Hipster Grifter

Notes On the California Novel

1. Images of Disappointment

2. Grapes of Wrath as the definitive version

3. Day of the Locust represents the East Coast expection of certain doom

4. Taken up by the Mystery writers (Chandler, Cain, Ellroy)

5. Driven by makers and unmakers. Mike Davis and Joan Didion write about the makers (William Muholland, Harrison Gray Otis,etc.) and unmakers (earthquakes, smog, santa ana winds, etc.)

6. The move from California as the future to the future as obsolete (The Jetsons and Phillip K. Dick)

7. The Literature of California erases place. The story of Hollywood as a move from the place where movies are made to the way movies are made. Place turns into technology. California as not a place but a technology.

8. In the future California writers will not dote on New York and no one in California will use the phrase “back east” as if they have already been there.

On Random

When commenting on the occurrence of events, the parlance for the course to describe how things happen that do not fit into expectation or planned outcome is to say random.

What is random, but mathematics?

When random is used to describe a certain situation it is to account for the equation of happenstance.

Maybe my real problem with the term random is not its misuse, but that it concerns probability over possibility.

Is It Really So Strange?

The Trashmen performing on American Bandstand in 1963.

On Little Joy

Looking passed Abe Vigoda's Tropic Punk sound, one sees evidence of Minutemen-like structure, touches of Pavement-snark, and the subtle bounce of Talking Heads strut. Think Psycho Killer dropping the French and adding lines in Portuguese.

But the surface is what one sees and now that Little Joy are on the scene, Abe Vigoda are influenced by Tropicalia. While it could be a blessing in disguise, no one likes to be put in a box.

I like the Little Joy record, but I like it because it reminds me of a ska record. Am I the only one?


Also, check out Metacritic for the backhanded compliment.
http://www.metacritic.com/music/artists/littlejoy/littlejoy

On Modest Mouse, Denis Johnson, and California

Communicating repetition through difference
Inhabiting a space between thought and action
Something warm never felt so cold

On Noir Narraration

As she walked by, she caught my attention; her face, her hair, she had the look of quiet determination. I didn't know where she came from. But I wanted to find out where she was going.

On The Music Video

A genre in which form follows content.
Literalness has been new-leveled.
If a lyric describes The East Side Motel, one can expect to see an image of The East Side Motel

On Music and Robots

Fuck Pandora, Fuck Genius, today I emptied out my ITunes and filled it with only music I wanted to hear, 3,000 songs I want to hear, haven't heard in a while or at all. Now I'm enjoying the shuffle function for maybe the first time ever.

Crystal Castles Arcade Game More popular At Local Bar Than Band Of The Same Name

Brooklyn, NY—When the Toronto band, Crystal Castles played a popular Brooklyn club on Friday night, attendance was poor. Perhaps more unexpected was that major interest that night centered around a video game console coincidently called Crystal Castles.

Area man, Jordan, who just moved to Brooklyn after graduating from Bucknell University said, “I have no idea who the band or the video game was before tonight. I just came to meet some friends.”

Bored by the band, Jordan moved to the back of the bar where he discovered the video game. Jordan’s high score attracted considerable attention by those in the bar. One onlooker said, “Initially I was curious because there was a video game named after the band I came to see. But after I watched that dude play, it was more entertaining than the guys on stage. I also dug the music better.”

The video game was released by Atari in 1983. The band however, claims the game in no way affected their name selection. But perhaps the game should have been more of an influence. According to Atari, Crystal Castles was one of the first video games to have an actual ending. At the time the game was released, it had been industry standard to have games repeat indefinitely or simply start over.

An area woman in attendance had a similar criticism. She said, “It’s like the game had purpose and direction. When Jordan made that bear eat those gems, he couldn’t leave the level until they were all gone. It was like Ms Pac-Man but better. When I was watched the band perform, it was like the songs would just go on forever and sometimes I felt like they had simply started the song over.”

Still, there are similarities. As another onlooker commented, “Its like I can’t tell the difference between the music in the game and the music of the band.”

The failure to garner interest surprised no one more than the owner and promoter, Harry J. “When I booked the band.” he said, “I heard a lot of the kids talking about them. Not just in the bar. When I would go on their Myspaces and Facebooks, I would see that the kids liked them. I thought they’d draw a crowd. But when I put that video game in the corner over there it was just to hide the rat traps.”

When asked if he would get rid of the game to allow more interest in the bands, leaving the rat traps exposed, the owner said, “Not with the Rat Traps, a local band, playing next Friday. It’s too risky. The kids today they love their irony. If I book a band like the Rat Traps, they may rather drink my cheap beer and stare at real rat traps all night.”

On Cinnamontality

Long night walks through Claremont have been spent listening to the Smoking Popes. Played loud through those cheap ipod ear buds and only sometimes singing along at my favorite lines.

I don't know how to share the Smoking Popes with anyone. I listen to them at my most private and they make me feel more balanced. They take me back some place and I feel perspectived.

I imagine them to be what Weezer would sound like if Rivers believed in love.

On Wounded Lion

Something absolutely beautiful happens a minute and half through Wounded Lion's "Pony People." A crack emerges in the garage pop foundation. The song quickly recovers and parts catchier than the chorus cover and suture the wound.

This song falls apart the way the best Talking Heads songs do.

When Sevens Fully Clashed (PreMillennial Music Moment Version 4)

The 1977 album by Culture, When Two Sevens Clash was inspired by Marcus Garvey's apocalyptic predictions. The effects of this record were felt in Culture's home in Jamaica as the liner notes describe, "the prophecies noted by the lyrics so profoundly captured the imagination of the people."

Effects were felt abroad as well, The Clash released a record titled "1977," based around the same apocalyptic predictions as well as London turmoil and race riots.

But it was The Ramones who titled their 1977 album End of the Century. Conflating the end of the decade with the end of the century in the line from "Do You Remember Rock n Roll Radio?" "It's the end of the 70s/it's the end of the century."

Call it rushing towards the end, but it's not really looking towards, nor anticipating a particular moment, its making something happen rather waiting for something to happen.

On Framing

When I see photographs by Anita Bunn, it's like television. I trust her framing, that this is what I need to see. But in this trust comes the realization that there is something beyond the frame. Television never allows for that realization.

While watching sports, the playing field is reduced to the site of action: the ball being thrown, caught, hit, etc. When my grandma tells me things she saw on the news, there is no room in the discussion for the other side of the story, or that beyond the frame may be a more important story.

Slavoj Zizek says it a little different. It's not beyond the frame, but between two frames. There are always two frames, the visible and invisible frame; the frame that displays the painting, and the frame created by the structure of our perception. There is the frame of presentation and the frame of subjectivity.

The frame and the realization of the frame create a gap, a gap where meaning is made. In this way, this photograph by Bunn does not create an understanding or appreciation of inside/outside, but something much more complicated. It depicts spaces of between and beyond.

On Vampires and Zombies (PreMillennial Music Version 3)

The way vampires and zombies represent both versions of the apocalypse, in the form of eternal life and eternal death, respectively, Rock music at the end of the millennium celebrate or mourn itself.

This 2004 track by Secret Machines, which includes the line "our lives erased," in form is celebratory, but in content reveals mournful lyrics. As the NYC by way of Texas band uses kraut.heavy.shoegaze influences expanding them into bright punchy works of U2 sonic density, I mean destiny. The future looks bright.

See also, Muse, Radiohead, My Chemical Romance, and as of late Vampire Weekend.

PreMillennial Music Moment Version 2

Tomorrow You May Bring About the Destruction of Yr World.
But Tonight, But Tonight.

Henry Rollins. Germany. 1984. Reading Henry Miller.

The PreMillennial Music Moment

Strokes, Interpol, and Yeah Yeah Yeahs as perfecting the Iggy croon.
Mourning a yet-to-be experienced loss
Prenostalgia Ian Curtis/Postechnology malaise

Thoughts on Rocket Man

The influence of the Bradbury short story "Rocket Man" can be heard in both the Elton John song of the same name as well as David Bowie's "Space Oddity," songs that depict loneliness as a conflation of success and failure.

As the narrator in "Rocket Man" feels the effects of leaving home as horribly mixed, space also becomes a place with neither past nor future. He is not the man he was back home and it is not a place he can stay, because he can't raise children there.

I always thought the line "It's going to be a long long time" should be it's going to be a lot of time, but I guess it's really the same thing.

A version of the song shows up again by Neon Blonde on their first record.

On the Music Video

How come music video tropes become more apparent in the form of parody?

On False Metal

I traced the Death to False Metal phrase to Manowar, a band of the genre who made the distinction between True Metal and False Metal. The slogan of Death to False Metal is not so much a battle cry as it is a badge one wears to display that one is not a poser.

In what I've been reading on Metal, Manowar and the Death to False Metal claim, emphasis seems to be placed on keeping the genre pure. In a way it is meta, or meta(l) or metal about metal.

I always misheard the lyric in the Beastie Boys song "No Sleep Til Brooklyn" to being about about death to false metal something about a boiling kettle, but this would not be. Manowar would call the Beastie Boys false metal because they don't have a stake in metal, only dabble.

I also encountered a curious rhetorical shift. When discussing what false metal is, focus always goes to who it's by, but not what it actually is.

The Urban Dictionary definitions of false metal are entertaining if not enlightening: false metal

John Darnielle expands on ideas of false metal in Last Plane to Jakarta here

For more information about Manowar check wikipedia