We Can Tell How Good A Band Is Without Listening to Them! Probably not. But we’re going to try. Last Friday we blindly chose a band off of Last.FM’s “Hype List”. We will now judge (from 1 to 10) how good a band is based soley on their name and photo. After harsh (empty) judgment, today we’ll actually listen to their music to see how wrong/right we were.
(Joining us is L.A.-via-Milwaukee’s Adam Lovinus )
The Band We Are Judging Today:
Mercedes Sosa
And now… the moment of truth… feast your ears on THIS! (Last.Fm, MySpace)…
Brian: Well shit, now this experiment has made me feel like a fat, conceited American-centric jerk for not knowing what she’s saying, or who the hell she is. (Listening to “Mi Cajita de Music”). Very nice… a lovely slightly-hefty voice. Definitely 60s era folksy latin classical acoustic. I very much enjoyed those tracks, though, I won’t be guilted into giving her a 10 because I know nothing about the Argentinian Folk Tradition, or what the hell she’s saying. Final Rating: 8 (Previous Superficial Rating: 7)
Lille: I knew this had something to do with my grandmother. It’s exactly the kind of music I’d hear in her souped-up Lincoln. At first I wasn’t incredibly impressed by her songs, but I started listening to her whole catalog, and for some reason she reminds me of Leonard Cohen, but Argentinian and female. It’s perfect early morning listening; it transports me to a place that’s foreign, sad and beautiful at the same time. I googled her after listening to a couple of songs and found out she just died. I am humbled by the fact that Mercedes Sosa is not, in fact, a drain cleaner. And while I have an excuse not to like world music (I’m ethnic, give me a break), I think I would like to put this on my iPod in a playlist with the Buena Vista Social Club (heh). (Superficial Rating: n/a)
Adam: Indeed, she sounds as authentic as she looks. She’s NPR World Cafe all the way. The fine Spanish guitar work scores high on my nerd index. But it’s nothing I haven’t heard before, and it’s hard for me to get too excited about traditional music. As an unapologetic American, I can’t fully appreciate anything sung in a foreign language that’s not produced by Ry Cooder. My rating remains an 8. (Previous Superficial Rating:
And there you have it. We were relatively on-the-mark with this one.Tune in soon when we take on a much more terribly named artist.Oh, and if you’re curious (via Last.fm):
Mercedes Sosa (born 9 July 1935, died 3 October 2009 in Buenos Aires) was an Argentinean singer inmensely popular throughout Latin America. With her roots in argentineanfolk music, she became one of the preeminent exponents of nueva trova (new song). Sosa is greatly admired for the depth and beauty of her contralto voice. She is nicknamed “La Negra” by her fans for her long, jet-black hair.
Last night newly married man (i.e. chilled out and off cigarettes), rocker Ryan Adams said the words: fuck/fucking/fuck you approximately 28 times while promoting his second book of poetry Hello Sunshine at the New York Public Library.
“Are there any kids here?” Adams blurted after catching himself hanging on an expletive. “Cause I cuss a lot.”
The lovely and casual — yet at times awkward — discourse between the jumpy musician and his interviewer, fiery actress Mary Louise Parker ran the gamut, from their love and hate relationship toward American poet Mark Strand to Led Zeppelin.
A question most of us were asking ourselves even before the talk began was: why were these two paired up?
The unifying link here stems from a bond they both shared over their love of poetry when they used to be neighbors. Ah! OK, got it. Their fluidity was overtly noticeable as Parker would whisper things to Adams, making sure he stayed on track, moving the length of talk along (she left right before Q&A’s). For the record, the talk was supposed to stay at the running time of a “typical shrink appointment,” though Adams himself said he had never had a session that long before.
Regardless of time, the talk did hit on some interesting topics, like why poetry matters, overused words (rain!), editing poetry or not, the works of Allen Ginsberg, Frank O’Hara, John Ashbery, Elizabeth Bishop, Frederick Seidel (or as Adams refers to him by “the Hannibal Lecter of poetry”), and Johnny Temple (bassist of Girls Against Boys and Adams’ publisher under the independent imprint Akashic Books.
Interestingly enough the most spontaneous and sincere moments were when Adams discussed his own works, in music, art and poetry.
“I don’t have a vocation,” he sort of proclaimed. “This is all I can do.”
He discussed variations between his earlier work to the pieces he is producing now under a sober and happier cloud.
“I’m 34 now. I do hypnotherapy,” he said guzzling down green tea. “The biggest dicks become such softies.”
Adams almost avoided sharing some of his own pieces with us (having said he doesn’t like reading his work) and jokingly threatened to leave until the NYPL MC coerced him into doing so. He ultimately read two exquisitely sweet pieces from his new book: Plus Dreams and White Diamonds.
At the end of the evening an attendee asked Adams which poem he’d read if it were the last thing he’d ever read before he died.
What: Woodstock Photo Exhibition: Commemorating the 40th Anniversary of Woodstock When: August 13 through November Where: Morrison Hotel Gallery, 313 Bowery, New York Why: Because I wasn’t at Woodstock and they had free beer
We’re not sure if you noticed, but Woodstock is back (and not in the ‘99 revival sort of way). You didn’t hear about the Heroes of Woodstock concert at Madison Square Garden that went down last week, or Ang Lee’s new film, Taking Woodstock, that is scheduled to be released this year?
These happenings aren’t a coincidence but all in commemoration of the iconic musical concert, hippie-fest, will-never-be-replicated, 40th anniversary of Woodstock.
The Morrison Hotel Gallery is playing host to an exhibition featuring the photographs by Woodstock photographer Henry Diltz, among others. I encountered more than a few original hippies, along with Woodstock organizer Michael Lang while I drank something called Black Acid Beer. I didn’t ask questions, I just drank it.
Where: Dorsky Gallery, 11-03 45th Avenue, Long Island City, 718-937-6317
Why: Because I like scary things.
So in this lengthy interview with married curators of the Horrow Show, Deb and Dave Tolchinsky, whom also work as professors at Northwestern University’s Department of Radio-TV-Film, conversed about the crazy shit that frightens us, and why. It got me thinking about the one thing that will haunt me for the rest of my life. View at your own discretion.
Can you believe it’s been nearly a decade since Office Space? That’s roughly 36 financial quarters of bad Lumberg impressions and Swingline stapler jokes. The unforeseen longevity of a movie like Office Space -– a cynical look at corporate drones — stuck with the American audience long after its theatre run. Though the defining modern corporate farce is getting old, it seems like “life at the office” has become an increasingly prevalent touchstone. A new breed of unflinching, cynical, critical, tragi-comic and sometimes downright depressing office themed productions have hit a cultural nerve.
There have always been the silly corporate comedies and hyper-real farces a-la Office Space, Dilbert, and (can I throw in) Fred Savage’s short-lived Working, but it seems the new crop of pop-culture corporate landscapes have a biting, sad, desperate underpinning. What’s the deal?
The obvious jumping-off point is NBC’s excellent adaptation of The Office — a satire that turns a documentary-style camera on the lives of paper salespeople in first-world Nowheresville. It’s a show that’s both funny and melancholy — simultaneously hilarious and hitting a little too close to home. You’ve also got the inanity of Carpoolers, a silly single-cam show that’s the brainchild of Kids In the Hall graduate Bruce McCulloch. If you flash back 50 years and add some slick suits, the politics, binge drinking and philandering could easily be that of the sloganeering Madison Ave execs of AMC’s period drama Mad Men.
Elsewhere in the business world, author Matthew Beaumont documents the hilarity of London’s fictional Miller-Shanks office in a story told strictly through exchanged e-mail in e. If the U.K. doesn’t hit close enough to home, local cube dweller Joshua Ferris is getting stellar reviews for Then We Came to the End, a wry comedic novel chronicling the dismantling of a Chicago ad agency.
Of course, I can’t get too far into an office-themed blog without mentioning OFFICE, the group of former Chicago worker bees who produced a killer EP, quit their day jobs, and now professionally churn out bouncy pop tracks with some seriously sardonic underpinnings. Elsewhere in the music world there’s been a huge response to the National’s CD, Boxer. The album, with equal parts charm and anxiety, chronicles the Willy Loman-esque slide of a modern corporate worker into a nostalgic shut-in.
So if popular music, books and television are meant as means of escapism, what’s to say for an audience that’s developed an interest in fictionalized versions of working stiffs? Is the emergence of corporate-themed amusements just a mere coincidence, a blip on the radar, or a hint of more to come? Whatever the explanation, the subject matter has resonance and the writing is good, so I will continue to ignore the inherent irony of hanging around the office every week to talk about The Office. -Brian Howe Battle
Bembang! is a music blog written by a trio of music nerds who live in Los Angeles, Chicago and New York City.
We Can Tell How Good A Band Is Without Listening to Them!
