STREET TEAM

Where’s The Street Team?: 2008 Film Edition

January 28, 2009
street-team-filmflat For no reasons other than tardiness and disorganization, I continue to amass problematic entertainment entities from 2008. So, even as we near the beginning of February 2009, my retroactive master list of nuisances continues to grow. This is the first official installment of “Where’s The Street Team?: The Online Version,” my own little inauguration into the practice of ongoing online creativity that isn’t a blog that no one reads (failedpilot.com). Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist In a recent Entertainment Weekly (one of the only periodicals I regularly read cover-to-cover), crap merchant Diablo Cody whines inaccurately that Nick & Norah’s Infinite Playlist suffers from underdog status. Doesn’t she hang out with the 20-year-olds she is obsessed with targeting and emulating? Cody uses the phrases “rarest of creatures,” “beautifully sincere” and “passion project” to describe a film that’s going to age like a big tub of uncovered hummus festering in the August heat. An astonishing dearth of foresight is in place when communication technology is used to accent/provide a film’s title or serve as a plot device. Though some mumblecore films are actually named after instant/text-message shorthand, using the word “playlist” will make Nick & Norah a nostalgic laughingstock in 10 years, a point of reference for 2025’s version of the emo/indie-robot who needs something to talk about at a party. Let’s say I’m a childhood friend of MAGNET senior editor Matthew Fritch and together we made a film in 1990 titled Matt And Andy’s Badass Sports Walkman. Now let’s say that Sandra Bullock starred in a 1995 film known as The Net … If Napoleon Dynamite remains the gold standard in painful mediocrity disguised as seemingly original quirkiness, Nick & Norah is mainstream flock mentality disguised as instant underground cool for the high-school/college set. What the movie displays is a culture one notch below the uber-mainstream drivel of Britney Spears and the Jonas Brothers, and plenty of post-college adults worship this movie. They should know better. Nick & Norah’s very finite soundtrack wins kudos for including a Chris Bell song (“Speed Of Sound”) but more or less lapses into a road map of how “indie rock” as a qualifier has descended below meaninglessness and now denotes good-looking guitar/synth bands that invariably draw more than 400 people no matter where they perform. Counterpoint: Maybe I’m just old, and Nick & Norah is another piece of popular culture that makes me feel like Bill Cosby hearing N.W.A. for the first time. Maybe a huge segment of the 18–35 age group has evolved into one that appreciates far superior music than what was absorbed by the jam-band followers and frat boys who used to tease me for listening to Superchunk and My Bloody Valentine. Counterpoint to the counterpoint: Or maybe not. Regardless, I will optimistically approach the sequel as long as it’s written and directed by Tommy Lee Jones and titled Nick & Norah’s Infinite Back-Alley Beatdown. Cloverfield “Douchebag” is perhaps the most overused slang in the parlance of the under-50 set. It’s so damn effective, and I love nothing more than to latch onto slang that’s either showing its expiration date or recently expired altogether. Unlike Lost, Cloverfield was not an attempt by J.J. Abrams to refine the collective taste and pop-cultural literacy of the massive cigar-nibbling/martini-sipping douchebag blob that roams quasi-urbanite downtown bars and sushi happy hours the country over. What I mean by that confusing mouthful is this: While Lost will always be a smarter choice than anything in the loathsome genre of reality TV, it seems to attract the same audience and still feels like a poor man’s answer to a bad HBO production. I’ll watch dumb horror and sci-fi until my eyes fall out, as long as what I’m watching knows what it is, so to speak. Cloverfield has moments that suggest an identity crisis, moments that say, “See, I’m not that dumb!” Sorry, try again! Just because the indie-film agenda (not solely the handheld-camera nature, but the aesthetic) is so fine-tuned and omnipresent that grandmas no longer turn their noses up, it’s not OK to overintellectualize a long-dead horror movie trick to suck in the sharp-witted end of the Details subscriber base. Cloverfield was an attempt to make a lot of money, and as such, it succeeded, though my entire argument could have been summed up with a look at the rating. If there is a genre created by and for the douchebag, it’s PG-13 horror. Semi-Pro One thing that always makes me look forward to a new year is a smattering of comedies about marginal, ultra-wimpy or non-existent sports. Once collected, these films will be responsible for supplying both "The World’s Largest DVD Box Set" and “The World’s Cheapest DVD Box Set” entries in the 2024 Guinness Book of World Records. Wait, most people won’t be watching DVDs in 2024! Movies will be downloaded via brainpower and played on the inside of sunglasses. Still, there will be a subset of the future-tastemaker/former-hipster demographic that lavishes DVDs with faux-nostalgia for a medium they don’t remember. Semi-Pro causes personal conflict because the subject matter is A+ but the execution is subpar. What rubs me the wrong way is that the ABA (American Basketball Association), one of the more purely fascinating sports subjects of all time, suffers worse treatment than men’s figure skating. The ABA deserves Slap Shot treatment. No fault of writer Scot Armstrong (decent-to-funny films like Road Trip, Old School and School For Scoundrels), the problem may be with producer Kent Alterman’s directorial work (his first), but I’m no producer, so what do I know? I do know that “from the producer of … ” holds the same creative capital of “from the director of … ” in the minds of garden-variety moviegoers who rank '70s vintage shop props and big afros on white men pretty high on the Side-Splitter Meter. A movie about the ABA should be created for funny people, similar to how David Simon created The Wire for a certain type of person and flipped a big middle finger to everyone else. Everyone else will have plenty of movies about, well, marginal, wimpy and non-existent sports. Choke A match made in … a boardroom somewhere. The guy who co-wrote 2000 Harrison Ford thriller What Lies Beneath (“Harrison Ford thriller” = another two-hour excuse for Ford to perpetually scream, “My wife!!” “Where is my wife?!?!” “She's my wife!!!” or some variation thereof) and Fight Club author Chuck Palahniuk team up to bring the latter’s literary crimes to the big screen. Palahniuk is the reigning king of cinderblocks and two-by-four bookshelves or tiny piles of Bukowski and Worst-Case Scenario titles. In short, it’s faux-transgression for quasi-intellectual college kids or grown adults who devour fucked-up-for-the-sake-of-it literature and nurture a love of clever art for stupid people (e.g., Kevin Smith films, The Matrix franchise, etc.). Until Todd Solondz unleashes his next work of tired shamesploitation, Choke, the plot of which doesn’t deserve investigation, will tide over film fans who love nothing more than wallowing in 90 minutes of negativity so they can convince unwitting (male) co-workers how “fucked-up,” “intense” and “real” a film is.

—Andrew Earles

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Where’s The Street Team?: Year-End Edition

December 24, 2008

street-team-yim-flat2Well, color me surprised! In 2008, I listened to more new music than would normally be expected from a rock writer in his mid-30s (none of us actually seeks out new music on our own accord, as the dynamic changes drastically when new music is forced upon us for the purpose of adding another byline to the portfolio), especially from one who’s been missing that perfect combination of “asshole,” “smartass” and “heart” in the same column for almost six years now. Wow, what the hell was that last sentence? The framed mantra in the think-tank room at Apatow Productions? Yes, I genuinely obsessed over a lot of 2008 releases: Fucked Up, Geisha, Neil Hamburger, the beginning of the Oneida trilogy/triptych, Disfear, Destroyer and Crystal Stilts, to name a few. But the year was predictably marred by albums and movements that genuinely irked me. I suppose it would be a mild head-fuck to populate this column with albums I love, but it wouldn’t pack the soft, short-sighted punch of what’s written below.

Black Kids Not to give readers a stroke or anything, but let it be known that I’m a white guy. If I were to assemble a four-piece band of white guys (not unheard of) and name that band the Black Dudes, I’d be a white, racist guy in the eyes of some. Like where-are-they-now psych-poppers the Negro Problem, Black Kids do have at least one African-American member. They’re also responsible for an additional comment heard on college/satellite radio (OK, only on Sirius’ Left Of Center) between-song banter: “Next up, we have the new dance-tastic gem by Black Kids. And hey, it’s cool, there’s black people in the band.” Everyone needs to stop acting like this band invented sexuality in “underground” music. Come on, people. Partie Traumatic is as forgettable as most of the electroclash no one cares about anymore, and its similar theme of “partying + fucking + shakin’ that ass” is about as refreshing as nu-metal bands translating “the pain of a broken family/tough upbringing” to redneck alternative radio. Spiritualized Jason Pierce was a 32-year-old man when he decided it was a novel idea to present a limited number of 1997’s Ladies And Gentlemen We Are Floating In Space CDs in fake prescription-pill packaging. An 11th-grader blasted on Lortabs for the first time doesn’t have ideas like this; he has better ones. A near-death run-in with pneumonia almost led Pierce to scrap 2008’s Songs In A&E (which, despite the PR, was mostly finished before the illness struck); he was encouraged to finish the album after striking up a friendship with filmmaker/charlatan extraordinaire Harmony Korine. It’s a bro-down made in scam-artist heaven. Like Korine, Pierce has made a career of grossly overrated creative endeavors, fooling zombie-like tongue-waggers with the obscenely pea-brained Spacemen 3 as well as A&E’s hackneyed bullshit threesome (“Death Take Your Fiddle,” “I Gotta Fire” and “Soul On Fire”). For some reason, telling the ugly truth about this aggressively mediocre outfit is the music-criticism equivalent of telling dead-baby jokes in a Planned Parenthood waiting room. Wham City If Napoleon Dynamite was a widescreen culmination of everything that’s wrong with the 18–35 demographic, Baltimore’s Wham City collective is a smaller-scale update focused on the historical ignorance and herd mentality of art-school sheep in their early-to-mid-20s. Wham City was more or less spearheaded by irritant-savant Dan Deacon, a calculatedly precocious doughboy with a trickle-down brainwashing program spreading the ever-so-tired geek-chic look (Kitty Kat sweatshirts, big lensless eyeglasses, purposely mismatched colors that only bees can see) and poor man’s noise/improv meets plagiarized '80s themes/sounds that everyone was going apeshit over 10 years ago. This scene includes bands such as Ponytail, Club Lyfestile (maddeningly described as “a spandex-tabulous dance squad doing a disco ballet about wizards” in Blender magazine), Videohippos and Leprechaun Catering. Future anthropologists will look back on Wham City and mark it as the death rattle of rock 'n' roll inspiration, a bottom-trolling feast of late-'90s Olympia/K Records, electroclash without the pop-hook aptitude and transparent thrift-store bric-a-brac worship. Therein lies the main problem: Most of it means nothing. Idealistically, around mid-2010, as the economy bounces back and the U.S. regains its grace, pride and dignity with Barack Obama at the helm, I sincerely hope that all of this coincides with a musical housecleaning courtesy of a movement with guts and real ideas that aren't a warmed-over retelling of mainstream pop culture from 20 years ago. Margot & The Nuclear So And So's Every time I try to avoid the sticky trap of jaded cynicism that comes with the territory of music journalism, I’m forced to read about a band that proves my instincts are correct. Thankfully, my preventative maintenance radar would never allow these ears to consume a band with a name like Margot & The Nuclear So And So’s. I’m not simply harping on a superficial aspect. Before any strain of this group’s meandering, masculinity-removing, too-precious, over-over-overindulgent claptrap entered my earholes, I knew exactly what it would sound like: big (fucking yawn) pop jams created by a band consisting of nine or more disciples following one guy who’s fancied a “misunderstood genius” by the press and himself. Deerhunter Kranky Records, through no fault of its own, won the lottery when Deerhunter went from an unknown band carefully pantomiming mediocre, decades-old shoegazer groups to a much buzzed-about band carefully pantomiming mediocre, decades-old shoegazer groups. Add the golden ticket of “eccentric, difficult, insanely spoiled and health-challenged frontman,” and the combo would be good for two albums before: a) an implosion, b) people stopped giving a shit, c) people caught on, d) an irreparable number of bridges are burned, e) it releases a universally reviled album, or f) all of the above. Whether or not the name is derived from the movie, some parallels are notable: The Deer Hunter is a film that everyone believes they’re supposed to like. In truth, it’s a really tedious movie during which nothing really happens. Deerhunter is a band that everyone believes they’re supposed to like. In truth, it makes really tedious music devoid of anything better than a lot of overused hooks and plodding ambience. And no, nothing really happens. I propose Deerhunter saddles up to a little honesty and change its name to Heaven’s Gate. My Morning Jacket/Fleet Foxes/Bon Iver I have little faith in rock music’s current ability to move forward, but this is just laughable. Are we still dealing with a bunch of pretty boys who rock the ’70s hitchhiker-chic/Peckinpah-extra look while dragging the lifeless corpse of indie rock further into the bottomless void of mass-consumed Bonnaroo/jam-band/neo-hippie culture? With computer-generated hooks that unadventurous minds hear as real hooks, these bands belong where they’re gunning for: background music in Bank Of America and Pontiac commercials. Speaking of Pontiac, this phenomenon is the General Motors of the music world: progress-allergic product coasting along on the promise that large numbers of people will deal with it until the bottom falls out. And the bottom will fall out, it’s just taking way to long to do so. Vampire Weekend As long as there are millions of morons who’ve never heard just how bad the Style Council was and find guys dressing like the villains in John Hughes movies attractive, we’ll forever be weathering the temporary omnipresence of bands like this. Vampire Weekend will be around next year; it just won’t be called “Vampire Weekend.” Vivian Girls I was fooled by the catchiness of a Vivian Girls b-side and incorrectly assumed that the Brooklyn trio’s self-titled full-length held similar charms. Rather than dislike them, I feel sorry for them. In November, mtv.com ran a terrifyingly bad news piece that sums up the problem surrounding a lot of what’s now considered “underground” or “indie” music. Following a painfully clueless profile of “lo-fi” rock (“a new rock revolution” or something similar), old-school VJ John Norris returned to make a total ass of himself by spending eight minutes kissing up to the Vivian Girls. When a “journalist” (his writing resembles the worst college-student Pitchfork-intern drivel imaginable) who was lapping at Hollywood superstar heels within the past three years suddenly turns his fanboy energy to a scenester-fueled genre, it’s troubling that no one seems to understand we’re in the midst of a new version of the grunge explosion, the late-’90s underground hip-hop explosion, the Brooklyn/Williamsburg rock resurgence of the early ’00s and other vapid, mindless movements that everyone likes to sit around laugh about today. Trust me, many smirks will be had at the Vivian Girls’ expense come 2015. The Shaggs crossed with My Bloody Valentine is not endearing or cute. The amateurism is not endearing or cute. It’s grating. The Vivian Girls are the Staind of 2008.

—Andrew Earles

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Where’s The Street Team?: 15 Years Of Failure

November 30, 2008
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MAGNET’s editors came up with the idea of a Where’s The Street Team? directed at one band for each of the 15 years the magazine has been in existence. Fifteen years? Yeah, right. I know full well that MAGNET was founded in 2003 for the express purpose of providing a vehicle for this column. I’m pretty sure the boardroom meeting went something like this: “Well, we need to surround Street Team with music coverage, features, reviews and such, just to give the reader a breather.” I’m a good sport, of course, so I went along with this whole “15th Anniversary Issue” applesauce.

1993: Urge Overkill Urge Overkill, which adorned the cover of the first issue of MAGNET, was responsible for approximately two-and-a-half albums in the style of “good.” The reason for Urge’s cover-stardom was major-label debut Saturation: a juiced-up, unholy cocktail of Journey, the Who and a trickle of aggro noise. So why am I writing about Urge? It’s not because the band promptly started to suck (which it did). It’s not because the members of Urge became bloated, drug-addled rock stars (minus the “star” part). It’s because Urge was a crystal ball looking into the future we’ve been living for several years now. In the once-sacred indie-rock early-’90s, bands did not dress up, party with actual party drugs, brazenly seek fame and act like vapid idiots, even with tongues firmly in cheeks. Now, “indie rock” bands are simply vehicles propelled by the consumerism of assembly-line socialites. So yeah, Urge Overkill was on to something. It just happened to be something really depressing.

1994: The Afghan Whigs The Afghan Whigs started out in that nether region I like to call grundie rock: the purgatory a band resides in when it’s a little too challenging to be grunge and a little too X-station-date-rape-radio-ready to be indie rock. See also: Best Kissers In The World, late-period Screaming Trees, Coffin Break and Paw. Then, a funny thing happened: The Afghan Whigs became the Afghan Wiggah Puhleeze! For better or worse, frontman Greg Dulli deserves points for being ahead of the curve with the paint-alt-rock-black thing. Consider the Make-Up, Har Mar Superstar, Midnite Vultures-era Beck and the eight-years-too-late humor found in most Flight Of The Conchords songs. Dulli loses points for being the guy who reliably attempted to fuck your girlfriend whenever the Whigs came to town.

1995: Rocket From The Crypt It’s painful to be reminded that this band shared a member with the greatest post-hardcore unit of all time, Drive Like Jehu. Encompassing absolutely everything that made ’90s garage-rock/rockabilly culture utterly stupid, Rocket From The Crypt can be thanked for further popularizing mouth-breather favorites like matching mechanic’s shirts, faux-gearhead lifestyles and horn sections put in places where horn sections should never be.

1996: Spacemen 3 Spacemen 3 is perhaps the most overrated “seminal” outfit of the past three decades. So, you like bands whose lyrics are interchangeable with the bad poetry of a 17-year-old stoner? There’s going to be a drug revolution in the streets? Guess what, boys, that never happened. What did happen was a neutered, when-minimalism-goes-tedious version of the Jesus And Mary Chain combined with a neutered, when-minimalism-goes-tedious version of the Stooges.

1997: The Jon Spencer Blues Explosion This was the period that found Jon Spencer pulling stunts like We’ve Got A Real Live Black Bluesman Onstage. Utilizing R.L. Burnside was a fortuitous last-gasp move, seeing as how every record nerd north of Kentucky eats that shit up like a BBQ sandwich being served through a hole in the wall of a broken-down shack. Next to the limp-ass rockabilly he’s peddling these days with Heavy Trash, I’ll take what Spencer was doing in 1997. And I’ll take it for one dollar at a yard sale. 1998: Tortoise Tortoise led a school of thought that settled for humorless, jazz-inflected tedium, opening the floodgates protecting underground music lovers from the onslaught of identity-allergic crap and raining the term “post-rock” upon every leftfield misstep uttered by those bored with troublesome tactics such as hooks, vocals, charisma and energy. Post-rock? Try post-good. 1999: The Magnetic Fields Talk about a guy who needs to lighten the fuck up. Let me take you back nine years, when Stephin Merritt should’ve terminated his membership in the cult-of-one that believes everything he writes is a pop gem. 69 Love Songs was the line of demarcation between the early inspiration/fun-seeking/exploratory phase of indie rock and men turning a blind eye toward embarrassing acts of domesticity such as carrying your infant on the front of your body. 2000: Badly Drawn Boy Looking like a decade-too-late extra from Slacker, the man I like to call Badly Dressed Boy had his three minutes of fame dumbing down Built To Spill hooks and over-intellectualizing Britpop. My girlfriend at the time used to chase me around the house with a MAGNET photo of Damon Gough’s mug taped to her face. That’s why we’re no longer together. 2001: Queens Of The Stone Age It took a couple albums, but Queens Of The Stone Age eventually scared off discriminating listeners by attracting thuggish, aging mallternative rockers and homogeneous pea-brained bartender types to their shows. Gotta love standing next to a guy as he marvels at the inclusion of vinyl on the merch table, only rocks out during the hit(s), then shuffles off to do shooters at Buffalo Wild Wings. 2002: ...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead Because the late ’90s and early ’00s were so boring, the members of Trail Of Dead looked to be on the brink of success due solely to the fact that they smashed their shit up onstage and usually lived up to the rumors that they were walking garbage cans. What didn’t work was their sound (adult-contemporary screamo) combined with their age (pushing if not exceeding 30) at a time when every early-20s asshole with a guitar had learned to play Wire and Gang Of Four riffs. 2003:  Interpol People still can’t give the Joy Division shit a rest. Interpol updated ’90s indie rock by brilliantly revisiting first-wave post-punk and the Church. 2003 was a heady time for the New York City foursome, when the world stayed oblivious to the fact that this was a one-and-a-half-album band. That reality slapped Capitol across the face four years later when Interpol delivered major-label debut Our Love To Admire, a small-scale Waterworld for modern rock circa now. Will this entry conclude without a slam against bassist Carlos D? I like to believe the rest of the band whispers, “Do something irritating, wear something ridiculous, keep getting attention,” into his ear during hours of deep slumber. 2004: Tom Waits When MAGNET readers came across a Tom Waits entry in issue #66’s Street Team column, something shifted ever-so-slightly. Before my hatred of Waits’ music (I do not hate the man) and fans was made public, infrequent partygoers or show patrons might credit me with making them laugh or politely let me know they disagreed with me. After my feelings about Waits were revealed, however, people treated me as if I went on VH-1’s 100 Greatest Hip-Hop Artists and used the N-word to describe Afrika Bambaataa. Some folks just don’t understand how a music lover could possibly dismiss Waits. It’s easy. I’m like Rowdy Roddy Piper in They Live, but instead of special sunglasses, I have special ears that can hear just how contrived, unlistenable, heavy-handed, unsubtle, silly, irritating and grossly overrated 100 percent of Waits’ output is. The infestation has already spread so widely that I feel helpless in my fight against his impenetrable awfulness. I’m only one man. 2005: Sleater-Kinney By the time Sleater-Kinney reached final album The Woods, every rube on the scene had weathered a ’70s-inspired hard-rock makeover. It took The Woods to prove that if you wanted this sturdy formula to fail, give the job to a group of bleeders. The women in Team Dresch still stand as the only birds who could blow your brains apart with rock. Sleater-Kinney rocks about as hard as Monday morning in a Planned Parenthood waiting room. 2006: Beirut How groan-inducing is the hipster embrace of Gypsy music? The exact second I became cognizant of it was the exact second I despised it deeply. I’d like to see it spiced up by Beirut’s Zach Condon and his fellow multicultural vultures acting like the “other Gypsies.” You know, the “Irish travelers” and such. I’d like to see Condon get caught trying to con some hard-working homeowner with a poorly done driveway-repair scam. That would be funny. 2007: Against Me! Q: How many members of Against Me! does it take to change a light bulb? A: Against Me! isn’t going to change shit. The best thing about the end of the Bush administration? Maybe the PG-13 major-label politico-punks will go away. It boggles the mind to think of how many adults listen to and enjoy children’s music. No one is against you, no one is threatened by what you have to say, and one day you’re going to seriously regret those tats.

—Andrew Earles

 

 

 

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Where’s The Street Team?: The Blank Generation

June 20, 2008
street-team-79c I’m so tired of hearing musicians whine about how long they’ve struggled, how long they’ve spent “in the van,” how long they’ve been on an independent label. Get yourself some famous parents and shut up. Nepotism is the key to getting to the top—or, at least, to somewhere between the middle and the bottom with the possibility of four seconds at a higher level. Being the progeny of a successful musician is a coupon for a one-album, one-option contract with a marginal record label. Not only does nepotism allow the artist to skip the “struggle” part of the process, another unnecessary requirement is “talent.” Jordan Zevon To the b est of my knowledge, Jordan Zevon lacks his father Warren’s tendency to purchase a grey T-shirt every time his tour bus passes an outlet mall. Jordan’s new album, Insides Out (New West), is his first since, well, birth. All due respect to his late dad, but if Jordan contributes three-and-a-half minutes of torture like “Werewolves Of London” to the collective consciousness during the next 30 years, I’m going to track him down. Carlene Carter Most of you know this, but Carlene Carter is the daughter of June Carter Cash. Her most talented performance was recorded by the dashboard camera of a New Mexico State Police cruiser. A smart record label somewhere will come to its senses and release her 2001 duet with Howie Epstein, the late bassist for Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers, as they were arrested for speeding in a stolen SUV full of heroin and drug paraphernalia. Until then, we’ll have to settle for Stronger (Yep Roc), the soundtrack to my quest to find some saplings I planted as an eight-year-old. Justin Townes Earle What a surprising career route for Steve Earle’s son. Justin Townes Earle is a guitar-totin’ highway troubadour with no solid roots anywhere, honey, and he just might decide to up and hit the road one day, breakin’ your heart and spawning The Good Life (Bloodshot), an album’s worth of tedious Americana. I want to see a birth certificate with that middle name on it, because I’m just not buying that one. Let’s make sure that whoever writes Justin’s press releases remembers to include the brings-to-mind sentence regarding Townes Van Zandt. And any male musician who allows himself to be photographed shirtless for his album cover should be immediately dismissed. Maybe that’s too harsh. I would be confused, too, if I had five stepmothers. Jakob Dylan Bob Dylan’s son may make terrible music, but he must be congratulated for not capitalizing on his blood relations. Jakob Dylan actually tried to hide from them earlier in his career. I’d be embarrassed, too, if my dad was the guy rapping on the Band Of The Hand soundtrack. I mean, you may not care for the style of neutered adult-contemporary rock on Dylan’s solo debut, Seeing Things (Columbia/Starbucks), but it’s nice to see that Starbucks was on hand to help him make that bold move into solo territory from his previous adult-contemporary mind-deadeners, the Wallflowers. Harper Simon If collaborating with more famous musicians makes you eligible for a lifetime achievement award, Paul Simon’s son is a contender. And the one album Harper Simon has released? It’s a collaboration with Edie Brickell. Let me rephrase that: He made a record with his stepmother. We wouldn’t want anyone to try too hard over here. The resultant album is the self-titled debut by Heavy Circles (on Dynamite Child), and I welcome anyone to explain to me how they thought it couldn’t possibly suck. His other stepmother is Carrie Fisher; I bet he ghostwrites her horrible New York Times pieces. Maybe his third stepmother is Rita Rudner. (I have no idea why that’s funny, but it is.) Simone Simone On Simone (High Priestess/Koch), the latest album from Lisa Celeste Stroud (a.k.a. Simone), is a tribute to her deceased mother. When I was younger, the glimpse or sound of a CD by Nina Simone was always the ultimate sign that I was on the first and only date with someone. This is what you hear playing at very low volume in a Barnes & Noble. I wonder how many copies of Simone On Simone will be purchased by people misled by its title, thinking this is lesbian porn. Year Long Disaster Rolling Stone concluded that last year’s self-titled debut by this Los Angeles trio (fronted by Daniel Davies, Dave’s son) sounds like a combination of Pantera and Led Zeppelin. Year Long Disaster seems to want everyone to know that Year Long Disaster is “heavy” and dissimilar to the Kinks. Which means Year Long Disaster sucks. Fun facts: The band is managed by Robbie Robertson’s son Sebastian, and its drummer is also in Third Eye Blind. TAB The Band Tony and Adrian Perry (sons of Aerosmith guitarist Joe Perry), along with Ben Tileston, have chosen a band name that’s not only based on a reference to an out-of-date diet cola but is also a convenient anagram of the members’ first names. TAB The Band is not nearly as badass as TAD (the band), Seattle’s roundest grunge dogs of yore. TAB The Band released an album earlier this year called Pulling Out Just Enough To Win (North Street). I’m going to guess the album title means … Damn … I have no idea. Perhaps it refers to pulling your cock out during sex while simultaneously winning $17 on a scratch-off lottery ticket.

—Andrew Earles

 

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Where’s The Street Team?: The Worst Of The Best Of 2007

December 24, 2007
street-team-78flat4 I tried to talk my editors into allowing this year-end issue to be one big installment of Where’s The Street Team?: no advertisements, just 128 pages of my razor-sharp wit, slicing and dicing 2007’s crimes against good taste. Lord knows I would have no dearth of material. Did the entire world wake up on New Year’s Day 2007 with its collective head up its ass? Forget global warming; I’d like to battle a little problem called creative bankruptcy. Rock Biopics How about th at group of actors depicting Joy Division in Anton Corbijn’s Control? They really played all of the songs and ended up beating the source material by a long shot. The scuttlebutt is that Sam Riley was the 42nd actor to play Ian Curtis, as the previous ones kept fouling up that last scene. Jokes. Control is tolerable compared to Todd Haynes’ Bob Dylan trainwreck, I’m Not There. Not only does the plot descend from pretension into stupidity (Dylan played by different actors for disparate themes and time periods), it also breaks a fundamental rule of writing: Never, ever place a wizened, aged creative soul into the body of a small black child. Mr. Haynes, at the door we have Bill Cosby, Gene Wilder, Steve Martin, Mel Brooks and the ghost of Richard Pryor. They’d like to take turns slapping the shit out of you. Dinosaur Jr I was kind in my career retrospective of this group. Dinosaur Jr is, after all, one of my all-time favorite bands. But the rumors are true: There exists no worse group of interview subjects; journalists get to choose between: a) painfully aloof (J Mascis), b) difficult asshole (Lou Barlow) or c) the drummer (Murph). Reunion album Beyond was little more than a check-cashing exercise. It sounded like a passable Mascis solo album from the late ’90s that just so happened to include Barlow as a guest on two tracks. Against Me! Hey, got a joke for you: “How many members of Against Me! does it take to change a light bulb?” “Against Me! isn’t going to change shit.” Because I never hung out beneath an overpass with a dog and a 40-ounce, my back covered with Discharge and Capitalist Casualties patches and my body smelling like an 11-day-old Happy Meal, I’ve never really been qualified to comment on the “importance” of a punk-rock lifestyle in a mid-sized American city (in Against Me!’s case, Gainesville, Fla.) or how it influences a group to take its (Young) Pioneers karaoke show to the world. Everyone, including the band, loves to name-drop Billy Bragg. Try Rage Against The Machine for the hoodie-wearing, Jetta-driving activist set. You know, the ones who matter. Against Me! and other bands that have found themselves in a position of exposure—like Chumbawamba, when that group wasn’t changing the world from the cut-out bin—always play the well-at-least-we’re-able-to-get-our-message-to-a-lot-of-people or we’re-going-to-sabotage-the-industry-from-the-inside-out cards. At the end of the day, Against Me!’s self-righteous proletariat claptrap is delivered from the Warped Tour main stage, the band is on Sire, and its members sleep on a really nice bus. M.I.A. It’s amazing the lengths to which music consumers, makers and critics will go to avoid appearing—gasp—racist. If the Sri Lankan-born M.I.A. had instead hailed from Tulsa, Okla., with the exact same music in tow, well, she would still be there right now. I call it TV On The Radio Syndrome: If they were white, one-eighth of the press and attention would’ve come their way. Music critics are terrified of facing this fact. M.I.A. provides lazy listeners with an easy multicultural accessory, the equivalent of traveling through India by way of seeing The Darjeeling Limited. Amy Winehouse Drug problem. Jacked-up teeth. Depraved back story. Troubled genius ... Where have I heard all of this before? Oh yeah, I’ve had eyes and ears most of my life. “Welcome, Target customers. An inoffensively attractive mother of two, mid-30s, in housewares needs some James Frey in her Feist. Hurry, she’s late for Pilates.” Battles Boy, I bet this is a fun bunch! I do respect that Battles have made a bold attempt at creating a brand-new type of pop music, but I wouldn’t want to be stuck in a van with them, trying to espouse the merits of Smokey And The Bandit Part 3. Battles might be responsible for the first-ever instance of vaginas being in the same room as a free-jazz musician. Arcade Fire I’ve poked at this band before, but not too hard, as it’s a very slow-moving target. I never had much trouble ignoring Arcade Fire until the group released sophomore album Neon Bible, at which point it became a very slow-moving target that’s also very irritating. Let’s start with the presentation. No, let’s start with the album title. It’s named after John Kennedy Toole’s first novel, the one he wrote at age 16—and the one that only saw the light of day because Toole would go on to commit suicide and leave behind a little manuscript called A Confederacy Of Dunces. The album’s namesake isn’t a particularly good book; in fact, it’s pretty overrated, much like Arcade Fire. On Neon Bible, you’ll hear a marriage of John Cafferty And The Beaver Brown Band, the Hooters and some contemporary touches (pinch of Radiohead, pinch of Modest Mouse, pinch of Godspeed You! Black Emperor). The plan is obvious. Listeners should sell Neon Bible back to the store, take the $5 to a thrift shop and purchase the entire discographies of both the Beaver Brown Band and the Hooters. More for less!

—Andrew Earles

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Where’s The Street Team?: Crappy Anniversary

September 5, 2007
street-team77f3flatc I tend to think of anniversaries in the romantic sense, not the musical one. Considering I’ve spent my adult years striving to have a romantic anniversary greater than two years, music-related milestones serve one purpose for me: boring, last-ditch story ideas for magazines. The music biz’s attempt to reverse awful CD sales through anniversary editions and reissues should tell you something about the pathetic lengths that labels will now go to get you inside of a soon-to-be-closed-and-turned-into-a-check-cashing-outlet retail music store. It Was 40 Years Ago Today Do we really need to get rea cquainted with Sgt. Pepper? Who doesn’t understand its importance? A 90-year-old North Korean who lives in a cave? The 40th anniversary of this album, though, is special because it’s marked by some events so weird that they transcend criticism: Ministry main man Al Jourgensen recently joined Cheap Trick for a Sgt. Pepper tribute concert in Los Angeles. Just what the most famous, played-out Beatles album needed: some inane anti-Bush ramblings. I can’t even make any more fun of that; it works on its own merits. As of this writing, I’m not certain if 40th-anniversary celebrations for The Velvet Underground And Nico or Love’s Forever Changes will make a comparable mess, but everyone over the age of 20 should know these records without buying into some inflated reissue with limited bonus tracks. It Was 30 Years Ago Today How many Bob Marley posters do you think have stared down a frat-house date rape? Marley is an excuse for jam-band fanatics and meatheads to front some “worldliness.” Taking the predictable early-stuff-is-the-best stand, early Wailers is great, but by 1977, Marley was a reggae Eagles and Exodus was a reggae Hotel California. Recently given a 30th-anniversary reissue, Exodus was named the best album of the 20th century by Time in 1998, so it could be that I need to change my tune. But the world would do better with anniversary parties for Bette Midler’s Broken Blossom and Deep Purple’s Concerto For Group & Orchestra. It Was 25 Years Ago Today If the world were not convinced that Michael Jackson touched little boys, we'd all be celebrating the 25th anniversary of Thriller, the album responsible for every shitty '80s night on every shitty Tuesday at every shitty club in America. On the other side of the fence, 1982 was the year that once-great bands woke up and decided to release shitty records. When was the last time you rocked Strawberries by the Damned? With Combat Rock, the Clash would prove that flimsy, ill-defined politics—not to mention drinking iced tea from Jack Daniel’s bottles onstage—can sell a gazillion records, thus paving the way for the flimsy, ill-defined politics of bands like Against Me!, Rage Against The Machine and Chumbawamba. It Was 20 Years Ago Today I suspect that about half of you reading this remember the release of Guns N’ Roses’ Appetite For Destruction, currently enjoying its 20th anniversary. I’m of that half; I recall the summer before ninth grade and digging “Welcome To The Jungle” and “Sweet Child O’ Mine” because, you know, I was in ninth grade and all. Appetite For Destruction is children’s music. Even its R-rated tracks, the ones with lines like “Turn around bitch, I got a use for you,” sound juvenile, to be laughed at on schoolyards and in boys’ locker rooms. It Was 15 Years Ago Today 1992 was a great year. If I remember correctly, it was the “year punk broke.” That’s what Sonic Youth said, anyway. Otherwise, I don’t remember too much from 1992, as I was spending a lot of time in my mom’s apartment doing drugs and watching infomercials until seven in the morning. I now declare a moment of silence for a lost era when someone deemed it a good idea to release Babes In Toyland’s Fontanelle on a major label. When Dr. Dre’s The Chronic revived pot culture and made white kids act black. When the Beastie Boys’ Check Your Head made even more white kids act black and introduced baggy clothing to mass culture. And, last but not least, when Pavement’s Slanted And Enchanted unwittingly gave us the second-worst genre name of all time: slacker rock. It Was 10 Years Ago Today Numerous proclamations that “rock is dead” occurred in 1997. DJ Spooky maintained a straight face when he adopted the nickname “that subliminal kid” (a William S. Burroughs reference, by the way) and helped launch the most loathsome genre—and genre name—of all time: illbient. Cool music was nothing more than bad techno and Brian Eno rip-offs. Math rock became post-rock, losing any iota of personality in the process. Krautrock was “discovered” by everyone short of my mom, thus killing the magic of yet another influential movement. Am I going to get caned in public for stating that Elliott Smith’s Either/Or isn’t that great of a record? So be it. Thankfully, the year was salvaged via the self-titled debut by Atom And His Package. (No, I don’t actually mean that.) It Was Five Years Ago Today Ah, the birth of post-punk. This is going to be hard to believe, but there was a time when a lot of bands lived in Brooklyn. On different levels, angular bass-driven outfits like Liars and Franz Ferdinand and movements like electroclash invented the wheel with ... a style of music practiced consistently over the previous 25 years by Fugazi, Circus Lupus, Honor Role and hundreds of other groups in the late ’70s such as Gang Of Four and Wire.

—Andrew Earles

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Where’s The Street Team?: Trendsobbing

June 7, 2007
street-team-76-f23 All of us do something that’s part of a trend, some of us more so than others. Most of us do nothing unless it’s been pre-approved by a gazillion other cookie-cutter scenesters. This continues to be the case as ideas are born and worn into the ground by drones too boring to have the ideas in the first place, thus setting individuality at an all-time-low. There are no true outsiders. What you are doing, creatively, is part of a big dumb movement, so don’t get all high and mighty about what you incorrectly perceive to be original. There exists no more fertile ground for lemmings than the music industry. Let’s take a cursory look. The Tastemaker Trend Is there anyone out there who checks out a band just because Thurston Moore says it’s good? What about the seemingly golden tastes of David Byrne? (Clap Your Hands Say No Thanks.) Morrissey? He wanted to see the New York Dolls so bad that he talked them into reuniting, which wins the award for most useless of all new albums and most pathetic of all live performances. I saw one, and it was like watching a nursing-home common area in the midst of tantric sex. Can’t you people think for yourselves? Twenty years from now, post-career-slump Sufjan Stevens will be getting label deals for naïve, rehashed-beyond-belief early-20-somethings, and people will be listening. You’ve been warned, but I won’t be around. By that point, I’ll have lost my mind and will be living in a shack in the woods listening to battered KLF cassingles. The Classic-Album-Performance Trend Not to pick on the members of Sonic Youth, who, deep down, I love. They’re performing their untouchable Daydream Nation in its entirety for the Don’t Look Back concert series this summer. But consider other acts that have been invited to participate in this paper tiger of an idea. I’m not trying to make you laugh when I write that Girls Against Boys will be performing ... will be performing ... will be performing what? I can’t even name a GvsB album. While we’re at it, let’s round up Monsterland for a blow through Destroy What You Love, or maybe Sammy can be cajoled into performing Tales Of Great Neck Glory. (Naturally, those references make me 10 times more depressing than anything I make fun of.) The Reunion Trend The reformation of long-defunct bands is as needless as the continuation of others. What’s worse, the re-emergence of the Happy Mondays or another Fucking Champs album? Has anyone’s life been altered, in any way, by a new Stars Of The Lid record? Who’s going to buy the new Buffalo Tom release? The same 10 people who bought Birdbrain? Are the Kirkwood brothers back together to hurt the feelings of Meat Puppets fans? R.E.M. is still at it? So much happens that doesn’t need to. So much energy could be redirected elsewhere. Is there a secret society somewhere just handing out bad ideas? So many forgotten skidmarks on the tighty-whities of pop culture. The Björk Trend Why is there an omnipresent force funneling accolades at this aesthetic offspring of Kate Bush, Yoko Ono and a chick-lit protagonist? In the ‘90s, Björk’s music was the “weird” lowest common denominator that united dorm rooms across the nation; now it unites single women in their mid-30s. Plus, Björk has inspired legions of girls to act like little forest creatures; she’s almost like a logical extension of that loathsome unicorn fad. I have a problem understanding women to begin with; I don’t need some squeaking or high-pitched murmurings to further confuse the process. Get a good gander at the outfits Björk has been wearing lately? It looks like someone tarred the nymph and threw her into a Fire Island garbage dumpster. The Sneaker Trend Maybe you’ve heard that New Balance released a Joy Division sneaker in April. Does it come with a special sole designed to slip off of chair seats? In February, Nike issued a Dinosaur Jr high-top shoe, which makes even less sense. I’d be willing to bet a little toe that J Mascis doesn’t play sports. Dinosaur Jr Dunks come with laces and stitching in the band’s trademark purple. Look out Alice Walker: It seems Mascis has the copyright on the color purple. The Exercise Trend LCD Soundsystem’s James Murphy also got into bed with Nike for an absurdly long “workout” track. Hipsters are insane about working out, a trend that seemed to start at the same time that hipsters became insane about doing cocaine. But I can’t get behind this working-out thing. I like to exercise, sure. I stay in relatively good shape, but yoga, pilates and yogalates—have you seen what this shit does to the female body? Not sure about the hetero male readers out there, but I’m not attracted to the female body when it looks like a giant length of rope. Or Iggy Pop. Lou Reed just released an album designed specifically for yoga workouts, T’ai Chi, massage therapy and meditation. How I long for the days when Reed rocked a Joe Piscopo jheri curl and a guitar with no headstock. The Comedians And Music Trend I’m not exactly sure when comedy got into bed with indie rock. Maybe when Janeane Garofalo was dating that guy in Muckafurgason? Wow, did you just read that sentence? These days, shit’s out of hand. Ask any hot young comedian or comedienne what they’re listening to and you’re likely to get a list with striking similarities to a Grey’s Anatomy soundtrack CD.

—Andrew Earles

 

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Where’s The Street Team?: Heavy-Metal Parking Lot

April 21, 2007
street753altfinal550b Let’s rock out! Let’s make some metal! Better yet, let’s fake it! I’m not a metalhead. I do, however, know a lot about metal and have always listened to it alongside more obvious obsessions. I bought Mercury Rev’s Boces during the same record-store outing that netted Death’s Individual Thought Patterns. I know, whoop-dee-doo, but I want to distinguish myself from some windbag who latched onto this shit three years ago. It’s interesting to note that the only genre more clique-ish than indie rock is metal, and the invasion of one by the other has produced much whining and fruitless grandstanding. And rocking out? Rocking out is still a popular and novel way to spice up those breadwinning careers that are allergic to energy. Join me, dear friends and amusing enemies, for a look at a few clumsy mid-career crises, ones that result from a need to show the world that metal is cool. As of yesterday. Goblin Cock The ultimate Pinback show: A member of Exodus shows up and beats Rob Crow senseless with a B.C. Rich Bich guitar. Goblin Cock is nothing more than a bad Black Sabbath rip-off: proof that Crow knows nothing about metal. It’s also a bad joke. Dressing up in hooded robes and geeking out at a comic-book shop isn’t funny. (See the video for “Stumped,” off last year’s Bagged And Boarded.) Nor is Goblin Cock a funny name. If anything, this is an insult to people who care about metal. It fails at parody and entertainment. Grinderman So Nick Cave belting out some inoffensive alterna-boogie is going to sound like what? A garage-rock Danzig? I can imagine the glowing reviews now: “His lyrical themes of death and betrayal were tailor-made for a harder form of rock.” Or something. Cave did so well with the script and music for The Proposition, why ruin things now? Tenacious D The promise of Jack Black’s Mr. Show days quickly gave way to a comic acting career designed for rubes. Tenacious D capitalizes on the average Joe’s amusement with the absurdities of rock music. In no way am I suggesting that rock music isn’t funny. Wouldn’t that thinking negate this column? Comedy can always be found at the expense of music. I’ll go so far as to claim that all music is comedy. But see, there was a little movie in 1984 called This Is Spinal Tap, and ever since that masterstroke, dumb-rock culture has been spoofed and ribbed to the tits by people who incorrectly deem themselves funny. Whether in casual conversation or in a blockbuster movie, the subject is dead. Liam Lynch co-wrote and directed last year’s Tenacious D movie The Pick Of Destiny. When a prosaic crap-pusher such as Lynch—whose pop-cultural frame of reference is whatever a 20-year-old Good Riddance fan finds nostalgically interesting—is combined with Black’s already limp, calculable concept, we’re left to deal with a perfect storm of mediocrity. In an uncommon show of public logic, The Pick Of Destiny flopped hard. Dead Child I’ve always believed that Slint was one of the first and best indie-metal bands. (You know those were metal riffs on 1991 post-rock landmark Spiderland, right?) Slint guitarist Dave Pajo was the architect of those mountainous downstrokes, which no one at the time wanted to admit sounded like half-speed Megadeth. And wasn’t he the secret third or fourth guitarist in Early Man when that band started out? Dead Child is Pajo’s full-on-metal project with members of the For Carnation and Papa M. If Pajo posed as Latino and had a brother who could also shred, I would no longer consider him fake metal. That was a Death Angel joke. Or, you know, a joke about the proliferation of Latino surnames in thrash metal. Sigh. Body Count Normally, I like to work a little harder for the punch line. Body Count is still Ice-T’s “thrash metal” side project, unable to reach former levels of controversy (a free child seat if you remember “Cop Killer”) but perfectly equipped to provide a forgettable and embarrassing contrast to an acting career on Law & Order. I suspect that last year’s Body Count album, titled Murder 4 Hire for your laughing pleasure, remains unheard by anyone who paid money for this magazine. Witch J Mascis is a noted metal fan. The first Dinosaur Jr album offered some examples that he was listening to Venom and crossover thrash. Plus, Mascis produced UpsideDown Cross, one of the weirdest, all-time-nastiest groups of underground-metal dirtbags. He also drummed for Gobblehoof, which just didn’t make any sense. Led by Mascis’ former Deep Wound/Dinosaur bandmate Charlie Nakajima, Gobblehoof was embarrassingly—well, I don’t really know how to put it any other way—bad. Witch’s stoner boogie on last year’s self-titled debut was just barely there. Anyone can drum like that; it doesn’t have to be Mascis. The Stooges A double-edged side project! Haven’t really heard these guys, but I read somewhere that this is Iggy Pop’s old band, that they’re supposed to be important and that this reunion version is a Mike Watt side project. (And who doesn’t miss Watt’s first band, fIREHOSE?) It’ll be hard to top Pop solo albums Brick By Brick, Naughty Little Doggie and Avenue B as the ideal triumvirate of hardcore punk rock. I can get behind this, but only if the Stooges do a cover of Pop’s 1990 classic “Butt Town.”

—Andrew Earles

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Where’s The Street Team?: Two Thousand Sucks

December 20, 2006
street74f58flat550a It’s that time again, when I act like I have no idea what magazine I write for, exuding disgust at the artists praised within these pages. After three years of writing this thing—a comedy column, if you haven’t noticed—the funniest words printed in MAGNET still fall within the hate mail I generate on the Letters page. To those letter-writers, I issue with full confidence the following statement: You deserve it. Music is the greatest comedy that was never written. I’m sick of typing words that no longer mean anything, words whose descriptive power has been squelched by overexposure and the neutralizing of a mindset that was, maybe 10 years ago, actually fresh and cutting edge. We have a problem on our hands when Sufjan Stevens is the barometer by which adventurous music is measured, when noise bands get fashion spreads in magazines, when music writers brag about not owning turntables (I’m looking at you, Chuck Klosterman), when there are as many faux-tastemakers as there are fratboys and jam-band fans, when everything feels mainstream. What follows is the best rock and circumstances that 2006 had to offer. Isis Stick a fork in these guys. They’re done. They’re a hair away from nü-metal. And what’s up with men in their 30s bellowing like 18-year-old hardcore kids? Screaming is one thing; barking like you’re in a ’90s power-violence band is everything this side of silly. (And now that Isis has snuffed the volume for the masses, it’s just awkward.) It’s a very fashionable stance to be the pasty boy who can talk the metal game, so for the time being, those people have a safe, louder Mogwai as a calling card. That is, before the X-station alternaheadbangers get a hold of Isis, which feels five minutes away. The Hold Steady I’m in a nearly invisible minority when it comes to dismissing this band. Disliking the Hold Steady is almost a new form of racism or something. Talk about blank stares! Apparently, the world can’t get enough “clever” pop-culture references. Last time around, the Hold Steady was all Midwestern chunky rock set to Family Guy plots (“amusing” references with nothing behind them); 2006’s Boys And Girls In America is boring McSweeney’s writing set to the J. Geils Band. The Downside Of Indie Films If you discover Gang Of Four through Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, I hope you’re under the age of 20. If you regard The Science Of Sleep as anything more than watching two adults act like a couple of emo kids courting one another to the backdrop of a bad Tim Burton film, I invite you to watch more movies. If you thought Broken Social Scene’s music fit perfectly in the otherwise enjoyable Half Nelson, I ask you to rethink the relationship that indie rock has with the “thinker’s” film. We will now refer to this genre of film as ReadyMade Magazine: The Movie. The Deaths Of Syd Barrett And Arthur Lee One incredibly depressing outcome of Syd Barrett’s death stands out in my mind: the local classic-rock station paying tribute by playing Pink Floyd songs that had nothing to do with Barrett, such as “Comfortably Numb.” At least Barrett only made two decent, albeit overrated, albums. When Arthur Lee died, his bad material all of a sudden became seminal. That Love album from 1974 is not good. Sufjan Stevens What Christian indie rock needs is its resident prima donna. With the quaint unoriginality of writing an album about each state, at least Sufjan Stevens is guaranteed to run out of good material nice and quick. I love how these guys (Danielson, David Bazan, MewithoutYou, etc.) act all aloof and weird about their faith, then choose the highly personal/confessional genre of indie rock as a template, thus inviting all sorts of uncomfortable attention. Scott Walker Some of the best music writing from 2006 can be found in the praise of this crazy fuck’s latest record. The Drift should’ve been laughed into the ghetto where Joe Pesci’s albums reside. But no, music-writer sycophants wouldn’t want to turn in their badges by actually admitting that The Drift is a senile embarrassment. God forbid critics be honest to their ears and laugh out loud at a once-important singer/songwriter mimicking Elmer Fudd. Indie-Via-Satellite Radio Howard Stern moved to satellite radio on Jan. 1, 2006, and your neighbors and co-workers followed. If you’ve been reading MAGNET for, say, 10 years, I invite you to tune in to one of satellite radio’s “indie” shows. There, the aesthetic you’ve held dear for a decade or more can be found neatly dumbed down. There are voice-over soundbites from Thurston Moore: “After the music leaves your head, it’s already compromised.” That may be the stupidest thing I’ve heard all year. Then there’s the daily morning show hosted by the all-mouth, no-substance Jake Fogelnest, a why-exactly-is-he-famous? hustler with instant musical history: Just add iTunes, a publicist-driven playlist and a familiarity with the CliffsNotes to Our Band Could Be Your Life. Here’s what it sounds like: Boring new song, boring new song, boring new song, boring new song, obligatory Hüsker Dü track, boring new song, boring new song, boring new song, boring new song, obligatory Fugazi track and so on.

—Andrew Earles

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