Friday February 29th 2008, 9:19 am
Filed under: Open Your Ears
Posted by: Julia
You may have heard there was an earthquake Wednesday night in England that was felt as far as away Holland, measuring 5.2 on the Richter Scale. No deaths, but it was strong enough to knock a few teapots from their shelves, rattle grandma’s false teeth and leave the family dog constipated for a week, that. I heard it from my brother over there, who sent me a text message 22 minutes after it happened saying: “I think we just had an earthquake in York.” I immediately checked the BBC and the AP — nothing. A glass of wine later (I figured if he was texting me, my brother was okay), I checked again and a headline scrolling across the BBC website confirmed the story; grandmas across the Midlands were calling to report rattled teeth and constipated dogs.
That one man in Yorkshire can tell his sister two thousand miles away in New York about an earthquake mere minutes after its occurrence and before the news bastions report it says less of the immediacy of media technology today than it does of our attitude to events that once would have seemed, if you’ll pardon the expression, earth shattering.
In the Dark Ages, people cowered in terror in their mud huts wondering why “God” was angry at them. Fifty years ago, folks rushed to their radios after the panic was over and undoubtedly kept the following day’s newspaper as a souvenir of “the day I almost died.” The next generation spent hours glued to their television screens which a few years later would instead be computer screens. Today, people fire off a quick text, update their FaceBook page to say: “Julia felt the earth move under her feet,” and then get on with their day. (I for one have nothing against this laissez-faire attitude. To the contrary, I think humans generally overthink these things — any other life form would simply find a safe place to weather the storm and then get back to foraging for food, stalking prey, mating, etc.)
This is not say that we are more superficial today than our forefathers; the attitude shift is an inevitable result of our wider knowledge of the universe, basic understanding of seismic activity and fault lines, etc. It does however raise the interesting question of how a musician can make a lasting impact in 2008 when not even an earthquake can. How do you craft a hit song that makes people do more than text their friends and update their social networking sites? It may be an indicator of success when thousands of people have your song loaded on their MySpace pages so that visiting “friends” will hear it, but the problem manifests the next day when everyone has switched to a new song.
This is one of many questions we’re asking ourselves every day in this business, but still we’re not giving up on the concept of a hit song (we’d kind of have to quit our jobs if we did). Oh, for the days like February 7th, 1964 when four Liverpudlians could fly into J.F.K. and virtually eclipse everything else happening in America that day! But, there were less than half the amount of Americans back then than there are today; so, more people making music, more people buying it. Good, right? But then there is that pesky question of competition, all those iPods and the internet offering us all this choice. All this new media to harness — get the featured artist slot on MySpace, make the song into a ringtone so fans can download it to their phone, and still you’re competing against thousands of other artists. Geez, all the Beatles had to do was show up.
Easily the most talked about approach of the moment for getting your song out there is music licensing; placement on Grey’s Anatomy or Lost or a commercial for an Apple product so that it’s heard by millions every view or download or ad break. Genius!
I know, I know. If you’re a radio programmer it’s possible that you doth protest. “I don’t want to play a song from an ad, it’s so…..commercial!” Well, get over it. The Beatles made whole movies to provide vehicles for their music. And this shit works: The Reminder from Feist has had over 800,000 downloads, a good chunk of which occurred immediately after her iPod ads aired. Yael Naim peaked at #7 on the Hot 100 chart before radio was even serviced with her song “New Soul” when it was featured on the new MacBook commercial. The downloads on “Killing the Blues” from Robert Plant & Alison Krauss are up 181% since the JCPenney’s commercial began its run. Ingrid Michaelson and Joe Purdy are both independent artists who’ve experienced downloads in the hundreds of thousands following commercial exposure. There is nothing deceptive or sleazy about this approach, but times are changing. So keep up! This may be the closest thing we have to hit making these days, and it’s no bad thing.
Consider this: radio listeners know that song and they’ve read the artist bio online before you get it on the air. How’s that for your precious familiarity? And if you worry that your listeners might complain you’re playing “that song from the commercial,” you shouldn’t. Many of them are most likely part of the millions who have responded to a commercial and consequently downloaded a song. And those musicians that we all claim to love and support? They get to make an income (minus Apple’s obligatory 30% of course). And make more music!
Go ahead, play the song. The tremor might be smaller than the one you felt when “I Want to Hold Your Hand” hit the airwaves, but a song can still rock your world.
Thursday February 28th 2008, 6:17 pm
Filed under: Livewire
Posted by: Julia
“Do you view the current situation as an occupation or a liberation?”
A loaded question, you might say, when the “current situation” is the US presence in Iraq, and the inquiry is being posed to an Iraqi by a US officer. Bill Prescott, an information officer at the US Embassy in Baghdad, is interviewing Adnan, an Iraqi, for a position as an interpreter in the Green Zone. Oddly enough, they agree on the answer.
The two are central characters in Betrayed, a play by The New Yorker’s George Packer currently showing off-Broadway, which he adapted from an article he wrote for the magazine last year. In it, he exposes the disturbing plight of many Iraqi contractors who have risked their lives to work for the US government, making them targets for rebel forces, though they are offered no protection in return. The character of Prescott is based closely on Kirk Johnson, an Illinois native who three years ago at age 24 arrived at the Embassy. What appears as brash political rhetoric when we first meet him is later revealed to be sincere, yet naïve, patriotism. Prescott is here to rebuild Iraq, to improve it.
In this respect, his enthusiasm is matched only by that of Adnan, a gregarious 35-year-old Sunni who welcomed the US intervention in Iraq, even wished for it: “I was always fascinated with the English language.” But under Saddam Hussein, Adnan hadn’t even had the opportunity to get an education, so he worked selling books spread out on a blanket on the street. Meanwhile, he voraciously devoured anything written in English, particularly philosophy, adventure and porn (it is important, he explained, for the storyline to be interesting, so that you want to understand it). With the US invasion, Adnan saw his chance at freedom — freedom of thought and opportunity and expression and religion. Finally, he said, he would live in a place where you can speak anything you wish! This was indeed liberation.
In one act, using one set, Packer magnificently transports us between the original bombing campaign of March 2003 to the present day, from the hostile gates of the Green Zone, to the sterile offices of the Embassy, and from the dark, ravaged backstreets of Baghdad, to the deserted sanctuary of the Palestine Hotel in central Baghdad.
It is here at the hotel where Packer spoke to two disillusioned Iraqis about their experiences in early 2007, and it is here that his play begins. Adnan is waiting for his friend Laith in the now vacant hotel lobby. The men began working at the Embassy three years previously, with their friend Intisar, a zealous young Iraqi woman. Leading double lives to protect themselves and their loved ones, they concocted ludicrously complicated schemes to get to work, often involving multiple vehicles, to avoid being followed. After which, they stood in line in the blistering heat for hours waiting to pass security at the Green Zone. This line is a prime target for suicide bombers. During their job orientation of Green Zone and Red Zone procedures, Intisar asks, “What is the Red Zone?”
“Well,” comes the response, “it’s everything outside the Green Zone.”
“So,” ventures Intisar, “the Red Zone is Iraq.”
And here lies the answer to Prescott’s original question: the Red Zone is a place to escape from. Or, Iraq is a prison. Despite Prescott’s support, the three were denied upgraded passes that would allow them to skip the long lines. Intisar has since been murdered for her involvement (after which the remaining two have still been denied passes that would protect their lives), and Laith was fired for contacting rebel fighters under instruction from his supervisor. He has requested the meeting with Adnan in the hope that he can help him find asylum.
Today, Prescott and Adnan have changed their views about the nature of the allied presence, and still they remain in agreement: occupation. Prescott helps first Laith and then Adnan to escape Iraq, finding them asylum in Sweden (because for America to accept asylum seekers from Iraq “would be to admit that we have failed”). Liberation in the end comes not from Prescott’s arrival in Iraq, but by finding the Iraqis a passage out.
One of my family’s many home movies depicts a very grave injustice. My elder brother, probably five or six at the time, is participating in Sports Day at his primary school (here you do sports at school every day, I think, but in Scotland it’s an annual event). In any case, my dad was there with his video camera to capture my brother’s victory. Taller than the other portly little kids in the pack, he breaks free and emerges the clear front runner in the 50 meter sprint. Then, inexplicably, the teacher strides over, randomly selects the nearest kid, and lifting his fist in the air proclaims him the winner.
I’m sure there was nothing malicious about it, just an artless teacher deciding it didn’t really matter who won, because these were only five-year-olds after all. But the camera catches my brother standing there looking perplexed and gutted as everyone else moves on to the egg and spoon race. I know, I know, life’s a bitch. Shit happens. These things make you tougher. But maybe as a result of that tape, I’ve always been a champion of the underdog, hoping for once that the person in charge will call time out, review the play, and make the right call. It doesn’t matter if it’s a World Cup qualifier or world politics, fair is fair. But it never happens.
Until last night. Daily Show host Jon Stewart actually had the balls to call out that epitome of fascism that is the conductor of the Academy Awards orchestra! Year after year, using repressive methods that could even make Amtrak trains run on time, that quintessentially tyrannical orchestra keeps the ceremony moving at its characteristically idle pace, leaving terrorized and silenced celebrities quaking in its wake. For every maudlin montage of “great” movie moments they find time to subject us to, more time is trimmed off the acceptance speeches we’ve actually tuned in to see.
It has long been falsely assumed that everyone gets thirty seconds to speak, and then the music drowns them out. In fact, a much more complex formula is used: they begin by taking the significance of the award being given (is it Best Picture, or merely Best Sound Mixing in a Short Animated Feature?), and then multiply that number by the status of the winner (Clooney or that Ratatouille dude?). After that, time left on this earth is taken into consideration. If the recipient is an octogenarian, an extra thirty seconds is awarded, and anyone in their nineties gets a whole additional minute (conversely, someone young like Ellen Page would have time subtracted in the assumption that she has plenty of time to win more awards, and give more speeches). Finally, there are all sorts of tiny specifications taken into account, such as: Is the recipient going to mention the war? (Turn the music up! Turn the music up!) Is the recipient Sean Penn? (Fade him out NOW!) And is the recipient female? Automatic fifteen second deduction, ladies.
Last night, the autocrats truly outdid themselves by deducing that Marketa Irglova had earned exactly zero seconds of talk time. Culminating what has been a momentous year for the musician and her partner Glen Hansard, their song “Falling Slowly” from their movie Once was awarded Best Song. Something I had strongly wished for — but highly doubted would actually happen — a sentiment Hansard concurred with when he noted the film had been made in three weeks using two hand-helds. He gave his brief (ten second?) acceptance speech, and then as Irglova was stepping up to the mic, the music muscled its way in. Perhaps the equation showed that her lack of notoriety plus gender eclipsed completely the fact that she co-wrote the song, co-starred in the film, and had co-performed it only a few minutes previously? Who knows? Anyway, same old story.
But in a classy move, Oscar producer Gil Cates immediately caught the error and asked Jon Stewart to go backstage and ask Marketa to come back out and make her speech. It was a first for the stuffy old awards show. Coming back after the break, Stewart announced that it was unfair that the last awardee hadn’t been able to make her speech, and brought her back out. Someone actually called time out, reviewed the play, and made the right call! And did Irglova waste our time thanking her mother and the Academy and God? She did not. She dedicated her award, concisely, to all independent musicians everywhere, something close to my heart that so rarely gets the attention deserved.
And nobody died from the extra, unaccounted for, fifteen seconds it took! No celebrities expired from that additional time suffering a duct taped cleavage (as far as we know), the tuba player didn’t topple over from fatigue after holding up a fifty pound brass instrument too long, and the folks at home didn’t develop gangrene as a result of circulation problems from sitting on the couch an extra quarter minute. And the Oscar goes to… the underdog.
The stars were out in full-force last night for the Oscars — even the late Danny Kaye made an appearance in a clip of him acting as master of ceremonies in 1952.
Check out this delightful clip we discovered of the treasured actor, singer and comedian performing an American classic with one of the world’s greatest jazz innovators, Satchmo. Trust us, they don’t make ‘em like this anymore!
The clip is from the semi-autobiographical 1959 film Five Pennies which starred Kaye as “Red” Nichols, a Dixieland cornet player who gives up on his dreams when his daughter develops polio, only to make a comeback at her bidding years later. The film received four Oscar nominations, including “Best Song”!
NME recently made the new disc from Nada Surf, Lucky, their album of the week. They call it the band’s “finest album yet” — pretty impressive, considering that the Brooklyn trio has been around for 14 years, released five full-lengths and two EPs, and that their debut sported a massive hit single. Hear excerpts of tracks, including the single “Whose Authority,” in this podcast.
Nada Surf drummer Daniel Lorca loves to cook. He made dinner for the band every night during the recording sessions for Lucky. Here’s his favorite recipe for mussels. Serve with rice.
Monday February 25th 2008, 11:13 am
Filed under: Open Your Ears
Posted by: Julia
This just in: Public Radio International’s Clark Boyd is the latest victim of Bell X1’s supremely crafted rock.
Since we received our copy of their third album Flock, we mostly sit around at the Songlines office drinking cups of tea, listening to the album endlessly on repeat, and wondering what we did before Bell X1. But Boyd took it one step further and decided to get to the bottom of why this record is so addictive.
As he reports on The World’s “Global Hit” segment,Boyd’s quest led him to the recipe for a hit record: it involves Ireland, an apple, one US Military Aircraft, and the Fox television series The OC. Oh, and a large serving of hugely talented musicians.
With the Fair Deal program, desegregation of the armed forces, and Communist persecution on his resume, Harry S. Truman didn’t really need to end his presidency with a bang, but end it with a bang he did. Three days before Dwight D. Eisenhower defeated Adlai Stevenson to become the next Commander in Chief, the United States detonated the first hydrogen bomb above the Marshall Islands, early in the morning of November 1, 1952.
“Nine months later the Soviets surprised the Western powers by exploding a thermonuclear device of their own. The race to obliterate life was on — and how. Now we truly were become Death, the shatterer of worlds. So it is perhaps not surprising that as this happened I sat in Des Moines, Iowa, quietly shitting myself. I had little choice. I was ten months old.” –Bill Bryson
And so goes Bill Bryson’s unrivaled knack for delivering hard facts with an uncompromising wit and a flair for the greatly exaggerated in his new book The Life and Times of the Thunderbolt Kid. In what is part childhood memoir, part history of 1950s America, Bryson’s hilarious aptitude for sprinkling historic data with delightful embellishments results in a larger-than-life nostalgic journey through an America that is at once frightening and enchanting, foreign and familiar, and is no more.
The Thunderbolt Kid is the superhero alter-ego of the childhood Bryson, who grew up in Des Moines, IA. Bryson navigates Kid World set against the featureless landscape of the Midwest with tales of a home life led by a father partial to being naked from the waist down, of misguided family vacations that ended him up in Harlem, and high school beer heists of epic proportions.
Most impressive is his attention to detail of American life in a bygone era: space exploration, proliferation of the automobile, the day Playboy began showing pubic hair, UFOs, the arrival of television in America’s homes, the meatloaf-based cuisine of Midwestern church socials, Growing up with Dick and Jane books, Maidenform bras, Slinkys, The Bay of Pigs, grape-flavored Nehi soda, George & Gracie. With great enthusiasm, he fondly recalls a time when a new kitchen appliance was the object of a large neighborhood audience for weeks after its purchase.
In all of his memoirs, Bryson is a master manipulator of wistfulness and shrewd realism. The American life he remembers in The Thunderbolt Kid was simpler, and the universe was a less explored place than today. Therefore, people had bigger imaginations, as virtually anything was possible: life on Mars, surviving a nuclear attack in a catalog-ordered air-raid shelter with non-perishable food, self-driving cars, anything! But concurrently, he expertly weaves in the less comforting aspects of the era: racial brutality, the nuclear arms race, polio, McCarthyism, the banana republics of the United Fruits Company.
No sooner has Bryson convinced you that cartoons, along with most things, were better in the 1950s, than he reminds you of Walt Disney’s unsupported testimony that the cartoonist’s guild was full of Communists. Striking a balance between hard social truths, warmhearted memories and fantastic imagination, he evokes a world where happiness was easier, often taking the form of something as simple as an electronic ice crusher, but assures us that some things — like spray-on mayonnaise — are better left in the past.
Shawn Mullins has a winner in his new single, “All in My Head.” Originally written as a prospective theme song for the fantastic NBC sitcom Scrubs, Mullins decided to revisit it on a whim when he began to lay down tracks for his new Vanguard record, Honeydew, and quickly heard a new groove in it. The recut track is some of his strongest work. Hear more about the album in this Songlines podcast, and then view the video below, which is a terrific solo acoustic performance from KFOG in San Francisco.
I know, I know. Gnarls Barkley has a hot new single, and we’re always excited about what’s new, new, new! I don’t know about you, though, but I’ll never forget the first time I heard “Crazy.” So I was particularly gratified to hear it in this new way:
This otherworldly instrument — in case you’ve never seen or heard one before — is a theremin. It was one of the first electric instruments to be invented (1919), and the very first to be played with no actual physical contact. The way that it would someday imitate Cee-lo’s voice so perfectly was probably not intended by its inventor, Leon Theremin, but I’m glad nonethless.
It’s been three years since Kathleen Edwards released her last record; she’s taken pains to make the new batch of songs perfect. The resulting album — which is fleshed out with beautiful instrumental work from Benmont Tench and Greg Leisz — is Asking for Flowers.
Julia was desperate to include a string of expletives at the end of this podcast in Kathleen’s honor, but in the end she decided not to shock you. (And I’m sure you would’ve been shocked.)
