Old Stuff
I’m For Positivity But I Still Like My Brain
(originally published Aug.17 2011 at BadmonkeyX version 3)
There’s an ad campaign in Canadian cities by a group called “People For Good” that is really getting on my nerves. I came across it on a billboard near my shrink’s office – an ad that said something like “Here’s a good story: A man lets everyone else onto the bus before him. People for Good.” I was curious enough to look into it – and it turns out to be a truly stupid, vacuous faux-movement, of the sort advertisers like to “create.”
First off, letting everyone onto the bus isn’t actually good – it’s just self-negating. This is the Christian suffering-is-good model, the pain-worshipping impulse my mother used to instill in us by telling us to “offer it up!” when we were sick or hurt. I don’t actually understand it, but suspect that the impulse is a misunderstanding of “Christ dying for our sins” as a two-way trading relationship. Everybody loses – hooray!
Allowing someone onto the bus before you is appropriate if you’re both heading for the same door, destined to collide unless one of you surrenders. Giving your seat to someone who needs your seat more than you is kind and good. Giving it to another person just like you is … nothing. Waiting until everyone gets on the bus before you is the limp-handshake version of kindness.
The self-negaters are misunderstanding happiness as a zero-sum game: if I win, somebody else must lose. But in most areas of life, simple courtesy and the odd compromise can actually allow many people to win. There’s enough happiness to go around.
There are suggestions among the People for Good ads that make sense. One suggests that smiling at a random stranger is nice; I agree. When a bus driver is friendly first thing in the morning, that has a big impact on my day – and it’s a fair guess that the reverse is also true. Small gestures can improve the world, yes. But dumb gestures – and empty sentiment – make the world stupider.
The People for Good website contains very, very little in the way of content. For the most part, it’s flashy meaninglessness: lots of invitations to join, very little information about what you’re joining. Here’s their “manifesto”:
We’re People for Good. And our goal is to make the world a better place, one good deed at a time. It may sound ambitious but it’s easier than you’d think. In fact, you could help make the world a better place right now. Just by doing something nice for someone. Rest assured, we’re not asking for money, we just want you to donate a little generosity.
That’s it. Here’s another word that marketers should be barred from using: manifesto.
This “movement” is indeed a marketer’s creation. I found this explanation on Things Are Good:
Throughout Canada mysterious ads have appeared promoting People For Good and it turns out it’s a few marketers who wanted to take a break from selling things and wanted to sell good ideas.
A little more detail is available at the Globe, but that’s essentially it.
Sadly – for them, for us – they don’t actually HAVE any ideas. Yes, it would be nice if everybody could be nice. It would also be nice if it was sunny instead of rainy – but nobody says “Wow! What a great idea!” when somebody suggests that.
The “ideas to get you started” on the front page are as ill-considered as the ads. Number one? Mow somebody else’s lawn. Okay, that’s not awful – but there are people who would resent that, or find it puzzling. Mowing someone’s lawn because they need help mowing their lawn is nice. But favours that are unasked for are annoyances, often. Of the ten “ideas to get you started,” two more are variations on “do an unsolicited favour”: shovel someone else’s walk, make your neighbour cookies. One is fine: say hi to your neighbour. Three are variations on “do someone in your house a favour,” which is fine but unimaginative. Number 3 is solid: “Call your mother.” And the last two are just fucking stupid – write handwritten notes instead of emails, and “Bring home flowers.” Those are only “good” if the recipient likes those things.
Why does this all make me angry? Because it makes it so clear that these people – despite their good intentions – either have no idea what “good” is, or are avoiding any more substantial “good” things because they don’t want to limit their opportunities when they return to selling whatever they’re hired to sell.
Marketers are good at selling things, by any means necessary, but the content – the thing for sale – doesn’t matter. So they’re trying to sell an idea, for a change. Unfortunately, they don’t have any. Their industry uses ideas to sell things, and in doing so strips the ideas – concepts like manifesto, movement, new, fresh, improved, healthy, etc. – of their meaning. Small wonder marketers can’t describe what “good” actually looks like.
The world is infinitely complicated, and being good is complicated too. And marketers – the public relations end of big business, the true and amoral destructive force in town – hate complication. Because if people consider ideas in any depth, they’re in danger of discovering the real rabbit hole of the considered life: that thinking in any depth leads to more thinking and considering, and never ends. And that it is not easy.
There are simple things one can do to make the world more pleasant – smiling, being courteous – but the simple things are not the world-changing things. Nothing about the People for Good campaign is challenging, and it all reminds me of the plague of ribbon-wearing and “shopping for change” tokenism that allows people to think they’re doing good when all they’re really doing is shopping.
To be actually good, you must also try to be actually smart. To the degree that you’re able, you should use your intelligence to first consider what Good is, and second, how to use it to the greatest common good.
My favourite of the ads: “Hug a stranger. We’re all relatives if you go back far enough.” It’s a nice idea to remind us that we’re all family. But hugging a stranger is actually completely inappropriate. Hugging anyone who doesn’t want a hug is akin to a dog’s humping your leg: it’s a one-way pleasure, and a pain to the recipient. It’s a nice thought – but please don’t do it. If you want to acknowledge our mutuality, our commonness, consider the many intelligent ways to do that:
– Look a homeless person in the eye.
– Try not to steal from the future.
– Give some of your extra money to someone who needs it.
– Try to understand somebody you find confusing or offensive.
– Stop bitching about taxes.
– Vote for the greatest common good.
– Pay a living wage.
– Keep public facilities funded and equitable.
– Keep an eye on your prejudices.
– Don’t stop thinking when you finish school.
– Question advertisements.
I’m sorry I’m such a cock. But advertisers play hardball. Witness the pro-tar sands ads. Witness divisive, manipulative political ads. Witness the murder of meaning and the promotion of endless, wasteful consumerism. Big Business is quite happy to smile and lie to us, and they’re pleased as punch when we distract ourselves with trivia, allow ourselves to become simple, and all behave “nicely.” Fuck that. The way to take on a relentless and powerful bully is to punch him in the face. So here’s my little, local, heartfelt punch: These ads are incredibly stupid. They’re even a little dangerous.
I respect a man who goes to where he wants to be
Published December 25, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: vic chesnutt
Vic Chesnutt died today, on purpose. What a fucking year for death. I share sadness with people today, for him and for those of us left. I spoke with him a couple of times, and twice he played my request. For some reason it’s always these sad motherfuckers who are the motherfuckers I like the best.
Rest in peace and thanks for all the music.
“a man must take his life in his own hands
hit those nails on the head
and i respect a man who goes to where he wants to be
even if he wants to be dead”
– Florida, by Vic Chesnutt
The Top Whatever, an Aside: Vic Chesnutt
Published December 26, 2009 Uncategorized 4 Comments
Tags: vic chesnutt
Vic Chesnutt wasn’t a phenomenon of the last decade – he was indeed the highlight, musically, of my 1990s – but he was a major part of my musical life from the first moment until yesterday’s last. I saw him everytime I could, picked up every record, and chewed on every line of his incredible lyrics. The Info Pusher and I found him together, sought out his harder-to-find records all over the place together, loved him together. If I were to have a piece of music inscribed on my headstone, it would be his music. I wrote about his music more than anyone else’s, and wanting to have my say about him was a big part of starting Bad MonkeyX, the site that preceded this blog. So I’m taking the liberty of sticking him into this Top Whatever series.
I’m still reeling a bit – I had the moment this morning where I’d forgotten he was gone and had to re-realize it. But I’m also sort of sadly not that surprised; like another artistic hero, Kurt Vonnegut, Vic Chesnutt had let us know long ago that he was ready to go. He wrote so many songs about it over the years, including on this last record, where he sang “Ohhhh, death! Ohhh, death!” (Flirted With You All My Life, from At the Cut). With both men, however, I always took the occasional hints that they were over their sadness as the more true messages; that’s called wishful thinking, I guess. The funny question: after years of threatening suicide, Vonnegut died an old, angry bitter man who fell and hit his head. Which is a better death? More importantly, who’s to judge?
It’s baffling, and revealing – like it was with Cobain, with Elliott Smith – that having this incredible talent, this amazing way to let your soul out, and this clear evidence that you are important to people – how is that not enough? It makes me think that there is no thing that makes life bearable; I’ve always known that money and fame weren’t the answer, but it is sad to find out that neither are genius, community, marriage, or music. Sad people are sad people.
And who knows what it was like to live in his busted body? For us it was always the incredible voice that flew from it that mattered, but watching him on stage, his endless trying to get comfortable in his chair, the work he put into trying to get into a good position for the mic, his treacherous arms interfering with his guitar playing… for him that must have been equal in impact on his day.
Of course, in both hypotheses, I’m only guessing. I suppose, really, I don’t want to know. Not knowing why he died when he died will fit in just fine with his musical legacy, with his poetry, and with his dark, earthy sense of humour. He wouldn’t have said, I think: just look at those crazy biographies he’d write, in point form: in between something like “discovered leonard cohen” and “learned trumpet”, a four letter explanation of something huge: “coma”. It occurs four or five times in the list, which is otherwise mostly full of wonderful things.
I’m not sure why I’m writing all this. I guess so I can think about it. I’m full of sadness that he’s gone, and I’m shattered for his wife, and I wish we could have had more of his music – but that was not a thing I would ever have wished to stop. I’m glad we got to see the stunning, incredible last show in Toronto, and I’ll never forget that. I’m glad we got to hear him at all, ever.
I wrote about almost everything he did, here and at Bad MonkeyX; I was just looking it over and remembering, listening. The one I’d like to share a link to is the piece I wrote about About to Choke, the very best record of its decade. If you’re not familiar with it, you should check it out. If you are already familiar, here’s a song to help you if you’re having trouble crying. If you’d rather laugh your sad ass off, listen to the song below it. Both is fine, too.
(((()))),
-jep
See You Around – from About to Choke
Good Morning, Mr. Hard On – from Nine High A Pallet
[ADDENDUM: Kristin Hersh has put up a donation site for Tina Chesnutt and the rest of Vic’s family; Vic Chesnutt was carrying large medical bills when he died. I’m donating, and think you should too. It’s Paypal, so it’s easy and small amounts are doable. Here’s the place to do it: http://kristinhersh.cashmusic.org/vic/ ]
Published January 24, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a Comment
Tags: barack obama, chatter, shh, stephen harper
I am a happy cat this week, for the obvious reason: the new-thing-that-may-be thanks to President Obama and the good people who voted to give him a shot. I love the opportunities for renewal and forward movement and I love the hope that I feel tangibly for the first time ever. I’m not exaggerating.
This: our time of standing pat, of protecting narrow interests and putting off unpleasant decisions – that time has surely passed.
And this: the stale political arguments that have consumed us for so long no longer apply.
And this:
Our challenges may be new. The instruments with which we meet them may be new. But those values upon which our success depends – hard work and honesty, courage and fair play, tolerance and curiosity, loyalty and patriotism – these things are old. These things are true. They have been the quiet force of progress throughout our history. What is demanded then is a return to these truths. What is required of us now is a new era of responsibility…
These sentences – it makes me want to cry a bit that they’ve been spoken for the entire world to hear, by someone who may be able to steer things in this hopeful direction. I love it that all of these ideas are founded upon the supposition that we are the responsible agents who must carry them out for them to exist, and that this isn’t a burden. This gives my heart a boner. I want to be an adult in an era like this.
listen to it all in another window
But ever since the speech, I’ve been unable to tolerate much stupidity. I’ve been irritable with TV and radio and people talking shit. The news anchors and radio hosts who followed up this amazing speech can never say anything about it worth listening to. How could they? But they’re obligated to do so – media can never shut up, even when shutting up is the only good response.
I’ve been annoyed that, inevitably, in our own lives, somebody has to be the one to poke at it all with a stick. Somebody has to be the first one to smirk at it all. Today at work, a guy I like a lot quipped that Obama wouldn’t be any better than Bush, because he was American. I rolled up the paper I was holding and hit him over the head with it and left the room. I didn’t want to hear his joke, nor the reactions of those who found his statement provocative.
I don’t want to hear from everybody for a while. I want to be done with chatter and opining and holding forth: I just want to hear rational, forward looking, clear thinking for a while – or some silence. Dumb-asses have had their time, big time, and they showed us all what they do with things when they’re in charge: they break things and hurt people and hoard stuff – and they use words irresponsibly, stupidly, wastefully, greedily, until they don’t mean anything anymore.
I think this is the exact right moment for all the adults in the world – I mean real adults – to stand together with President Obama and say – just like we would say to disruptive or petulant children, “Alright, now, be quiet. Just hush.”
I think this is the exact right time to admonish the self-interested and the mean-spirited with the firm but gentle tone real adults would use on angry, self-righteous but uninformed teenagers:
“Don’t be childish,” we should start saying to bigots of all types.
“That’s just greedy,” we should feel free to scold the over-privileged. “Put that back right now.”
“You need to think about the future,” we should advise the fuckers who today fight to disable environmental regulations. “If you don’t take care of that, you can’t have it.”
Because adults should be in charge. Not because of their age, but because of their strengths of character and their abilities to solve problems and to care for others and take responsibility, to hold it and wield it. After a lifetime of mean old men, rotten aristocrats and silly-ass baby boomers running the show, I feel pretty ready to step up and put up, and to ask some folks to please shut up.
Published February 29, 2008 Mp3 Post 4 Comments
Tags: buggles, music history, new wave, post-punk, prog rock, yes
I pulled out Yes’s Drama last week on a whim; it’s always been the only Yes album I’d ever pull out, but something warm and magical has happened: it turns out that I love it. Just like an REO Speedwagon ballad, I have found love and it was – gasp – with me ALL ALONG! Sigh. Just buried in my shelves. And now, like any other fool in love, I am going to talk about it ALL THE TIME. My true friends will weather this storm. The rest of you – well, we’ll see.
I have a deep love for a very specific and short period in musical history – I don’t even think it has a name. Let’s name it right now: it’s When the Prog Rockers Got Real – Just Before They Got Plastic*.
In and right around 1980, several bands from the Progressive Rock age grew up and laid off the mushrooms. The result was a tiny period of very good rock music, where technical proficiency was still central, but the massive energies in King Crimson, Genesis, Rush, and Yes were boiled down into greatness, rather than sprawled out in pomp and crapenstance.
Let me state for the record, if it isn’t already obvious, that I hate Progressive Rock. If you don’t know what it was, well: right after all of the mind-expanded hippies lost their innocence (in 69, with Altamont, Kent State, bad acid, and lots of death) some of them retreated into this very British, very thumb-sucky music. Progressive Rock had pauncy pseudo-intellectuals imagining that the division between Classical and Rawk musics was “just a construct”, so they tried to smoosh into one wonderful thing.
Of course, they were all still really into drugs, and now really into escapism, so the music they came up with was faux-classical, faux-intellectual nonsense for nihilistic stoners, generally concerned with lyrics about new age crystal magic and the Lord of the Rings. Songs were 30 minutes long, which in rock music is always a mistake.
There was, as there always is, some bleeding between the scenes; Zeppelin certainly had large bits of this nonsense mixed into their ultra-blues. The Who were on dumb and similar tangents of their own (Tommy, anyone?). Pink Floyd proved to be ahead of their time, and so settled into the Royalty section of the scene. Even Styx and Journey made long instrumental pseudo-something-smarter music in the mid-70s.
The good thing that came out of Prog Rock’s Classical aspirations was that playing was really important – technical proficiency got a big spotlight. That’s why you hear the many, many solos on any of the Live Albums from the 70s. That’s where the big drum sets and banks of keyboards and double- and triple-necked guitars came from – these guys were so good that they just couldn’t express themselves without an entire music store around them.
(The other good thing about Prog Rock was that it set Punk Rock in motion – guys and ladies who were offended by the way music had become something for experts to do, who noticed and hated that the spirit of rock and roll was buried and suffocating under all that fat.)
Now I don’t approve of this silliness anymore. Seems to me the truly great guitarists have one or two they love and play, and that a smaller kit is a better way to watch a drummer shine, and really, you hardly ever need a bass solo. But if you grew up in the 70s, especially if you were a guy, the technical proficiency was really something to admire. I’m sure it remains important in some subscenes, but then it was pervasive. (To give context, I became a teen in the early 80s – so punk had already happened – but I was in a small town in Ontario where punk was pretty much a myth until 86 or so.) Playing ability was what we listended for, compared, and charted on lists of our favourites. Being Canadian, of course, the Best Drummer, Best Guitarist and Best Bass Player were always Neil Peart, Alex Lifeson, and Geddy Lee. I still admire proficiency – it’d be weird not to, I think.
But I secretly hated the long songs; I still hate them. They were unfocussed, they were pretentious, they were boring. On the radio, however, as opposed to on the record player, were some very focussed songs – the post-punk singles-based era had arrived in Sarnia before punk did, naturally – and I loved the radio of the early 80s, with Tom Petty at his best, played right before Thomas Dolby and the Human League, followed by Journey and Rick Springfield, leading into Steely Dan. That was fun radio. So I straddled these two worlds, shamefully appreciating the lighter one more.
THEN, THE MAGIC.
This period we’re now calling When the Prog Rockers Got Real Just Before They Got Plastic (WTPRGRJBTGP) came along. It was a very happy medium between post-punk brevity and prog rock proficiency: Genesis recorded Abacab, their best song and peak. Rush ditched the dragons and put out Moving Pictures. King Crimson got interesting, finally, and did those stellar records with Adrian Belew – Discipline and Three of a Perfect Pair especially.
And Yes lost their ridiculous-little-angel singer Jon Anderson (whose singing may be best understood by tiny birds) along with Rick Wakeman, possibly the most annoying keyboard player in the universe, and merged with a weird British synth band called The Buggles. You’d know them best, if at all, for the tune “Video Killed The Radio Star.” THAT new band put out Yes’s best record, which I am in love with, called Drama.
Does it Really Happen from Drama.
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* Plastic? It was the 80s: everything got plastic. I think specifically of (the campily enjoyable but less than good) music of Asia, Yes’s 90125, Genesis’ Invisible Touch, etc.
Published March 4, 2008 article Leave a Comment
Tags: ABC, buggles, music history, Trevor Horn, yes
I came to dig music under the tutelage of my older brother Jim; as often as he’d tolerate us, my pals and I would hang out in his basement bedroom and listen to his collection of LPs and 45s, and he would answer my questions about who had been in which bands, how bands were related, how to hook up a stereo. I have very distinct memories of all of this: of watching the Payolas’ single Romance spin; of wondering how Tommy Shaw could be a boy and be so dang pretty; and in close proximity, two crucial events: first, of learning what a “producer” was, and second, of learning what a “cover song” was.
The cover song was an unusual lesson because generally one learns about this by hearing two versions of a song; I learned it because my brother, while we were listening to David Bowie’s Heroes album, suggested that he’d like to hear Beauty and the Beast as a heavy rock song. It was a great conceptual leap for me, taken early in my formation, and separated the composition from the way it was performed in my mind.
The producer was another early “aha” moment – listening to ABC’s first and best record, The Lexicon of Love. I’ve written about that record before, but let me quickly restate that it is one of my favourite all-time records pretty much because of the lushness and clarity of the production. Jim was pointing the sound out to me, and I went ohhh – is that what this means? – pointing to Trevor Horn’s credit on the back.
I still love covers; I still listen for production as much as anything else. And both of these are relevant here! I mentioned in Drama Week pt 1 that the ethereally annoying Jon Anderson is missing from this album, along with the wanky Rick Wakeman, and that both were replaced by Buggles. Well, the Buggles were Geoff Downes and … Trevor Horn.
Apparently Horn had worked on the previous Yes record, Tormato, and was to produce Drama when the sessions fell apart and Anderson and Wakeman took their leave. He brought in fellow Buggle Geoff Downes, and they rounded out the lineup for just this one album. The Buggles , if you don’t know, were a pre-Pet Shop Boys British techno-duo famous for Video Killed The Radio Star as well as for being the first band played on MTV.
And for our purposes, they’re interesting for having covered their own song to great effect. On Drama, the tune is called Into The Lens; on the Buggles’ Adventures in Modern Recording, it is called I Am A Camera. On Drama, the songwriting credit is shared by all five members; I imagine this is because they all added so much in their individual parts, and think it’s fair. The difference between the two tracks is serious, and interesting. Check it out:
Into The Lens – Yes
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I Am A Camera – The Buggles
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After this Marvel Team Up finished, Geoff Downes would go off with Steve Howe to form Asia. Trevor Horn would stick around to produce and help write Yes’ 90125 (with their hittest single, Owner of a Lonely Heart). Oh, and then he became one of the hottest producers around.
Next on Drama Week, we’ll talk about Radiohead, concept records, art-rock and the Rheostatics.
Drama Week Part 3: Machine Messiahs Across The Ages
Published March 8, 2008 Mp3 Post 1 Comment
Tags: concept albums, flaming lips, pink floyd, prog rock, radiohead, rush, styx, tommy, yes
There’s no incredible thesis here – just an interesting across-the-musical-generations tie-in thing. Drama, the Yes album we’re concerned with, comes from the tail-end of the prog rock era, which was heavily laden with something called the Concept Album – long and terrible stories spread across LPs, essentially – see Rush’s 2112 or Tommy for two bad examples, Dark Side of the Moon for a great example, and Kilroy Was Here (Styx) for the nail in the coffin.
Drama – not a concept album. The spurious reason I have for bringing concept albums up at all is that this track, Machine Messiah, calls to mind an album that wasn’t ever, to my knowledge, referred to as a concept album but which always struck me as an obvious one. (A quick search of the www found the band decrying even Floyd’s post-Meddle music, and explaining what seems like a through-line as a series of random ideas, songs and phrases.)
The concept/story on OK Computer which I heard from my earliest listenings and can’t not hear now is this: a robot comes to Earth as a savior and then reveals itself as a fascist dictator. I won’t spend time laying out my case for this, because that would seem ridiculous in the face of the band’s clearly indicating that this is not true. But it’s a reasonable thesis, especially for a former student of English lit, where the author’s intention is fully ignored in analysis.
Another concept album that wasn’t came about in the same-ish period – The Soft Bulletin (Flaming Lips) is the story of what happens when science starts to meddle with the stuff life is made of: the results are both transformative and destructive. Both of these are much better concepts than “rock and roll freedom fighters struggle for right to self-expression” or “deaf dumb blind kid” – um – what was the concept in Tommy anyway? I wonder if it weren’t for the terrible reputation of Concept Albums, OK Computer and The Soft Bulletin might have been seen as two great ones.
I SAID there was no great thesis here – just some connections. Yes’s Drama was one of the endings for Prog Rock, which term would never be embraced again. But with it’s concise and skillful performances and storytelling it could be considered a precursor to Radiohead’s OK Computer. Drama has no concept (as an album); OK Computer does but says it doesn’t. Both push what a Rock song can be to its outer reasonable limits to great success. And both have heavy, great songs about Robots.
Machine Messiah.
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Paranoid Android.
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Next on Drama Week: Art Rock is Prog Rock’s New Wave; Bonus Tracks Suck; Demos Rule.
Published March 9, 2008 Mp3 Post 2 Comments
Tags: art rock, canadian rock, dave clark, dinner is ruined, drama, ford pier, genesis, instant klassix, max webster, prog rock, rheostatics, rush, wooden stars, yellowjacket avenger, yes
The period we’ve been calling When the Prog Rockers Got Real – Just Before They Got Plastic (or WTPRGRJBTGP for short) – the period around 1980, when Genesis and Yes and Rush and company got briefly concise without abandoning their technical proficiency or proclivity for complexity – didn’t last long. [To be clear: I am not presuming to describe a cultural phenomenon here. I am describing a personally important musical period where what certain others were doing gelled beautifully with what I was wanting.]
I never stopped loving this sort of music – heavy, rocking and concise but still angular, challenging, imaginative, considered. I still keep an eye out for it, and here’s a weirdo thing: in recent years, I’ve been finding it in my own backyard. My own 3000 mile wide backyard, known to others as “Canada”. Art Rock, as it seems to like to be called now, is sort of big here, in our small way.
I think the influence of Rush on all teenage male Canadians must have had some influence on this; credit must be given to Rush’s less mainstream cousin Max Webster as well. The influence can be seen in almost invisible cult acts like the Yellowjacket Avenger, slightly more visible weirdos like the Wooden Stars and The Dinner is Ruined, and crystal clearly in our Art Rock darlings the Rheostatics – and in their friends Dave Clark and Ford Pier and the collective Instant Klassix.
I find this a satisfying little turn of events.
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Satan Is The Whistler – from the Rheostatics’ Night of the Shooting Stars
Drama Week pt 5: The Bonus Post
Published March 10, 2008 Mp3 Post Leave a Comment
Tags: bonus tracks, demos, drama, special editions, tempus fugit, yes
Alrighty, here’s the final piece of Drama Week (which, incidentally, took three weeks). I hadn’t intended to write this one – but while doing a little web-research about Drama, I found out about and downloaded a “special edition” of Drama released by Rhino. The contents of said “special” record inspired this post. I suppose you could say that this post is the Drama Week’s Hidden Track. Woo Hoo!
The Special Edition is essentially a digital phenomenon – once the labels had resold their
vinyl catalogues as ridiculously overpriced Compact Discs, it made sense to then find other ways to sell the same record again – by offering Extras – remastered recordings, rare tracks, b-sides, live recordings, demos. DVDs do the same thing, to (I think) an even more ridiculous extent – there’s a reason not everything shot becomes part of a film – and I swear to god it’s started with books – some paperbacks of late have included “scenes from xx’s next novel!” at the back.
Like everything else in this old universe, this is both good and bad. Bad: true fans get gouged; many of the extras are crap; Disney marketing campaigns with copy that says “now on two-disc DVD for the first ever time”. Good: true fans dig this stuff; some of the extras are fun; every generation of three year olds gets its own commemorative Little Mermaid.
I’m into minutiae as much as the next geek, but I’m not a die-hard grabby consumerist – so I’m particular about how extras are shared. I do not appreciate – I hate, I object to – tracks being tacked onto the end of an album. I’ve ranted about this before, so I won’t say much except this quick two-paragraph blurt: An album is a work of art, with a wholeness and integrity that matters. To me. The last song is the album’s ending, and its position on the record matters. So to follow it with four tracks is cheapening and degrading.
It irks me that a kid buying Imagine now might easily be led to believe that it was released in 1999, since that’s the only date listed on it. I also believe that the sound of a record is a part of what it is – so cleaning up an old record is, well, rude. A remastered album shouldn’t replace the original. Extras should be on a separate disc. The end.
The extras that I appreciate most of all are the ones that give insight into how a record was created – especially demos. Demo recordings give insight into the process of engineering and production, of the studio-as-instrument and how it influences the overall sound, and I’m very interested in this. It’s comparable to why I like covers.
The special edition Drama has both my pet peeve and favourite aspects. The album sessions started with old Jon Anderson and Rick Wakeman still in the band. So several of the extra tracks feature the aborted old-Yes album. These tracks, plus a few exploratory jams, are tacked onto the ending. Included in these, however, are a couple of worthy demo recordings that bring home how well-written, played, and produced Drama is.
Tempus Fugit – Tracking Session
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https://version30.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/11-tempus-fugit-tracking-session.mp3
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Tempus Fugit – from Drama
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https://version30.files.wordpress.com/2008/03/06-tempus-fugit.mp3
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Well, childrens, that’s it for Drama Week. Hope it was fun. I’ve listened the shit out of the record now, and will likely search out something less wizardly and precise for my next orgy of fascination. Guided By Voices is a contender. Maybe Captain Beefheart. Thanks for bearing with me.