James Ferraro. Let's talk about it.
I could go on and on about the post title meaning that I can't tell where the irony stops and starts with this thing, or how that linked article intimates that there shouldn't be any irony in it at all (which I have a hard time believing). I've had a hard time getting into the Rustie record for the same reason. With both of those artists, I have moments in the record where I'm like, "this is good... I'm liking it". Then some fucking Yamaha keyboard horn preset or some other such thing that sounds like a scratch track from a Huey Lewis record happens and I'm like, "nope. still annoying."
Maybe this means I just can't look past timbre and appreciate things that sound like fucking garbage but are compositionally inventive. Or I'm just old, and get off my lawn.
The whole reason I even listened past the first track of that Ferraro record is Mike P put it on his year-end list.
Tuesday, February 7, 2012
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For better or worse, I think we're stuck with this. Kind of like the Odd Future stuff, or definitely that Rustie record, it's the work of younger people who came of age in a decade so supersaturated with an aesthetic of "ironic" appropriation and re-appropriation that it's just the fucking air that they breathe. Like, we're old enough only to like Garfield for the nostalgia and/or kitsch mileage we can get out of it (plus a megadose of good old fashioned Gen-X self-loathing if it's both of those at the same time). But now the cultural ascendancy belongs to people who, BECAUSE they were weaned in the internet hothouse of "Garfield sux" LOLZ, genuinely LIKE Garfield for what it is, and trying to parse their Garfield homages for sincerity is near impossible down to the molecular level. This is the generation that will be having orgies in high orbit to chopped and screwed Boston/Waka Flocka mashups while Steve Albini rots in assisted living, and I'm already tearing my hair out over which side to be on.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you up till:
ReplyDeletegenuinely LIKE Garfield for what it is
...because I'm not sure what they like - the original "fat cat likes lasagna and acts like a king, heh heh" Jim Davis joke, or the "isn't this a ridiculous attempt at humor" Gen X perspective (or both). Which is kind of what you were saying anyway.
I dunno.. I guess it seems wrong? unintelligent? something to me to be so completely unaware of yourself, which is I think kind of what you're getting at. I'm probably just old, though.
The dill with the linked article may be that it was written by someone our age, who doesn't really understand this shit, but is doing the art-gallery-descriptions writing trick where critics try to bullshit people into thinking they grok the fuck out of something they're just riding the bandwagon of. (if that made sense.)
But partially I think it is just an aesthetic reaction on my part - I liked the records of that band College this year, too, which are similarly intentionally-shitty-sounding, but they pull it off in a way that appeals to me, perhaps because the element being recycled is slightly older (Jarré vs. Wesley Willis).
Just to be clear that I'm not shitting all over Mike P's taste, I've also been listening to that Oneohtrix Point Never record on the same list (Replica), and that shit's pretty fucking good.
ReplyDeleteIn Kansas, there is a strange house party music scene that spends a lot of time with the casios and presets. Referred here after as the Preset Casio Generation (PCG). I run with some of these PCG kids and I will give my interpretations of what I have seen, at least in the midwest.
ReplyDeleteThere is a novelty factor of music that sounds poorly done. This may not be a new phenomenon, but I have been so blitzed out of my head for so long, I may not have noticed people doing this shit in public, ON PURPOSE. It is like the kids go "Look how big my balls are cause I just got on stage and fucked off for a 20 minutes, and it sounded like shit, and I wanted it that way" This accounts for at least a non-negligible portion of the PCG's.
There seems to be this crazy drive for live shows. Most of the PCG bands I have seen were on tour. These kids go on country wide tours playing house shows for weeks at a time. So there is the old Grateful Dead joke, you can't listen to the LPs, you have to see them live. And you can't see them live sober, you have to be on a drug that makes you see shit.
I went to a show last night that had 2 singers, a hype man, and a CJ/DJ guy running the music, and they played there ass off. But they were playing hookey casio music. I wasn't that impressed with the music, but I had a good fucking time. The mother fuckers were doing splits and grinding the fuck out on the building ( I speak of little ruckus).
Pic- http://iheartlocalmusic.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/02/DSC_0168.jpg
Article- http://iheartlocalmusic.com/2012/02/08/photo-gallery-robocopter-terror-pigeon-dance-revolt-little-ruckus-cs-luxem/
That being said, some of the folks in this scene are GREAT musicians are use this genre as on slice of there personality.
PCGs are similar to cassettes tapes. We all had walkmen and remembered how big of a pain in the ass they were. CD's came around cause some smart dude got tired of cassettes and made something "better". For me, most of the electronic music I have made was a reaction to the synth pop casio sounds from when I was growing up. CDs and Electronic Music were reactions. PCG's are reacting and rediscovering shit we got tired of.
So the punk kids are still around, but the PCGs are very much like them, in terms of clothing, venues, and focus on DIY. The PCGs may be offspring of the of the punk generation when we were young. The style is a strange mix of punk/richard Simmons aesthetic with that Huey Lewis instrumentation. I don't think these kids had to listen to My102.5 (or other adult contemporary top 40 station) every time they rode around in there parents cars, or they would sample fucking Huey Lewis.
I think the world dynamic go thrown off kilter when lots of the acid makers started making ecstasy.
There is also this John Cage type deal of making music to make a point.
PCG's are rebelling against the hipster stereotype by embracing the stereotype to a CRAZY amount. See the title of this post . . .
I have some rough drafts of a project I am working on with a PCG kid and I will get a post of it up in a few days and see what you all think.
I don't really see the point of spending a lot of time worrying about this. This music is just fucking bad. You can pretty much tell, just from looking at the cover, that the whole thing is going to be diarrhea. I think there's still too much legitimately, unabashedly good music being made to spend time trying to figure out why you don't like the stuff you don't like.
ReplyDeletei was killing time at work and didn't have anything better to do!!!
ReplyDeletefair enough. not calling you out or anything. just how i feel about it.
Deleteyou and your positive thinking! A haters gonna hate- http://cdn0.sbnation.com/imported_assets/510602/haters-gonna-hate-panda_medium.jpg
DeleteThe first song at the bottom of that link is straight up CharlieBrown-step.
ReplyDelete