First, I just wanted to say how much I’m enjoying doing this – especially getting emails from people and seeing comments. I think college was the last time that I was really inundated with a wide variety of music. So it’s cool to get suggestions and have discussions and I encourage people to post more comments or even submit posts. I had fairly selfish intentions when I started (wasting time), but I would love for this to be a place where people can discover and discuss new music.
Oh, also, in response to a few people who posted about Phish, I’m inclined to agree that musical virtuosity doesn’t neccesarilly entail a good product, but perhaps that’s the joy of live Phish and improvisational music in general. Rather than reading a speech to the audience, the band attempts to have a conversation on stage; it may not be polished, often can be redundant or incomplete but every once in a while (See: “Wolfman’s Brother” on Slip, Stitch, and Pass), the back and forth between the musicians, creates something totally organic and unique, surprising even the band. To see musicians evolving before your very eyes and ears is something truly special. Improvisation at it’s finest is about just that. Now onto the hipsters:
I was wandering around Williamsburg, Brooklyn with my buddy Julian last year and we got to chatting about hipsters. For those of you who’ve never been there before, Williamsburg has become the gold standard in hipster hipness – Silver Lake, Wicker Park, and Portland are all jostling for the silver. Anyway, I asked Julian if he thought that a hipster would be insulted if you called them a hipster. He wasn’t sure, neither was I, but I think both of us shuddered at the thought of being considered one.
The hipster movement seems to parallel the Revenge of the Nerds trilogy. Think about it: hipsters were those kids in high school, who, having been ostracized by the jocks and cool kids, embraced non-conformity and developed their own funky style. Perhaps they suffered a bit in high school, but at least they had school musicals and tech. Then they went to college, and low and behold, lots of people in college weren’t the cool kids in high school. And much like the ending of the first two Revenge of the Nerds movies, the hipsters realized they outnumbered the cool kids and having that realization they were embraced by the masses, liberated, empowered, free to wear tight jeans and ugly sunglasses, and show off their tattoos. Then when hipsters graduated college, they congregated in hip little communities; they were now the cool kids. And much like Lewis in Revenge of the Nerds III (and the pigs in Animal Farm and pretty much any discriminated class that rises to power for that matter), now that the hipsters were cool, they turned up their noses and started shitting on all us regular Joes and Jills. Fucking hipsters.
That’s all well and good and I could really care less if I’m still a nerd and two years behind the fashion curve (It’s been that way since middle school). The problem is, hipsters are fucking up live music. Hippie music seems to be all about virtuoso musicians and jamming – innovation and originality seem to get lost along the way. Hipsters have the opposite problem. They put such a premium on unique, cutting edge music, that musicians seem to be focusing more on their sound then their abilities.
I’m not an indie rock junkie, but I’ve been to enough shows and listened to enough music over the past few years to both: really enjoy a band’s album and really hate them in concert. Live music is a beautiful thing when done right, but the indie rock scene (which prides itself on bands gaining a following due to their concerts) is helping to ruin it. Live music doesn’t have to be about improvisation, but it should at the very least cause me to have an emotional response to what I’m listening to. Whether it’s dancing, or a general sense of excitement, or being fired up, or being depressed – I should feel something at a concert. At far too many indie rocks shows, emotion is replaced with a dull swaying and numb feeling from drinking too many PBR’s.
The problem isn’t the music itself – it’s the people performing it. In a studio, with a producer and plenty of time, a band can with great vision but mediocre ability can achieve wonderful things. That same band struggles live. And yet the hipsters flock, rejoice, and proclaim their greatness… and then have the nerve to scoff at hippie and mainstream bands alike. Hipsters are perpetuating an environment where originality is valued and little else.
Now obviously there are exceptions to this. Christine got me into Built To Spill. Definitely an indie rock band, with an indie rock following, but the talent to put on a unique live show every night (My Morning Jacket is in the same vein). The ironic thing seems to be that if these much beloved hipster bands had a hippie following, hipsters would hate them (see the previous post for more on this).
I haven’t caught them live yet, but from what Christine and Vein and handful of other people tell me, the Decembrists manage to put on a great show, using a variety of theatrics and audience participation. I caught a Clap Your Hands Say Yeah show last year and was thoroughly impressed, not so much by their musicianship, but rather the sheer energy with which they played; it felt like seeing a real rock band, complete with a lead singer that had udder disdain for the crowd and was still beloved.
Still, a good live indie show seems few and far between. And maybe I’m demonstrating some serious ignorance here, after all, I don’t see enough shows and I’m probably not hip enough to know about some of the really cool bands. It’s hard you know, when you don’t have a myspace page and can’t become friends with three hundred indie bands. So perhaps this is more of a plea than anything else: please, educate my ignorant, un-cool ass. Show me some bands that will wow me if I see them live. If not, we’re approaching a scary time, one where I’d rather sit on my couch and listen to a band’s studio album, then go see them in concert.
Showing posts with label Hippies. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Hippies. Show all posts
Friday, February 9, 2007
Wednesday, February 7, 2007
Hippies and Hipsters: The Worst! (Part 1 - Hippies)
My girlfriend and I have a running bit where we try and prove that the other one is a hippie. Christine is a hippie because she went to school in Eugene, makes skirts out of pillow cases she bought at the Salvation Army, and has more Grateful Dead songs on her iPod than I do. She says I'm a hippie because of my widely eclectic and vastly superior tastes in music -- most notably, my affinity for a small handful of "jam bands." I hate the expression "jam bands" almost as much as I hate hippies.
And no, I'm not talking about the 60's hippie. This is a discussion about music and not politics. I've got no beef with the 60's hippie's preference in music. Instead, I want to discuss the modern hippie and how they've managed to tarnish the reputations of a few bands that I love. Whether they're cynical, elitist, naive, apathetic, and/or just plain smelly, the modern hippie is the worst.
(Note: I need to set politics aside when I discuss the modern hippie -- otherwise I'll become enraged. While I generally side with leftists, the modern hippie's plan for changing the world constitutes: smoking copious amounts of weed and from what I can tell, little else. Having knowledge of society's ills and the means to change them, but doing nothing about it, is almost as repugnant as moving out to LA to pursue sitcom writing as a profession.)
The modern hippie loves "jam bands." For modern hippies, the draw of the jam band is a unique live experience every time you see a band. That, in of itself, sounds like a wonderful thing. In practice, it has created a market for bands that seemingly can only be enjoyed if the people who see them are high. Here's a good general rule: (The Acid Tests aside) if you need to be fucked up to enjoy a band, what they're playing probably isn't very good. I'm not saying the musicians playing the music are lousy, rather, their product seems to be either cliché, boring, and/or exhausting. The ability to play a song for fifteen minutes or more does not make the song or the band worth seeing live. Over the past couple days I forced myself to listen to the "jam on" station on my Sirius radio and not change the channel, in an attempt to do some research for this blog. In the eight months prior, I have never successfully gotten through a song by the following bands: Moe, Widespread Panic, Umphry's McGee, Tea Leaf Green, Railroad Earth, The Breakfast, and a handful of other jam bands that seem to be beloved by the modern hippie.
So what's the problem? Why not let the modern hippie have their stoner music in peace? Well, the problem is, the modern hippie also loves some really good bands and their association with these bands, seems to ruin the band's reputation and dissuade non-hippies from giving them a chance. Take Robert Randolph. He's the best steel petal guitar player in the world; his concerts, something like a gospel show on speed, are so good they make this Jew want to convert. Yet, his hippie following seems to immediately delegitimize his reputation as a great musician.
The same is true with two jazz/fusion trios, The Bad Plus and Medeski, Martin, and Wood. The Bad Plus is doing some revolutionary stuff in jazz with their melodic in your face piano and accessibility of their contemporary pop covers. MMW, perhaps the opposite of accessible, has infused Afro rhythms and electronica into the classic jazz trio structure. Innovators in a musical genre of innovation, these two groups have the jam band stigma attached because far too many of the people attending their shows are stoned out of their gourd. It's almost as if, people outside the hippie community see the correlation between drugs and music and assume it must be crap if the bulk of the people enjoying the show are high.
The ultimate example of this seems to be Phish. I still love Phish and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Now, I hear them shit upon (by hipsters in particular... but that's part 2) more often than other "jam band." Why? People can no longer separate the music from the modern hippie twirling to it.
Top 3 things I hate about Phish heads:
1. They think there's some deep meaning to the songs. In reality, the lyrics, written by Tom Marshall, are generally bits and pieces of poems Marshall has written, cut and pasted together by the band to fit the song.
2. Their belief that Phish is start of and end all of great music. Come on! They're a great band, but really?! You don't want to expand your horizons a little (and no, the String Cheese Incident doesn't count as expanding your horizons).
3.There's an old joke I like, "How do you starve a Phish Head? Hide their parent's credit card underneath a bar of soap." That sums up number 3 pretty well.
Top 3 things that make me not ashamed to love Phish:
1. The band was composed of four incredibly versatile and talented musicians. Innovators, the band was prolific in a variety of genres including: rock, funk, jazz, blues, folk, bluegrass, heavy metal, acoustic, and even classical (Trey Anastatio wrote and conducted a symphony a few years ago).
2. The band developed their sound in the eighties. They seemingly rejected all of the trends in music of the time. Comparisons to the Grateful Dead fall flat -- their sound had more in common with Traffic. As they developed their chops, experimented, and meshed, the band created a distinctive sound, often imitated (by other jam bands) but never recreated. It was something totally original.
3. Having been to a good number of shows, I can safely say that every show was a unique and enjoyable live experience.
Now that being said, I won't go so far to say everyone should enjoy Phish. Obviously that's not the case. They're lousy singers, they have weak lyrics, some of their songs are painfully boring and/or annoying, and the patience to appreciate a band improvise for fifteen minutes is not something everyone possesses. So, not liking Phish is fine, but saying they're a shitty band is silly and demonstrates some serious musical ignorance. If you don't like jam bands, okay, but please, I implore you to withhold judgment on bands until you actually listen to the music. Don't let the fact that hippies like the music discourage you from giving it a shot. Don't be that stuck up hipster who turns up their nose at the very mention of a "jam band." (more on hipsters in part 2)
And no, I'm not talking about the 60's hippie. This is a discussion about music and not politics. I've got no beef with the 60's hippie's preference in music. Instead, I want to discuss the modern hippie and how they've managed to tarnish the reputations of a few bands that I love. Whether they're cynical, elitist, naive, apathetic, and/or just plain smelly, the modern hippie is the worst.
(Note: I need to set politics aside when I discuss the modern hippie -- otherwise I'll become enraged. While I generally side with leftists, the modern hippie's plan for changing the world constitutes: smoking copious amounts of weed and from what I can tell, little else. Having knowledge of society's ills and the means to change them, but doing nothing about it, is almost as repugnant as moving out to LA to pursue sitcom writing as a profession.)
The modern hippie loves "jam bands." For modern hippies, the draw of the jam band is a unique live experience every time you see a band. That, in of itself, sounds like a wonderful thing. In practice, it has created a market for bands that seemingly can only be enjoyed if the people who see them are high. Here's a good general rule: (The Acid Tests aside) if you need to be fucked up to enjoy a band, what they're playing probably isn't very good. I'm not saying the musicians playing the music are lousy, rather, their product seems to be either cliché, boring, and/or exhausting. The ability to play a song for fifteen minutes or more does not make the song or the band worth seeing live. Over the past couple days I forced myself to listen to the "jam on" station on my Sirius radio and not change the channel, in an attempt to do some research for this blog. In the eight months prior, I have never successfully gotten through a song by the following bands: Moe, Widespread Panic, Umphry's McGee, Tea Leaf Green, Railroad Earth, The Breakfast, and a handful of other jam bands that seem to be beloved by the modern hippie.
So what's the problem? Why not let the modern hippie have their stoner music in peace? Well, the problem is, the modern hippie also loves some really good bands and their association with these bands, seems to ruin the band's reputation and dissuade non-hippies from giving them a chance. Take Robert Randolph. He's the best steel petal guitar player in the world; his concerts, something like a gospel show on speed, are so good they make this Jew want to convert. Yet, his hippie following seems to immediately delegitimize his reputation as a great musician.
The same is true with two jazz/fusion trios, The Bad Plus and Medeski, Martin, and Wood. The Bad Plus is doing some revolutionary stuff in jazz with their melodic in your face piano and accessibility of their contemporary pop covers. MMW, perhaps the opposite of accessible, has infused Afro rhythms and electronica into the classic jazz trio structure. Innovators in a musical genre of innovation, these two groups have the jam band stigma attached because far too many of the people attending their shows are stoned out of their gourd. It's almost as if, people outside the hippie community see the correlation between drugs and music and assume it must be crap if the bulk of the people enjoying the show are high.
The ultimate example of this seems to be Phish. I still love Phish and I'm not ashamed to admit it. Now, I hear them shit upon (by hipsters in particular... but that's part 2) more often than other "jam band." Why? People can no longer separate the music from the modern hippie twirling to it.
Top 3 things I hate about Phish heads:
1. They think there's some deep meaning to the songs. In reality, the lyrics, written by Tom Marshall, are generally bits and pieces of poems Marshall has written, cut and pasted together by the band to fit the song.
2. Their belief that Phish is start of and end all of great music. Come on! They're a great band, but really?! You don't want to expand your horizons a little (and no, the String Cheese Incident doesn't count as expanding your horizons).
3.There's an old joke I like, "How do you starve a Phish Head? Hide their parent's credit card underneath a bar of soap." That sums up number 3 pretty well.
Top 3 things that make me not ashamed to love Phish:
1. The band was composed of four incredibly versatile and talented musicians. Innovators, the band was prolific in a variety of genres including: rock, funk, jazz, blues, folk, bluegrass, heavy metal, acoustic, and even classical (Trey Anastatio wrote and conducted a symphony a few years ago).
2. The band developed their sound in the eighties. They seemingly rejected all of the trends in music of the time. Comparisons to the Grateful Dead fall flat -- their sound had more in common with Traffic. As they developed their chops, experimented, and meshed, the band created a distinctive sound, often imitated (by other jam bands) but never recreated. It was something totally original.
3. Having been to a good number of shows, I can safely say that every show was a unique and enjoyable live experience.
Now that being said, I won't go so far to say everyone should enjoy Phish. Obviously that's not the case. They're lousy singers, they have weak lyrics, some of their songs are painfully boring and/or annoying, and the patience to appreciate a band improvise for fifteen minutes is not something everyone possesses. So, not liking Phish is fine, but saying they're a shitty band is silly and demonstrates some serious musical ignorance. If you don't like jam bands, okay, but please, I implore you to withhold judgment on bands until you actually listen to the music. Don't let the fact that hippies like the music discourage you from giving it a shot. Don't be that stuck up hipster who turns up their nose at the very mention of a "jam band." (more on hipsters in part 2)
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