machine Music, which he considered an electronic masterpiece with "about seven thousand different melodies," "harmonic buildup," and "infinite ways of listening." Instinct suggests it was either an ingenious prank or a misguided attempt to recover Reed's waning 'street' credibility, but I'm more than happy to take Reed and the record's advocates seriously, suspend my disbelief, and consider Metal Machine Music a fully realized avant-garde composition; evaluate the record in terms of Stockhausen and Xenakis; survey its impact on the so-called noise, industrial, and ambient genres of rock 'n' roll -- Merzbow, Throbbing Gristle, My Bloody Valentine.

In doing so, however, I should be careful not to be carried away by the idea of Metal Machine Music as a serious work (like the German fellow who recently transcribed and arranged it for a 40-piece orchestra). When Lester Bangs, the well-known author of "A Reasonable Guide to Horrible Noise," named it "The Greatest Album Ever Made," he wasn't entirely sincere. Although Bangs said he liked the record -- and I believe that in some sense he did -- supposedly he listened to it constantly and eagerly played it for all his friends (much to their dismay), in print he called it a "migraine" and suggested, "that as classical music it added nothing to a genre that may well be depleted." He added: "As a statement it's great, as a giant FUCK YOU it shows integrity -- a sick, twisted, dunced-out, malevolent, perverted, psychopathic integrity. . . ." Yet I sense that, for Bangs, who is somewhat responsible for the record's enduring cult status, Metal Machine Music was more of a bizarre novelty than a work of art. This is not necessarily an insult. Bangs loved novelty records and consistently mentioned them in his articles and reviews. For him, and I think for any music geek, the novelty record adds personality to a record collection that might otherwise seem caste from a mold. Let me offer an example. A while ago I downloaded the first half of Metal Machine Music onto my iPod. I listened to it closely several times and, after a while, found I most enjoyed playing the record in the background at parties without telling anyone, then waiting to see how long it would take before my guests began to notice and complain. (Longer than you might think. Usually at least fifteen minutes, which is surprising when I explain that, by party, I mean a quiet gathering of perhaps twelve friends -- none of whom are particularly interested in electronic music or distortion.)

This anecdote serves several purposes. One is to show off my terrific sense of humor. Another is to prove that, like Bangs, I have an imaginative feel for what a record is, or should be. The truly dedicated listener, after all, aspires to something greater than good taste. Since the records he collects, studies, and really enjoys are also, as I have told myself, the very elements of being, it becomes necessary to convince, not only himself, but indeed everyone he knows, that they are not merely the commercial products of a vast and indifferent industry. By proclaiming affection for a record that almost no one would honestly say that he or she likes, whether it's Metal Machine Music or a musical adaptation of Finnegans Wake, the listener seems to achieve a rare moment of individuality and surprise among a lifetime of prefabricated certainty. Of course, it's possible that what he really achieves is only solitude and isolation. Bangs once suggested that Metal Machine Music was a "kind of ultimate antisocial act." Thirty-seven years later, the record still has a reputation for being aggressive, hostile, and off-putting. Is alienation, finally, the price of individuality in a mechanical age? If one really believes in Metal Machine Music, it is -- most likely -- as an indictment of the pop album's capacity for self-expression. The record has no songs and, in spite of what Reed may claim, no melodies or harmonies, and only the vaguest, crudest sense of rhythm. Though it came in the same gatefold, double-vinyl package as Exile on Main St. and The Beatles (white album), it refused to be identified with on the terms to which the listeners of those records were accustomed. Those who could identify with the record on its terms, a barrage of distortion and screaming feedback that was literally endless -- the fourth side of the LP* ended in a locked groove, which played the final seconds over and over until the listener decided to turn it off -- became the figurative dead-end of pop music listening, obliged to manually terminate their relationship with a potentially dangerous noise that had no foreseeable purpose or conclusion.

For the moment, however, as I look forward to transforming Metal Machine Music into a book, I prefer to see its infinite drone, not as a dead end, but as a starting point for fresh discussion; a blank slate to write upon without having to worry about fitting my statements into a context that is already set and fixed. The listening body has invested much less in Metal Machine Music than Blonde on Blonde, and this lack of preconception should allow for a greater freedom to examine both the potential and limitations of the pop album honestly. Metal Machine Music may have the reputation of a bad joke, but I'm excited by the possibility of taking that joke seriously and hopeful that, within its void, there may be a chance for renewal.

*The eight-track tape version of Metal Machine Music (pictured above) automatically looped from one side to the next, over and over, with no breaks whatsoever. [Incidentally, the photo of the eight-tracks and this caption were not included in the original proposal.]

Bio: John Uhl

Hopefully my outline has already given you some sense of my personality and relative talents as a writer. Generally, when I write, I try to allow my biography to emerge gradually, through inference and connotation. At this point what's important to know about me is that I care about records and music, in particular their potential to express truth, such that I refuse to sentimentalize my relationship with them. I may be a fan of Lou Reed's work with the Velvet Underground, but I consider his solo career erratic and have no strong convictions about Metal Machine Music, one way or the other. I haven't even listened to it all the way through (I could only find half of it online), and see no reason why this should make me less qualified to write one of your books than someone who listens to it (or some other widely beloved record) everyday, start to finish. Popular music places too much emphasis on the fan's perspective and, frankly, I think it would be more interesting to read a book in which the author worked toward a new conclusion -- rather than against his, her, or the public's bias. Of course, I have my own biases, which present themselves clearly whenever they are needed, but -- in this case -- these don't pertain to my esteem for the record that would be up for discussion.

[At this point I included two paragraphs of professional biographical information that I will refrain from publishing here.]

Thoughts on the 33 1/3 series

So far, my favorite books in the series have been:

OK Computer, because I enjoyed its numerous musical charts.

Led Zeppelin IV, because even though it addressed a record and subject (the occult) about which I had no interest in reading, I got through at least half the book.

Celine Dion's Let's Talk About Love, which I like in theory, because it seems a ridiculous choice of subject and suggests a willingness on the publisher's part to take on ostensibly imprudent projects.

-- proposal written, 02.14.07

***

Other Rejected 33 1/3 Proposals

Jerry Lee Lewis, "Live At The Star Club, Hamburg," by Keith Phipps
Jefferson Airplane, "Crown of Creation," by Tim Lucas (this one doesn't include the actual proposal, but is interesting)
The Jesus and Mary Chain, "Psychocandy," by Daniel Fuller
Butthole Surfers, "Locust Abortion Technitian," by Antonio Lopez
Bonny 'Prince' Billy, "I See a Darkness," by Mike Hotter
Cheap Trick, "Dream Police," by Matt Cibula
Peter Gabriel, "So," by Nik Dirga
Sufjan Stevens, "Illinois," by Benjamin Squires
Soft Cell, "Non-Stop Erotic Cabaret," by Kurt B. Reighley
The Dukes of Stratosphear (XTC), "Chips from the Chocolate Fireball," by Paul Margach
Buffalo Springfield, "Buffalo Springfield Again," by Bryan Thomas
Bright Eyes, "Fevers and Mirrors," by Sarah Feldman
Isaac Hayes, "Shaft," by AKA
Phish, "Hoist," by Dave Heaton

***

Update

Of 449 submitted proposals, 21 have been selected for publication. A list of the selected proposals can be seen on the 33 1/3 blog.

See an excerpt from an accepted proposal here: Israel Kamakawiwo'ole, "Facing Future," by Dan Kois

Countdown to Ecstasy: 2005 Best-of Music Lists

Oh, joy -- the results are in! Another year comes to a close with another pair of Top 50 lists from Pitchfork, as well as a couple bonus tallies. Not too many surprises here, although certain ranking placements and exemptions suggest the fork slightly modifies its opinion for the end of the year. In October, for instance, the second Broken Social Scene record received an 8.4 rating and a "Best New Music" recommendation -- yet it didn't make the final 50 (whereas Devendra Banhart's Cripple Crow, which also received an 8.4, was ranked #38, and The Decemberists' Picaresque, which received an 8.3, was ranked #26). These aren't necessarily inconsistencies. The final list, I presume, is supposed to reflect the consensus of a more general, collaborative opinion and thus stand as a more authoritative, time-tested perspective. The days pass and opinions change. Now that January is on its way, though, clearly the time has come to make up one's mind about whether certain pop records are really as important as one originally thought.

Another thing I noticed was that, in the wake of these lists, there was some grumbling that Pitchfork doesn't know anything about hip-hop. An interesting sentiment and one that seems to come up from time to time -- although I'm the last person qualified to take a stance on the matter. Anyway, I'll save a more detailed commentary for a later post. For now, why not see how the fork's roundup compares with some of the others on the web.

More Best-of-2005 Lists

Metacritic

PopMatters

Stylus Magazine

Information Leafblower

Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise

Said the Gramophone

Insound Employees

And there's many, many more where these came from (though, after a while, they all start to blur together) ...

Some Other Lists that are Probably a Waste of Your Time

Every Local Album Released in Raleigh, NC

Hottest Babes in Indie Rock

USAToday.com's Top 100 People of 2005


Over here, at least people are talking while they list.

Coming Attractions: More of the List, and More

As the days grow increasingly dark and dreary, I thought it wise to pause and take stock of where this blog is headed. I began with a list and a rant, as well as a promise to make sense of why I find the lists that pass for discourse within the pop music subculture so unsatisfying. Now that we've arrived neck deep in the Holidays and find ourselves sinking quickly toward the New Year, we've suddenly entered prime list season. Over the course of the next several weeks, then, I will continue my struggle with the list. What is its purpose? Who are its friends? Why does it only come in intervals of five and ten? These are just a few of the vexing questions I intend to address and offer in place of the usual comfort and tidings of joy. Michael Bérubé has suggested that I hate lists because they "disguise the fact that a great deal of popular culture isn't worth ranking or remembering at all." He also states that "the real fun of a list -- and the intellectual labor -- is realized only when its creator has to explain and defend its rationale." Yet too often I find the list becomes a dead end, an excuse for pundits to make blanket generalizations they never have any intention (or idea how) to defend. I don't have a problem with the list, per se -- just the lack of insight it tends to yield. This, at least, is the premise I mean to explore.